Are Optimists the Most Likely to Succeed?
A while back, I shared a short video by Shawn Achor, author of ‘The Happiness Project.’
One of the things his studies revealed was that 75% of our success is dependent on optimism, a good support network and the ability to manage stress in a positive way.
In other words, regardless of how smart you are, how educated you are or how technically skilled you may be, if you don’t see a rosy future for your business, there’s a 75% chance you will not succeed.
That’s right. What contributes most to the success of your business is in your own hands. When you choose optimism, and build positive thoughts and behaviors into your daily routine, you increase your success factors substantially.
Sure, everyone’s going to have good days and bad days. Being positive doesn’t mean you walk around with rose-colored glasses, or that you’re being unrealistic.
What it does mean, is that despite the obstacles you might and will encounter, adopting a positive attitude and maintaining perspective will see you through to a brighter future.
After all, isn’t that why you started your business to begin with? I can’t think of one person who ever went into business because they wanted to wallow in doom and gloom. We were all positively motivated and able to look beyond obstacles and imagined what our world would look like when we achieved our goals.
When we hit stumbling blocks, it’s natural to think in terms of opposites. But don’t let that derail you. Just keep moving forward. You’ll find that a simply shift of perspective can get you back on track.
Here are 13 insightful quotes to think about, guaranteed to restore your sense of balance and put a smile on your face:
- “Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered” – José Saramago
- “The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.”- Oscar Wilde
- “…What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.”- Rabih Alameddine
- “The task is…not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.”- Erwin Schrödinger
- “One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.”- Tim Burton
- “Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty. I see a glass that’s twice as big as it needs to be.”- George Carlin
- “Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.”- Steven Wright
- What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”- John Lubbock
- “The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.”- Chuck Palahniuk
- “Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.”- Wayne W. Dyer
- “The best things in life aren’t things.”- Art Buchwald
- “Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.”- Irving Berlin
- “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough”- Oprah Winfrey
Business can and always will be a bit squirrely. Investing in positive actions and behaviors build resilience and capacities that help insure successful outcomes.