How to Overcome Your Inner Grump

Maybe you've noticed that doctors are grumpy.

Grumpy doctors are harmful for many reasons, not the least of which is that their negativity interferes with their decision making and leads to poor patient outcomes.

It also gets in the way of adopting an entrepreneurial mindset. In this day an age of the innovation imperative, that's a problem because innovation starts with the right mindset.

If you find yourself seeing the glass as half empty instead of half-full, psychologists have offered some advice based on empirical evidence:

1. Practice eliminating selective perception i.e when we are looking for something, we see it everywhere:

2. Practice happiness

3. Practice optimism. Clinical notes have a problem list. Maybe it's time to include a positive solutions list that helps move us from sick care to healthcare

4. Practice gratitude. Stop reading this and write down three things that make you feel grateful. Do it the same time every day for the next 5 days. Make it a habit. If you want to take the graduate course, write 500 words every day explaining why you are grateful for these things.

5. Practice random acts of kindness. Buy the person next in line behind you at Starbucks a cup of coffee

6. Don't give up completely your cynical, critical attitude. Like Andrew Gove (Intel) said, only the paranoid survive. However, balance it with a more positive mindset.

7. Practice creativity. Paint, write, perform,observe. If you need some help to get started, read How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

8. Prune toxic friends and relationships. They are bad for your attitude and bad for your health

9. Practice asking the right questions instead of looking for the right solutions

10. Experiment more. Spend a little, learn a lot:

If you practice, you will regain all that childhood, playful creativity you had as a kid. Jobs did.

So did Picasso.