Choose to be Optimistic

Dave

Thanks for inviting me to be a guest-author for the IMCAZ blog. I'd like to share a recent article I sent to friends and clients regarding the value of being optimistic. Since consultants can easily find themselves on an emotional roller coaster, this little article may help my friends and colleagues in this wonderful profession. Enjoy!

Choose to be Optimistic
When people ask me what I do for a living, I say, "I help individuals and organizations improve performance and productivity." Their response is often, "So, are you a motivational speaker?" That response always causes me to bristle because one, I'm not a motivational speaker and two, helping people and organizations improve performance involves much more than just giving a pep talk.

I have to be careful though because motivation is an important factor in performance improvement. Someone once said "I don't believe in motivation, it doesn't last." Well, neither does bathing, Bucco, that's why we do it every day.

Rather than talk about motivation, I'd like you to give some thought this week to the value of being optimistic. We live in a very negative world and, in order to get past the constant barrage of negativity, optimism can be a very useful tool for improving or maintaining a high level of performance and productivity.

Studies by the American Psychological Association show that there are some real advantages to being optimistic, whether you're in sales, managing a business or raising children. As a matter of fact, studies show that our (general) outlook on life came from the way our parents looked at life. That's a good reason to be real careful what we say and how we respond to life's difficulties around our kids.

Here are four reasons why it pays to be optimistic:

1. Being optimistic enables us to better handle and/or receive negative information when it has the potential to be useful. We can learn a lot from failure - if we approach it with the right attitude.

2. Optimists tend to realize that not every problem can be solved. As a result, they're better able to recognize the problems they can't solve and stop devoting time and effort to a loosing cause.

3.Optimists tend to have better coping skills than pessimists. They try multiple solutions to problems, ask others for help and recognize what's not in their control.

4. Optimists tend to behave in ways that provide them with more information. Ever hear "there's more than one way to skin a cat?" That's an optimistic approach.

So, on a scale of 1 to 10 were do you stand in terms of being optimistic or pessimistic? How do you handle negative situations? How do you approach a problem? Do you face a difficult issue head on and look for multiple solutions, or do you give up and walk away if the first solution didn't work?

Here's the good news, being optimistic or being pessimistic is a choice. You can choose to see the glass half full or half empty. And, you can choose to not react to life's difficulties the same way mom and dad did. Unless of course mom and dad were the most optimistic people you ever met.

Now, that's motivating!

Les Taylor
www.achievement-solutions.com

Comments

[Dave]

Great post Les. I suffer from the roller-coaster thing myself, and When I'm having a down day It just means that an 'up' day is just over the horizon.

I firmly believe that optimism is a habit that you have to develop.