Empowered volunteers are by nature caring and empathetic.
For this reason they will find themselves as they hand out business cards and encountering people who are not happy, they need to fall back on the empowered volunteer wisdom. They may have many of life’s hard issues on their plate and they may be emotionally dragging. They won’t feel that they have any good reason to even consider your offer of joining your group. When they tell you why they won’t or can’t join, the negativity of their emotional state radiates and drowns your positive nature.
This is where many would simply take “no” for an answer and move on. That is a choice. I am now going to suggest that another potential path is available, one that must fit the individual empowered volunteer well enough to even try to employ the empowered volunteer wisdom approach.
After reading this short post if an empowered volunteer feels that this idea has potential they should check out the website where the author of this book and many of the supporting studies can show a more well rounded presentation of methods to become more emotionally positive.
http://www.positivityratio.com/index.php
For people in emotional distress there are things that they can do to help themselves that are at no cost and are backed by decades of studies that show their positive impact and effectiveness. Barbara L. Fredrickson, in her book Positivity writes about the positivity ratio, the balance between negative things in your life and positive ones.
This ratio is totally in the control of each of us and it can mean the difference between languishing and flourishing! It is that powerful, according to the author.
Studies show that positive emotions don’t directly improve or impact the human heart, but they can undo the influence of the negativity! In other words, they can minimize the negative influence or damage. Positive emotions also helps the body to rebound from the negative effects faster than if they were not involved.
There are two types of positivity identified by the author, serenity and amusement. She sees both as equally good at improving recovery time from negative emotional stress. In the book and to some extent on the website she explains how each works. Serenity is something that is a great tool for those in the funeral business to use to keep their empathy from being drained away. Amusement is open and accessible to everyone.
A high percentage of empowered volunteers will be of the “resilient personality” that the author identified.
People who are of this type worry less and are able to rebound from negative life influences quicker than those who hold a more pessimistic life view. Studies on the behavior type resilient personalities have decades of research as well, and the results show that positivity and openness work together with resilience to dissolve negativity and enable people to make stronger comebacks in their lives.
If you find yourself as an empowered volunteer and you are not one of the resilient personalities, good news you can build this characteristic into your nature! It is a resource you can develop.
Empowered volunteers that encounter emotionally distraught people who seem to be generally positive but are at that point when they are encountered by an empowered volunteer in a negative rut can use this pattern to engage and perhaps set that person onto a better path. Down the road they just may take that business card and give you a call.
Negative emotions narrow the persons emotional state and their point of view.
They don’t see the forest for the trees in many cases. Many people in such states emotionally cut themselves off from the positive aspects of the community too, such as charities and volunteer groups. Do you see where this is going? They need the groups but they won’t see it.
The empowered volunteer wisdom secrete involves resilience to go beyond ones individual amount of positivity and embrace it from others in the community! In other words, the people who will without even contemplating your offer of volunteering reject it are the ones most in need of the a community embracing. Their negative emotions won’t let them even see the potential due to their narrowed focus, with the forest being the community full of positive types who can support those in need.
The author further explains that their are two responses to hardship, despair or hope. Despair multiplies the effects of negativity until it drowns out all forms of positivity! Beware of this great sucking sound of emotional drainage. Hope is the opposite of despair and it is like a shield that holds off negative emotions from the outside world in most instances. Resilience is another result from positive emotions using hope as one of the supports.
Summing things up, positivity broadens your mind, helps you build your best future, and fuels your resilience. Using the three to one ratio of positive emotional experiences to negative ones people can then see how positivity and negativity work together to “tip” their lives toward flourishing.
The nuts and bolts of how to find positive life emotions and view points from a broadened mind are available on the website. So is a test to determine the current state of the persons emotions. Tools to change that states if it needs changing are also listed in the book and on the site.
The empowered volunteer simply needs to be familiar with the wisdom and then when the presentation is rejected this is potentially the very best message that an empathetic person could offer to another who is emotionally down. Positivity and the surrounding message has decades of studies on it’s validity for the prospect who is data driven, it has strong empathy for the prospect who is more into touch and contact type informational learning and it just plain has absolutely no drawbacks that involve either monetary cost or resource costs. What could be better than FREE?
When you encounter an emotionally distraught person who rejects your message despite your passion and your knowledge that they need it, this is the one thing that you can offer them. Have the web address on you, take your card and write it on the back of your card for them. They still have to take action on their own, but they may just call you down the road and tell you they want to join your group that has so much to offer, just like the passionate presentation you offered him or her when they needed it most.
