The Magnitude of Optimism
Years ago I read a manuscript labeled Learned Optimism by Martin E.P. Seligman. The next quotation genuinely opened my eyes to what it takes to become successful in the insurance service.
“Life insurance agents, as a group, are more optimistic than people from any other walk of life we have ever tested: car salesmen, commodity traders who scream all day long in the pits, West Point plebes, managers of Arby’s restaurants, the candidates for the office of President of the United States during this century, major-league baseball stars, or world-class swimmers.”
Learned Optimism is the thought that the skill from delight, akin to any other skills, may be cultivated. This is in complete contrast to “learned helplessness.” Learning hopefulness is done by consciously challenging how you talk to yourself if it describes a off-putting occurrence, e.g. a personal disappointment, that permanently affects all regions of the person’s life.
Changing the damaging abuse you speak to yourself as soon as you come across the disappointments that life throws at most of us is the central theory of Learned Optimism. As a result of understanding the individual destructive inclination of negativity, with its insidious, crippling consequences, we can be taught to ignore its alluring invitation, however intensely seated in the brain or practice it may be. We can decide to learn optimism, and listen to cynicism when it’s reasonable.
2 Sides Of Optimism
1. Optimistic sales people deliver more, particularly under pressure.
Talent only is just not enough.
2. Durable brightness is a noticeable advantage for “high defeat” in addition to “high stress” businesses that involve initiative, perseverance and bold dreaming. If we’re to become managers that are well equipped to take our Company as well as the folks it serves into the future, I suggest we advance a vigorous and flexible brightness. Doing this will authorize ourselves and others to live fuller, richer lives.
As you carry on your path, memorize these words from the German Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.”