Brian Tracy shares five ways to stay optimistic when things go wrong: control your reactions, treat problems as isolated incidents, view setbacks as temporary, avoid taking failure personally, and keep the bigger picture in mind. He uses everyday examples like lost sales and traffic to show how optimists and pessimists respond differently.
How to Be Optimistic During Challenges Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other. Brian Tracy we all face challenges now and again, but it is our reaction to those challenges that determine how quickly we can overcome them. There are typically two types of views people have towards optimistic or pessimistic. While everyone may have a natural tendency to have one outlook or the other, your ability to find an optimistic view towards challenges will impact your overall success. So here are five tips that you can use when faced with a challenge to ensure that you remain optimistic. The first tip to be more optimistic is to control your reactions and your responses when faced with a challenge. An optimist and a pessimist tend to have very different reactions. The optimist sees the setback as temporary, while the pessimist sees it as permanent. The optimist sees an unfortunate event, such as an order falling through or not closing a sales call, as a temporary event, something that is limited in time and that has no real impact on the future. The pessimist, on the other hand, sees negative events as permanent, as part of life and destiny. So when you find yourself in this situation, take a moment to really reflect on the challenge before you react. Try to visualize the next step towards improvement rather than responding to the setbacks that you have no control over. The second tip is to isolate the incident. Another difference between the optimist and the pessimist is that the optimist sees difficulties as a singular event, while the pessimist sees them as universal, which means that when things go wrong for the optimist, he or she looks at the event as an isolated incident, largely disconnected from other things that are going on in their life. A pessimist will take the incident and add it to the laundry list of other things going on in their life. They have a largely negative outlook on everything and tend to expand the stress they feel towards one issue onto other unrelated areas of their life. So to remain positive, try to remind yourself that just because you are facing a setback in one area, whether that be a project at work falling behind or not hitting a milestone set, or does not mean that the entire goal is obsolete, you may simply need to modify your plan. The third way to be optimistic during challenges is to see setbacks as temporary events. For example, if a project you were on failed to materialize and you interpreted it to yourself as being an unfortunate event but something that happens in the course of life and business, you would be reacting like an optimist. The pessimist, on the other hand, sees disappointments as permanent. If you find yourself in this situation, take a moment to remind yourself that you are always capable of making change and nothing is set in stone. The next tip to be optimistic is don't take failure personally. It can be extremely difficult at times to see the positive side of failure. An optimist sees events as external, while pessimists interpret events as personal. When things go wrong, the optimist will tend to see the setback as resulting from external factors over which one has little control. An optimist tries not to take a situation personally. Although failure is not something anyone wants to deal with, the optimist uses it as a learning opportunity. If the optimist is cut off in traffic, for example, instead of getting angry or upset, he will simply downgrade the importance of the event by saying something like, oh well, I guess that person is just having a bad day. The optimist doesn't think that they were cut off because the person had malicious intentions against them. The pessimist, on the other hand, has a tendency to take everything personally. If the pessimist is cut off in traffic, he or she will react as though the other driver has deliberately acted to upset and frustrate them. The next tip to remain optimistic during challenging times is to remain calm. This is easier said than done when challenges arise. The hallmark of the fully mature, fully functioning, self actualizing personality is the ability to be objective and unemotional. When caught up in the inevitable storms of daily life, the superior person has the ability to continue talking to himself in a positive and optimistic way, keeping his mind calm, clear and completely under control. The mature personality is more relaxed and aware and capable of interpreting events more realistically and less emotionally than is the immature personality. As a result, the mature person exerts a far greater sense of control and influence over his or her environment and is far less likely to be angry, upset or distracted. If you feel overwhelmed or like your blood is boiling, practice being calm in these situations. Finally, look at the bigger picture. In the long run, you have to recognize that the inevitable setbacks that you face are temporary and external. View the negative situation as a single event that is not connected to other potential events and that is caused largely by external factors over which you have very little control. Simply refuse to see the event as being in any way permanent, pervasive, or indicative of any personal incompetence or inability. Resolve to think like an optimist no matter what happens. You may not be able to control events, but you can control the way you react to them. The earlier you learn this, the happier you will be in life. Now the question today is how will you implement these tips to become more optimistic in your life? Leave a comment below and Brian will be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, as Brian always says, if you want to change your future, take action. And take action now.
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