3 Ways to Add Crucial Insight to your Unstoppable Optimism

"The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty." ~~Winston Churchill

Photo credit: psychologytoday.com

Optimism is a wonderful trait.  Trusting the best possible outcome to occur is great for the soul.  There are almost always multiple possibilities… the one most likely to happen is the one you visualize, concentrate on, and put the most energy into.  With that in mind, offering your energy up to anything less than the best (“Lowered Expectations,” anyone?) is like investing in 4% bonds when a 12% mutual fund with a proven track record is out there for the taking!

Optimism, however, comes in two forms.  When you weigh all possible outcomes that fall within your area of influence and choose to aim for the best one, that is optimism with insight.  If, on the other hand, you choose to believe that something great will happen 'just because', you are in the realm of blind optimism.  Blind optimism is useless at best, dangerous at worst!

Blind optimism is the flipside of needless worry.  Both involve elements you cannot control.  The worrier visualizes the worst possible outcome and then frets about how to stop it from happening.  The blind optimist, on the other hand, comes up with a wonderful possible outcome and, with no rationale to support it, imagines that they have the power to make it happen.

In the movie "The Karate Kid", Daniel's mother moves them from New York to California.  In the first part of the movie, despite all the troubles her son is having adjusting, she believes that California will fix all their problems.  Lucille Laruso was a blind optimist.

Luke Skywalker (Star Wars) worried about not being able to get off his home planet.  He worried about not getting to be with his friends.  He worried that he didn't understand the force.  He worried that his understanding of the force wasn't strong enough without Yoda there to guide him.  If you've watched the original Star Wars trilogy, you know that this list could go on for days.  Luke Skywalker was a needless worrier.

William Wallace (Braveheart) saw injustice in Scotland and realized that something had to be done.  He analyzed that the weakness of the British crown was in the loss of control over their subjects.  He believed that he could lead his fellow Scotsmen to regain their country.  William Wallace was an optimist with insight.

With that in mind, here are three ways to ensure your optimism is grounded with insight:

1)   Ask the question: “Is there any way I can directly control this outcome?”

·      If the answer is YES, then devise a plan to achieve the best possible outcome.

·      If the answer is NO, then keep your hands, words, and thoughts off!  If you are a religious person, this is a good opportunity to pray.  Prayer is relinquishing control and asking God to do what you cannot.

2)   Don’t seek to take on tasks that aren’t in your area of responsibility and authority.  This is dangerous for a number of reasons.

·      It steals work from the person who is supposed to take care of the job and demotivates them.

·      If you get the task done, your ego inflates into thinking you can control anything because, after all, you are working outside the responsibility and authority which have been delegated to you.

3)   Recognize people who get the job done, keep their promises, and have a positive outlook.  These are optimists with insight!  When you regularly spend time with these folks, some of their character is bound to influence yours.


Bonus Tip: STOP TALKING ABOUT THINGS YOU CANNOT CONTROL!!!  The more you bring something up in conversation, the more energy you focus on it.  Whatever "it" is, if it out of your control, you are more likely to default to either needless worrying or blind optimism if you keep bringing it up.  So stop it already!

So how about you?  Are you an optimist?  How do you make sure that your optimism is based firmly in insight?

Painting by John Slaby

Friday: Something for the Musician - Stars & Stripes Forever by Chet Atkins

A brilliant musical performance transcends words, so I won't try to describe this.

The world lost one of her greatest musicians and I lost one of my heroes when Chet Atkins passed away in 2001.  Below is one of my favorite Chet performances.  I hope you enjoy!

Do You Make this Critical Leadership Mistake?

“I don’t care if people like me, as long as they respect me!”

This quote has bounced around the workforce to the point of cliché.  On the surface, the idea seems solid: If you spend all your time worrying about whether or not your followers like you, you will be paralyzed for fear of making an unpopular decision.  No one respects an indecisive leader.

Photo credit: thedailyman.org

Have you ever said those words?  If so, I challenge you to take a quick look inside your own heart.  Are you using that phrase merely as an excuse to disregard the ideas, opinions and feelings of those you lead?

Sometimes a leader has to make the tough decisions and forsake temporarily being liked for the overall good of the mission... still, there is a line between leading with authority and being authoritarian.

Hopefully, you are lucky enough to have someone on your team who is willing to call you out, in private, on your mistakes.  A leader held accountable for their leadership style is truly blessed.  Whether or not you have that, take time for personal reflection and hold yourself accountable for your actions and decisions.

Have you ever had to make a leadership decision that rubbed people the wrong way and cost you some friends?  Looking back, was it in the interest of the mission, or in the interest of your own personal agenda?  In retrospect, could you have approached your decision differently?

Are You Truly a “Practicing Christian”?

Photo credit: DougHammack.com

“I’m a practicing Christian.”

I’ve heard this particular phrase tossed around more than I care to remember.  It usually comes with a hefty dose of superiority, as in, “I’m not just a Christian-in-name… no, I’m a practicing Christian!”

BARF!

Honestly, that is about as off-putting as what Jon Acuff calls the ‘Jesus Juke.’  They may as well say, “Yes, you are Christian… but I’m Christianier!”  How truly Pharisee of them.

