Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Eric and I am back with another
Speaker 1: mini episode, and what I want to talk about this
Speaker 1: week is positive thinking. When is positive thinking a good idea?
Speaker 1: And when are we taking it too far? And uh.
Speaker 1: The guest we had on this week was Jessica Lamb Shapiro.
Speaker 1: In her book, she asked the question when is it
Speaker 1: positive thinking and when does it become outright denial. Her
Speaker 1: father was a self help author, and they talked. You know,
Speaker 1: they were very focused on positive thinking that she was
Speaker 1: growing up. But what they never were able to do
Speaker 1: is deal with the fact that her mother had committed suicide.
Speaker 1: There was something they could never talk about because it
Speaker 1: didn't fall into the realm of positive thinking, positive things.
Speaker 1: And so there clearly is a point that this can
Speaker 1: get can go overboard. Our Our second guest ever on
Speaker 1: the show was Oliver Berkman, who wrote the book The
Speaker 1: Antidote Happiness for People who Hate Positive Thinking. So clearly
Speaker 1: I have some some bias or concern against positive thinking,
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time, I'm very cognitantive and
Speaker 1: I believe one of the most important lessons we can
Speaker 1: learn is that we create our reality based on what
Speaker 1: we're thinking about. Our interpretation, our perception of events is
Speaker 1: what creates our reality and ultimately creates the level of
Speaker 1: happiness and quality we get in our lives. So this
Speaker 1: is one of those things that one of the quotes
Speaker 1: that I put out in our Twitter stream a lot
Speaker 1: that I really like says, the pessimist complains about the wind,
Speaker 1: the optimist thinks that it will change, and the realist
Speaker 1: adjust the sales. And that's about as good as summary
Speaker 1: as I can come up with. What I'm looking for
Speaker 1: is is to be the realist in situations. Um maybe
Speaker 1: with a positive bent, but being the pessimist or the
Speaker 1: optimist is not necessarily the right route. And there's a
Speaker 1: great story I came across the story in the book
Speaker 1: Good to Great by Jim Collins, and it's a story
Speaker 1: about Admiral James Stockdale, who is the highest ranking prisoner
Speaker 1: of war in Vietnam. He was in the prison camps
Speaker 1: for about seven years. I believe he was tortured terribly.
Speaker 1: He was put into solitary confinement for huge amounts of time.
Speaker 1: And uh in the book, Jim Collins is talking with
Speaker 1: him about the experience and and ultimately Jim asks him, well,
Speaker 1: who didn't make it out of the camps. And and
Speaker 1: Admiral Stockdale said, oh, that's easy. The optimists and and
Speaker 1: Jim was confused and said and Admiral Stockdale said, oh,
Speaker 1: the Optimists. They were the ones who said we're going
Speaker 1: to be out by Christmas, and Christmas would come and
Speaker 1: Christmas would go. Then they'd say we're going to be
Speaker 1: out by Easter, and Easter would come, and Easter would go,
Speaker 1: and then Thanksgiving and then it would be Christmas again.
Speaker 1: And they died of a broken heart. And then Stockdale
Speaker 1: looked at Jim and said, this is a very important lesson.
Speaker 1: You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in
Speaker 1: the end, which you can never afford to lose, with
Speaker 1: the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your
Speaker 1: current reality. And I think this is as good a
Speaker 1: explanation of the value of positive thinking and also where
Speaker 1: its shortcomings are, because what he is ultimately saying is, look,
Speaker 1: I never gave up faith that I would prevail, that
Speaker 1: I would survive. However, I was also very real and
Speaker 1: very honest about the circumstances that I faced at that time,
Speaker 1: and I didn't deceive myself about those And I have
Speaker 1: a great example from my business career. I worked at
Speaker 1: a company and we had a CEO who had been
Speaker 1: in previous careers a brilliant salesman. He was everybody would say,
Speaker 1: one of the best salesman they had ever met in
Speaker 1: their life. He believed that every phone call, the next
Speaker 1: one was going to be the big deal. And he
Speaker 1: believed that every meeting that he went into you was
Speaker 1: the was the next big thing. And that is an
Speaker 1: extremely helpful thing if you're a salesperson who has to
Speaker 1: pick yourself up off the ground after rejection over and over,
Speaker 1: and it helps you keep the enthusiasm to keep calling. However,
Speaker 1: in the role of a CEO, it is not a
Speaker 1: It's not good to be permanently locked into optimism mode.
Speaker 1: You have to be into a realism mode. Pessimism doesn't
Speaker 1: suit you either. You have to be realistic about where
Speaker 1: the company is, what the opportunities are, what the chances
Speaker 1: are when they're going to happen, etcetera, in order to
Speaker 1: be able to plan and forecast. And so that was
Speaker 1: a case that was a clear example to me of
Speaker 1: positive thinking worked in this one situation, wasn't so positive
Speaker 1: in the other. And I think that it's the old,
Speaker 1: the old idea of if if all you have is
Speaker 1: a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so to
Speaker 1: just blankets say that we should constantly only be thinking
Speaker 1: positive things denies the reality of our human condition and
Speaker 1: what's going on. So I think it's a fine line.
Speaker 1: Like anything, there's a there's a there's as much art
Speaker 1: as there is in science in figuring all that out. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's what's been on my mind this week. Again, we
Speaker 1: always appreciate you listening. We love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can email us, hit me on Twitter, or whatever
Speaker 1: you like and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks.