I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
Walt Disney
1901 – 1966

Over the past two weeks, we discussed the first three steps to increase your success, using guidance from the book Nine Things Successful People Do Differently by Heidi Halvorson. In this lesson, we’ll cover step four (Being a Realistic Optimist) and step five (Focus on Getting Good Rather Than Being Better). These steps are extremely important, yet most people fail to get them right.

We’ve all been taught about the power of positive thinking. Optimism is essential to a healthy, happy life, and you’ll rarely achieve your goals unless you have positive expectations. But underestimating the obstacles in your way can prove disastrous. According to Halvorson, “Studies have shown that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill prepared for the journey ahead and significantly increases the odds of failure.”

In one study of weight loss among obese women, psychologist Gabriel Oettingen asked the women how they rated their chances of losing weight. Those women who were confident they would lose weight lost an average of twenty-six pounds more than the doubters. But the more intriguing result was the difference between the women who believed weight loss would be easy and those who were optimistic but thought it would be difficult. The realistic optimists lost an average of twenty-four pounds more than the women who thought the process would be easy. The lesson? Be optimistic, but realize that any worthwhile goal will take real effort. It won’t be easy.

On a related note, your focus should be on improving yourself rather than on proving that you already possess all the skills and knowledge to succeed. When we set out to achieve new goals, we often see it as an opportunity to prove ourselves, to show how capable we already are. Many of us believe that our abilities — mental, physical and personality — are fixed: that we’re as good as we’re going to get. This situation is known as fixed ability or a fixed mindset.

When we approach a new task or goal with a fixed mindset — an attitude that we need to be good — we’re bound to run into problems, because with anything new, we’re in unfamiliar territory. If we think that we have to prove our talent, we’re much more likely to screw up. According to Halvorson, “The pressure to be good results in many more mistakes and far inferior performance than would a focus on getting better.”

If we take the position that we’re simply trying to improve ourselves, we can expect to make mistakes along the way and we’ll embrace mistakes as part of the learning process. Making a mistake when you’re just learning is no big deal.

So the lesson is: give yourself permission to screw up. When you approach anything new, don’t try to prove how much you already know or how good you are. Approach the task with a desire to learn. You’ll make mistakes, but they won’t hold you back.

Put these ideas into action. Write out the difficulties you’ll face in achieving your goals. Be realistic about the obstacles. Give yourself permission to make mistakes and have setbacks. Remember your desire: to get better.

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see.
Muhammad Yunus
1940 –

Copyright © 2012 John Chancellor