If one man tells you a horse, he’s insane
if three men tell you you’re a horse, there’s a conspiracy
If ten men tell you you’re a horse, you need to buy a saddle.
- Chinese proverb
I stared in disbelief at my Regional Manager. I could no longer hear
the words coming from his mouth because all my attention was turned
inside in a torrent of abuse aimed at him, the company, the industry,
and of course, myself.
How could this be happening to me? How could I be turned down for the
management development program when it had been de facto promised to me
if I hit certain goals. Goals that had all been reached and most
smashed.
As my brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening I heard him
say one final thing before the meeting came to a close and I was
suddenly out in the cold, both figuratively and literally:
“You’re just too negative and pessimistic mate. Work on that and we can talk again in six months when the next round comes up.”
I’m A Realist, Not A Pessimist
Too pessimistic, me? Was he being serious? I wasn’t a pessimistic
person at all I was a realist. Sure I was the guy at meetings that
pointed out the down side of things. But every business needs employees
that can be objective, point out flaws, and not just agree to everything
suggested by senior management.
It just so happened I was that guy, and proud of it!
Over the next few days, and rather ironically considering what I had
been told, I whined and complained to everybody and anybody that would
listen to me about how poorly I had been treated.
The responses didn’t quite pan out as I thought though because I
didn’t get anything like the sympathy I expected from such an obvious
travesty of justice.
In fact just the opposite in many cases, with people shrugging their
shoulders and a couple even laughing out loud in a “What did you
expect?” manner.
Seeing Myself As Others Did
I was stunned, I mean really stunned. I was starting to see myself as others saw me rather than I thought I was.
Leaving the whole Myers-Briggs thing to one side and speaking very
broadly, people tend to think of themselves as belonging to one of three
different personality types. They either see themselves as being an
optimist, a realist (pragmatist) or a pessimist.
When I speak to groups I will often kick things off by asking people
to raise their hand to indicate which group they think they belong to.
The split is usually along the lines of 50% feel they are optimistic,
40% realistic and 10% pessimistic.
Those figures are probably skewed somewhat as I suspect few people
like thrusting their hand in to the air to announce to their peers and
employers they are pessimistic. In my experience, it’s seldom a good
career move.
However, it’s really a trick question, because to my mind there are really only 2 groups of people, optimists and pessimists.
Realism Is For Accountants
Take a glance around you at the moment and I guarantee you can see
any number of things that at one time in the past were considered
totally unrealistic and beyond the pale, including the device you are
using to read this post.
Every single major breakthrough in the history of the human species
was at some point in time considered unrealistic. Every single one.
History is littered with legions of realists lining up to ‘help’ the
doers and the optimists by pointing out the error of their ways and
assuring them they are wasting their time.
Fortunately for humankind optimists tend not to listen to other
peoples version of reality Otherwise we’d still be living in caves,
clubbing our dinner to death each evening and wearing furry underwear.
I’m okay with the furry underwear bit, but I’m not so keen on
stalking my dinner or hanging out in bat-ridden, bear-hiding caves
thanks very much.
If you’re still not convinced and think you are a realist let me take it a stage further.
How Realistic Are You Really?
Think of the last 5 things you worried about. How many came true? My
guess is if you are anything like the vast majority of my clients it’s
either 0 or 1.
And even if it’s 1, I doubt it was as serious as you feared and you
obviously dealt with it because you are here reading this post.
So how realistic is it, spending most of your time worrying about
things that, on the whole, never happen, and when they do you deal with
them?
Shortly after my setback I picked up a copy of ‘Learned Optimism’ by
Martin Seligman and started to read and things started to make sense.
I realized that my form of realism wasn’t just draining on people
around me and a millstone around the neck of my career, but it also had a
host of negative psychological and health issues connected to it.
Optimistic people, get sick less often, they are more successful in
their careers, they make more money, they’re happier and they tend to
live longer.
Not only that, but even though about 50% of our happiness levels are
set at birth by our genes, the wiggle room in the other 50% is so great
that (psychological issues aside) anybody can learn to be optimistic and
thus happier.
If that is, the will is there.
How come nobody ever told me this at school?
It’s over 10 years since I had that conversation with my boss and
barely a day has passed when I haven’t done something to help me move
toward being a happier and more optimistic person.
I would be lying if I said it has been a smooth upward curve to a state of permanent blis, because life doesn’t work like that.
However, I’m pleased to say that I’m now the guy that looks for
solutions and not the one that looks for problems and I’m grateful that
my manager helped me realize I needed to buy a saddle because even
though I didn’t believe it at the time, there really was no conspiracy.
0 Comments: