My wife is an irrepressible optimist. It’s not that she doesn’t live in the real world – she’s been through several major, life-threatening health scares. She understands that life isn’t always sunshine and balloons. But the amazing thing about her is that even in the darkest moment, she always has utter confidence that everything is going to turn out all right.
I greatly admire this quality in my wife, but unfortunately I don’t tend to think that way. I imagine many of you can relate. Most of us focus our thoughts in the opposite direction, on everything that can possibly go wrong in a given situation. We wear ourselves out preparing for all of the possible negative scenarios that could arise. Often times we give up without even trying, like the young man who wants to ask the pretty girl on a date but talks himself out of it because she’s “out of my league” and would never say yes.
As a broker, I can tell you this way of thinking affects me all the time. The deal is never truly over until the commission check clears, and any number of things could go wrong in the meantime. I have been in this business for more than 30 years, and in that time I have seen zombie deals that I swore would never happen somehow keep coming back until they got done, and I have seen absolutely certain deals collapse at the last possible second. Sometimes it gets hard not to expect the worst with every phone call.
But have you ever thought about trying the opposite approach and expecting and envisioning everything turning out right? I have been taking this approach more lately and have found it is very beneficial on a couple of fronts. First and most important, it pumps you up and gets you in a more positive, confident state. That alone can make you more likely to succeed. Second, it helps you calm down. My daughter told me she took this approach once when she was preparing for a choral audition. Full of panic about losing her place in the music or singing horribly off-key, she let herself envision a perfect performance and found that it relaxed her enough to let her give her best during the audition.
At the end of the day, the odds of everything going perfectly are low. Life’s not perfect, and things rarely turn out exactly as we want them to. But the odds of everything going terribly, terribly wrong? They’re also low, yet we act like failure is guaranteed. If both scenarios are possible, let’s at least give them equal weight in the time we spend considering them.
Try it today. Fight the urge to think negatively and allow yourself to imagine things going exactly as you hope. I think you’ll find it will dramatically shift your attitude in ways that will help bring about the results you want.
Have a great weekend,
Ro