If someone wants to practice Christianity, they need only practice letting their faith, love, and works all naturally shine before the world.

Live, love, and pray in such a way that someone else would say, “Oh, yeah… they’re a practicing Christian!”

Quit Taking Notes! (or, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog”)

Photo credit: keep3.sjfc.edu

I love to read!  Presumably, since you’re here, you and I have that in common, so maybe you've had this experience: About a month ago, my venture into the world of blogs led me to a shocking conclusion.  As it turns out, there are people out there who know things that I don't… a lot of people and a lot of things!  Through their blogs, however, they make their wisdom available and free for the taking.

All you have to do is search them out.

Disclaimer: Between my wife, my friends, and my coworkers, there are plenty of people in my day-to-day life who know a lot of things which I don’t.  I’ll save that topic for another blog.

I'd say about a minute after discovering my first blog-based mentor, Chris LoCurto, I discovered my second (Jon Acuff)… and then my third, and fourth, and so on.  Before I knew it, my Read it Later queue was 150 articles long and growing!  As I began reading these blog entries, I was struck by their wisdom and I wanted to make sure that these secrets weren’t lost on me.  I wrote stuff down, printed things out, saved items in my queue instead of deleting them, created bookmarks… anything to keep from missing out on these brilliant tidbits.

Photo credit: theboard.byu.edu

Do you know what that accomplished?  I became one hot mess of disorganization!  I tried to tighten my grip on every little bit of wisdom I could, to the point where nothing was sticking.

I don’t know if anyone has said this before, but I’m saying it now: “Wisdom is like water.  If you try to grab it, it will slip right through your hands.  Just jump in... you’re bound to get some on you!”  The more I kept reading, the more I started to see that the best points of wisdom were, in fact, not secrets held by one evil genius blogger!  Ideas flowed from one blogger to the next like a mystical thread.  Everyone was saying the same thing, but in their own unique voice.

This revelation taught me two things:

1)   I stopped trying to save every little thing that caught my attention, because I knew if I just waited a day or two, it would come back around from another blogger.  Take an idea and repeat it from various sources, and you will internalize the lesson.

2)   I don’t have to worry if I'm saying what has already been said.  My job is to simply put my thoughts out there in my own unique voice.

All the above having been said, there is a precursor to letting wisdom wash over you… you must seek out the source!  If you just wait for the occasional Facebook link from a friend, you will never experience that feeling of wisdom washing over you.  Like anything you want to be good at, the key is daily commitment.

Seek out people who are where you want to be… they are often giving away their “secrets” for free!

Have you sought out the wisdom of those with more experience than you?  What did you learn and how did you learn it?

1 Sure-Fire Organizational Tool for the Internet Generation

Read it Later

Yes, it’s true.  I used one of the cheapest tricks in the blogging world to entice you.  Start with a number, make a promise, mention something that people need, and then declare your audience.  I’m guilty, I admit it… but I did it for a good reason.  If the headline was: “Read it Later – Internet Articles when You Have the Time,” would you have bothered?  I believe this free app is so useful that it deserved a little shameless headline tweaking.  Moving on…

You probably have been in one of the following two situations:

1)   You have given yourself 15 minutes to check your Facebook/Twitter/RSS feed, and you come across a link to an article.  You click it, begin reading, and see a link to another interesting article.  You right-click that, open it in a new tab, go back to the first article, and perhaps repeat that last bit a few more times.  Suddenly, your 15-minute session has snowballed into two hours of articles and YouTube videos!  Death to productivity!

2)   You have given yourself 15 minutes to check your Facebook/Twitter/RSS feed, and you come across a link to an article.  While it seems like something interesting, That Little Voice™ chimes in and says, “Not now.  You don’t have time.  You’ll remember it.  Come back to it later.”  Maybe you write yourself a sticky note.  Perhaps you copy the URL and e-mail it to your account.  Effective, but very inefficient.

And then you think, “Gee, someone should come up with a button to click that would instantly put this in a list.  Then I could read whenever I have time.”

Read it Later does just that.  Through a little JavaScript link you put on your web browser’s bookmark bar, you can save any webpage into your Read it Later queue.  Log into Read it Later -- well, later -- and you’ll see a list of all the pages you have queued up to read.

Even better, it syncs up across devices.  If you have an iPhone, Android, Blackberry, or any of several other smartphones, just install the Read it Later app.  Open up and there are all your articles, downloaded for offline reading (you can even set your phone to airplane mode and read your queued articles on a long flight).

Each day as I browse through my twitter feed, I queue up several articles that catch my interest and then check them out when I have time in the evening.  Not only does it save time, but I absorb more information because I get to read when I am not distracted.

Once you get used to using Read it Later, I truly believe you’ll find it an invaluable timesaver.

Have you used Read it Later?  How did it change the way you surf the internet?

Friday: Something for the Musician - Old Love

Today, a couple friends told me about a concert video with Brad Paisley and John Mayer.  I was more than a little excited to get home and search for some videos of this.  Out of them all, this one blew me away... I hope it does the same for you.




Thanks to Joel and Josh for hipping me to this.