The Art of Optimism

image glass half fullI have a friend that struggles to stay positive. Whatever happens in her life, she imagines the worst possible scenario. She has difficulty accepting that her situation is often just temporary and that it’s possible for things to turn around and improve. Frankly, she thinks people that who are optimistic are just kidding themselves. Her belief is that in real life, things don’t work out the way you want.

 

Do you know anyone with this perspective on life?

 

Elizabeth Tenney, a Professor of Business Management at the University of Utah, was curious about the role that optimism played in the workplace. What she found surprised her. Her research concluded that optimism didn’t help a person improve their performance as much as she had initially thought. However, the research revealed that having optimism helped individuals to stick with an arduous task and persevere. As you can imagine, this would be an important quality to possess in the workplace.

 

A show of hands please— how many of you would like to spend your workday surrounded by pessimistic colleagues? How about optimistic colleagues? That’s what I thought.

 

Martin Seligman, who has done vast research surrounding this topic, explains 0ptimism as the ability to always view the positive side of the situation. No matter how dark and discouraging things look, an optimistic individual has the ability to see the upside and know that things will work out. Pessimists have difficulty seeing the upside of any situation that exists in their life. They assume that things will stay bad forever. Optimists, on the other hand, view their current situation as only temporary. Deep down, they believe that things will improve soon and it only takes some patience to wait it out.

 

In today’s world, the workplace can be stressful. Whether you’re working in a corporate environment, or as an entrepreneur, the expectations and rules to succeed are constantly changing and evolving. Your ability to ride the wave through the good times and bad is essential to your success. Having an optimistic perspective enables you to see the possibilities and be creative in your problem solving.

 

Your ability to be resilient is the key ingredient to you and your workers achieving your goals.

 

There are going to be good days and bad days at the job— sometimes you’ll just want to give up. However, you must learn to persevere and drown out the distracting noise around you. Sometimes the most distracting noise is happening right inside your own head. I’m here to tell you that it’s possible to retrain your brain. With practice, you can learn to view these times as temporary setbacks that will soon turn around. If you’re determined to change, you can become a much more optimistic person.

 

I’m quite optimistic that things can change for you.

A Cowbird

image workers fightingI was going for a walk the other day when my friend pointed out a bird that we saw flying overhead. “That’s a Cowbird,” she commented. For a minute, I thought she had said Cowbird, so my response was, “a what?” “It’s a Cowbird!” I had never heard of a Cowbird. I can identify Cardinals and Robins but beyond that, I’m pretty much lost.

 

Since I was curious about this bird, I went home and did a little research. What I found out was fascinating. Apparently, Cowbirds originally relied on wandering Buffalo herds for their food. Their snack of choice was the seed in buffalo excrement— as disgusting as that sounds. Anyway, as the buffalo disappeared from our plains, they adapted to another herd food source. They started spending time with cows and found their food supply in the form of insects in the grass, ticks on the cows and seeds/grains.

 

Since they found their food source with herding animals that always moved on, they would have to lay their eggs and leave them behind in existing nests. To this day, they still follow the same pattern.

 

Cowbirds will lay their eggs in other bird’s nests. They usually pick the nests of smaller species that they can dominate. They have been known to push out the other eggs already laid by the bird and steal their food. They then take off, leaving their eggs in the nest, with the hope that the other bird will care for them. Often, the smaller bird will raise the young Cowbird as its own. Cowbirds lay as many as 40 eggs in a season, which means they spend a lot of their energy trying to find nests where they can leave their not-yet-hatched babies.

 

They have learned how to adapt and thrive at the expense of others.

 

After mulling over this new bit of knowledge, I decided that Cowbirds reminded me of that problem co-worker that I’m sure you’ve encountered at some point in your career. One time, I worked on a group project with three others. The initial idea was mine and I actually did the bulk of the work. I worked very hard on the project and the results were quite impressive. When we presented the project to the big bosses, I began to explain the project for our team and how we would unfold the initiative. Before I could continue, the Cowbird took over. She began to talk in first person and by the end of her soliloquy, she had taken full credit for the idea right through to the end product. She even physically pushed me out of the way during the process. In actuality, she had done none of the work but had left it for me and the other team member.

 

This human Cowbird had learned all too well how to not only survive but also thrive in the working world. The problem was that she had learned how to thrive at the expense of the other workers around her. In case you’re wondering, she didn’t get away with it. Did you really think that I would take that lying down?

 

We had a nice chat and she didn’t ever try it again with me. But I’m sure she attempted to repeat her pattern. This was resilience at it’s worst— she had found a way to survive and adapt but created a toxic work environment in the process.

 

If you currently have a Cowbird in your midst, you need to make sure that they get called out to take responsibility. Their pattern is probably ingrained from many years of practice and won’t change without firm re-direction.

 

A Cowbird

image workers fightingI was going for a walk the other day when my friend pointed out a bird that we saw flying overhead. “That’s a Cowbird,” she commented. For a minute, I thought she had said Cowbird, so my response was, “a what?” “It’s a Cowbird!” I had never heard of a Cowbird. I can identify Cardinals and Robins but beyond that, I’m pretty much lost.

 

Since I was curious about this bird, I went home and did a little research. What I found out was fascinating. Apparently, Cowbirds originally relied on wandering Buffalo herds for their food. Their snack of choice was the seed in buffalo excrement— as disgusting as that sounds. Anyway, as the buffalo disappeared from our plains, they adapted to another herd food source. They started spending time with cows and found their food supply in the form of insects in the grass, ticks on the cows and seeds/grains.

 

Since they found their food source with herding animals that always moved on, they would have to lay their eggs and leave them behind in existing nests. To this day, they still follow the same pattern.

 

Cowbirds will lay their eggs in other bird’s nests. They usually pick the nests of smaller species that they can dominate. They have been known to push out the other eggs already laid by the bird and steal their food. They then take off, leaving their eggs in the nest, with the hope that the other bird will care for them. Often, the smaller bird will raise the young Cowbird as its own. Cowbirds lay as many as 40 eggs in a season, which means they spend a lot of their energy trying to find nests where they can leave their not-yet-hatched babies.

 

They have learned how to adapt and thrive at the expense of others.

 

After mulling over this new bit of knowledge, I decided that Cowbirds reminded me of that problem co-worker that I’m sure you’ve encountered at some point in your career. One time, I worked on a group project with three others. The initial idea was mine and I actually did the bulk of the work. I worked very hard on the project and the results were quite impressive. When we presented the project to the big bosses, I began to explain the project for our team and how we would unfold the initiative. Before I could continue, the Cowbird took over. She began to talk in first person and by the end of her soliloquy, she had taken full credit for the idea right through to the end product. She even physically pushed me out of the way during the process. In actuality, she had done none of the work but had left it for me and the other team member.

 

This human Cowbird had learned all too well how to not only survive but also thrive in the working world. The problem was that she had learned how to thrive at the expense of the other workers around her. In case you’re wondering, she didn’t get away with it. Did you really think that I would take that lying down?

 

We had a nice chat and she didn’t ever try it again with me. But I’m sure she attempted to repeat her pattern. This was resilience at it’s worst— she had found a way to survive and adapt but created a toxic work environment in the process.

 

If you currently have a Cowbird in your midst, you need to make sure that they get called out to take responsibility. Their pattern is probably ingrained from many years of practice and won’t change without firm re-direction.