Empowering Choice #1 - Choose OPTIMISM

"Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong, but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists."

Thomas L. Friedman

Optimism is underrated. I am not talking about na?ve idealism or mindless enthusiasm here...

A former coachee, is a remarkably successful business man, and his favorite song is 'Pusique tu pars' from the French singer Jean-Jacques Goldman. The line that inspires Frédéric the most is Cette force de penser que le plus beau reste à venir” (‘the strength to believe the most beautiful is yet to come’).

I am always inspired by his ability to rebound from set-backs, and continuously grow his companies against all odds. 

Winston Churchill nailed it when he said

“I am an optimist; it doesn’t seem too much use being anything else”. 

Could you leave your comfort zone and embrace uncertainty and change without it? Could you inspire bright and passionate others to follow you without it? A more challenging question is… what will you do to nurture your optimism?

Lao Tzu said “Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear, and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dreams. Water them with optimism and solutions, and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success.”

These two Chinese characters mean 'crisis' or 'risk':

You can notice the ideogram for “opportunity” is more complex than the one for danger…. And it can be arduous to identify opportunities in crisis! Yet…

1st Tip - Train your mind at uncovering opportunities in challenges

You will find out you can soon excel at it because the rewards you gain make this practice addictive.

Sheila is the head of Marketing at a well-known Fast Moving Consumer Goods company.

She took the next step and repeatedly questioned her subordinates ‘what are three opportunities for us in this problem you brought forward?’ They first gave her blank looks, and then produced more and more valuable ideas...

?A competitor once launched a fierce price-war to gain market-share, and Sheila was delighted to observe her team putting together quickly an enhanced value-proposition for the customers, including bundled sales, at similar costs, that the rival company could not offer. Sheila’s team actually ended growing their market-share by 2%.

2nd Tip - 'Surround yourself with enough positive people', not the bling-kind of course, rather the courageous kind.

In addition, you may need to confront naysayers. Don’t go as far as reminding them of George Bernard Shaw’s sharp remark, “A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.” Instead just ask them to ‘create more value’ with what they say.

Our intelligence drives us to see what can go wrong, we must strengthen our will to drive us to see what can go right!

Jean-Francois Cousin is a global executive coach and the founder of Greatness Leadership Coaching. His latest book “Game Changers at the Circus: how leaders can unleash Greatness in their organization” is available on Amazon.com.

Marshall Goldsmith wrote about it: “Enjoyable and compelling, this timely fable and its lessons read like a novel but serves as an important business manual. With wisdom and context from a long and successful business career, Cousin has painted a vivid picture of how to enact change effectively. Page after page of insight!”