Vincent Eyre, one of the few survivors of the annihilation of the British army in Afghanistan in 1842, wrote an account of the disastrous campaign that still serves as a warning against undue optimism in military operations. She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today.During his captivity, Lt. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). Don’t visualize success - visualize the steps you will take in order to make success happen. Focusing only on what we want, to the exclusion of everything else, is just the kind of naïve and reckless thinking that has landed industry leaders (and at times entire industries) in hot water.Ĭultivate your realistic optimism by combining a positive attitude with an honest assessment of the challenges that await you. In truth, this kind of thinking is a necessary step in any successful endeavor, and it is not at all antithetical to confident optimism. Unrealistic optimists are only too happy to tell you that you are “being negative” when you dare to express concerns, harbor reservations, or dwell too long on obstacles that stand in the way of your goal. People who are confident that they will succeed, and equally confident that success won’t come easily, put in more effort, plan how they’ll deal with problems before they arise, and persist longer in the face of difficulty. Realistic optimists send out more job applications, find the courage to approach potential romantic partners, and work harder on their rehabilitation exercises - in each case, leading to much higher success rates.īelieving that the road to success will be rocky leads to greater success because it forces you to take action. She has found the same pattern of results in studies of students looking for high-paying jobs after college, singles looking to find lasting love, and seniors recovering from hip replacement surgery. The results were astounding: women who believed they would succeed easily lost 24 pounds less than those who thought their weight-loss journey would be no walk in the park. She found that those women who were confident that they would succeed lost 26 pounds more than self-doubters, as expected.īut Oettingen also asked the women to tell her what they imagined their road to success would be like - if they thought they would have a hard time resisting temptation, or if they’d have no problem turning down free doughnuts in the conference room and a second trip to the all-you-can-eat buffet. Psychologist Gabriele Oettingen asked a group of obese women who had enrolled in a weight-loss program how likely they felt they were to reach their goals. One of the clearest illustrations of the dangers of unrealistic optimism comes from a study of weight loss. And a secret identity that took a lot of trouble to maintain. (Forgetting that even Superman had Kryptonite. Unrealistic optimists, on the other hand, believe that success will happen to them - that the universe will reward them for all their positive thinking, or that somehow they will be transformed overnight into the kind of person for whom obstacles cease to exist. This preparation only increases their confidence in their own ability to get things done. They recognize the need for giving serious thought to how they will deal with obstacles. Realistic optimists (the kind Bandura was talking about) believe they will succeed, but also believe they have to make success happen - through things like effort, careful planning, persistence, and choosing the right strategies. Put another way, it’s the difference between being a realistic optimist and an unrealistic optimist. Thousands and thousands of experiments later, he has yet to be proven wrong.īut there is an important caveat: to be successful, you need to understand the vital difference between believing you will succeed, and believing you will succeed easily. Albert Bandura, one of the founding fathers of scientific psychology, discovered decades ago that perhaps the best predictor of an individual’s success is whether or not they believe they will succeed. Optimism and the confidence it creates are essential for creating and sustaining the motivation you need to reach your goals. And no, I’m not overstating it.īut how can this be? Isn’t optimism a good thing? Yes it is. This is good advice to give only if you are trying to sabotage the recipient. In fact, not only is visualizing “effortless success” unhelpful, it is disastrous. There is one small problem in this argument, however, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to stop anyone from making it: it is utterly false. There are quite a number of motivational speakers and self-improvement books out there with a surprisingly simple message: believe that success will come easily to you, and it will.
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