What You'll Discover In This Episode:
Would you consider yourself a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person?
I consider myself a pretty optimistic person but I have to work at it. I intentionally focus on the positives, keep a gratitude journal, challenge negative self-talk, and say my daily affirmations to make sure I don’t give in to any pessimistic tendencies lingering in my genetic makeup.
I strive for optimism because I know being pessimistic is self-defeating. When you’re constantly thinking the worst is going to happen, you don’t take chances, turn down great opportunities, and don’t reach for your goals. You also tend to experience negative emotions including self-loathing, anxiety, and depression. All self-defeating.
Being optimistic has downsides too, though. I see it all the time. Business owners who are way too optimistic about what they can get done in a day overload their plates with an abundance of scheduled out on their calendars, fail to complete them, then feel defeated at the end of each day.
Optimism is great but it can get you into a lot of mindset trouble if you’re not coupling it with realism – mindset trouble that can prevent you from progressing toward your goals.
You would fare much better if you only schedule your three most important tasks on your calendar, complete them, then add one or two more tasks depending on how much time you have left in the day. You would end your day feeling you conquered it which would build up your confidence to conquer the following day and the day after that.
Overestimating what you can get done in a day is just one of the ways I’ve seen optimism negatively affect business owners.
In this episode of Productivity Straight Talk, I discuss three other ways and dive into how optimism can outright sabotage your success if you don’t reel it in.
