“If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, ‘Well, this isn’t too bad. I don’t have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed,’ but most of us would say something more along the lines of ‘Aaaaah! My arm! My Arm!’”—Lemony Snicket
Optimism is one of the key strategies for overcoming fear, anxiety, frustration and skepticism in order to make a small business thrive, argue Clate Mask and Scott Martineau in their new book, Conquer the Chaos: How to Grow a Successful Small Business
The key, however, is to practice not unbridled, idealistic, romantic notions of cheerfully annoying optimism, but rather to practice “disciplined optimism.”
“Disciplined optimism, inspires you to maintain confidence and get to work removing whatever obstacle is in your way. It allows you to own the problem, and do something about it, because you have a sense that doing so gets you closer to your ultimate goal.
The authors define disciplined optimism as “faith you will prevail plus discipline to confront the brutal facts.” In other words, disciplined optimists do something about the little black rain cloud over their heads—they erect a very large umbrella, say—while blind optimists simply sit in the muddy puddle and cheerfully wish for the rain to stop (and then get wet and chilled and distraught when it doesn’t).
The key here, however, is the bigger picture: Responding with confidence and enthusiasm, not just going through the mechanics of fixing an issue.
In a larger context, too, it’s hard to maintain disciplined optimism with all of persistent business pressures that make up our workdays—competitive threats, cash flow worries, an underperforming employee, competitive threats, limited resources—or on those days when business feels more like a battle than an adventure. Some days, you need a shot glass full of optimism just to get through the afternoon. But the disciplined kind—not the clueless kind that makes you smile blithely and ultimately give up because things don’t change the way you want them to.
Though the book and much of the discussion above is mainly concerned about small businesses and tackling a customer with optimism, it does can be enlarged and probably enriched with the wider context of sensing and applying optimism for almost all walks of our life.
It does make sense to me , as I too was confused many times how to differentiate confidence from over confidence , optimism from this so called disciplined optimism.
What about you? Are you a so-called disciplined optimist? How do you maintain it?
Always looking for better tomorrow ,
WorthvieW
