One of the important characteristics of optimist is the ability to bounce back from any setbacks quickly. What makes a person as optimist or pessimist is how he /she is interpreting the events and registering in the minds. The best part is that the quality of interpretation can be improved through conscious response to events.
When some failure or setback happens, the mind interprets the events in three aspects viz taking personally, giving too much permanency to event outcome, and encompassing all to the event.
For example, two people attended a job interview and both of them were rejected. The pessimist considers the setback as too personal and say, “I failed “and whereas the optimist, considers the setback as not personal and use to say as “The interview was tough”
Pessimist considers this setback as “this setback is going to continue and I will fail ever in interviews” and whereas optimist considers this “This time I failed, next time I will be through"
Pessimist considers this setback as a loss to the whole of his life and everything is over. Whereas optimist considers this setback as standalone , just as I failed in the interview, but I am good in other aspects like relationship, health, skill etc.
The point is that how we are interpreting the event and internalizing makes a difference in becoming optimist or a pessimist. Eventually this mindset would drive the thoughts, behaviors and attitudes towards any incident in life.
Just be aware of your thought process when confronting setbacks and becoming optimist is a choice by learning.
Three friends went inside the forest and they lost the direction to reach back to their home village. They tried to find their way out, but none of them agreed to go one path together.
The first man said, “I use to listen to my intuition, hence I will go left direction to reach home” and he left.
The second man said, “Logically, we have to follow through our past, hence I will follow the same path as we reached “and he left to follow the old path.
The third man says himself “why should we explore different options when we are not sure, so let me climb up the tall tree and take a better look around, I will find the shortest path to my home “and he did so and found the path, went ahead, reached the destination. He thought the other people are not brilliant and smart enough like him.
Eventually other friends also reached the home, but with different experiences on the way. The first person met new people, made them as friends, with their help, he reached home. The second person had to fight a pack of wild animals and managed to reach home, but he learned how to survive in the forest.
In essence, all had reached the destination, but with different experience. Our life is also like that, we may take different decision in life which leads to different paths, at the end, what matters is the experience and perspectives we gain from the life. Let us enjoy the experience whatever the path we choose!
This book is from a person, Randy Pausch, American professor of computer science, who died due to pancreatic cancer at the age of 47. As he learned of the diagnosis that he had cancer and was given 3 to 6 months of good health, he delivered a lecture titled “The last lecture: Really achieving your childhood dreams in 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University which became a popular video worldwide. Subsequently, he co-authored a book called “The last lecture” on the same theme, which became bestseller.
In this book, he covered broadly three topics, with the intention of giving his messages to his children
1.His childhood dreams and achievement
2.Helping others to achieve their dreams
3.How to lead a life
Like other bestselling books, the contents, language and flow are good.What is really inspiring is the person’s humor, optimism, positive perspective about life
even after knowing his end.He is outlining the value of time, relationship as life span is short and uncertain.Recommend to read this book if you can…
Also, given the link of his last lecture video before writing the book
goo.gl/LwPWLH
Hope you like it.
If we look at any great organization’s history, they had many struggles to deliver consistent results, but still they are existing today and making an impact is due to their decision making in crucial times based on long-term perspective. Similarly, if we observe any successful married couples, they could be your parents, they might have faced many struggles in their lifetime, but still they made a difference as role models, it could be due to their decision making in important stages of life was based on long term perspective.
One of the profound management principles of Toyota, which says, “Base your management decisions on long term philosophy, even at the cost of short term benefits.”
Sometimes, we are tempted for short-term benefits in career switch or job switch decision making which cost our potential to make an impact on long term.
Most of the relationship issues arise when one of them takes a call considering short-term pain or gain foregoing the long-term happiness.
In fact, in the stock market, those who stay long term make more money than short-term traders do, even though there is so much of hype and temptation about short term trading.
Look around any achievements, impacts, inventions; it could be made possible due to long-term perspective of the person involved, even at the cost of short-term temptations or benefits.
Just be aware of your life decisions whether they are for short-term gains or avoiding short-term pains or they are for long-term impact and happiness.
A real fulfillment comes only through career growth. Career growth means an opportunity to make an impact for others through leveraging our potential, position, and competency. Some time we worry too much about the delay in recognition or promotion etc. According to me, those are all temporary in nature and most of the time, it is beyond your control. Whereas career growth is long term, more meaningful to measure and it is predominately influenced by you.
At any given point of time, considering your qualification, years of service and perceived potential, look at your career graph, if is well with your expectation, it is fine, if it is not, definitely the reason may not be due to others like your organization, boss, colleagues etc..
In any modern performance management system, two underlying factors are deciding our career growth. One is what you are delivering against the expectation and second is how you are delivering. To put differently, it is a combination of your result and relationship. Those factors are purely under your influence.
To give more perspective, created a video and if you are interested, Pl view and subscribe for more videos on career growth.
https://goo.gl/7uKUqJ
