When it comes to change management and negative thoughts we are still cavemen…
For humans when you strip things down it all comes to two big ideas: “I don’t want…”, and “I wish for…”. This translates into two emotions: fear-of and positive-desire.
When it has to do with changes, as in cycles, as in crisis moments, as in loss or closure, and even relocating or starting something new, we tend to panic. It’s kinda normal and it has been there for humanity for longer than we could imagine (unless we see humankind timeline). This happens as a reminiscent pattern that can be tracked back to cavemen and has been studied as part of biomemory and belief-based-behaviours.
Back in those (prehistorical) days, humans were exposed to all sorts of environmental threads such as storms, potentially poisonous food, predators, insects, lighting, rain, cold… and basically making a change became a dead thread. For example: If the person was used to eat a kind of red berries from one single bush, eating purple berries could mean that the new ones might be poisonous and die. Just like that.
Then, in that moment making changes was to put your life in Jeopardy. Therefore, the dominant idea became: Make as little changes as possible, and if you can, make no changes at all and stay safe.
What’s more, have you noticed that from time to time when a new factor/element appears, you tend to imagine the worst possible scenario? Well, caveman attitude again. And this is where fear appears, leading to negative thinking. Some people think that this kind of thinking as being realistic, and in a way it might be, but it is not the one and only way to be realistic. There is also realistic optimism.
The negative thinking behaviour is also a caveman attitude that triggers in our reptilian brain, but it is actually a piece of evolution that has the downside of being limitative now when it was actually a way to be preventive to threads. Also back in those (prehistorical) days, mankind didn’t have much information on what negative effects of things and events were; in a way there was no previous information and new situations kept on happening. Then the evolution came as the neuroscience explains when mankind began to prioritize negative cognition in order to prevent repeating same or similar actions and situations that might be potentially endangering.

What is not being seen in the perspective of a systematic negative thinking behaviour is that today, also from evolution, people have a certainly larger number of responsive resources. Yes, we still avoid negative stimuli, in terms of mental, physical and emotional… Who (that is in his/her right mind) is looking forward to suffer? Yet, self limitations from fear will lead you nowhere but to be stuck in your comfort zone, that will eventually stop being as comfortable.
To be both realistic and optimistic to a certain situation doesn’t mean that you’re ignoring possible downsides and potential challenges. It means that you are acquainted with them and decide that you can do something about those threads if they appear without losing your vision and level of commitment towards an specific goal. This behaviour and how you manage it happens in your neocortex, that is part of the evolved human brain.
Change management in a way has to do with #CreativeProblemSolving as a skill since it offers ways to be able to deal with potential risks and downsides with a predictive modeling plan that can asure a better transit through changes with less negative thinking and more realistic optimism.
