Are You an Optimist or a Proactive Realist?

Welcome back to another week. This blog post is getting out a little late this week, but I will explain why as we get into the blog, and I want to thank all of you who have been faithful readers throughout this past year. I started this blog in November of 2017, and I have not missed a week since I started. I'm committed to doing it every week, it's Saturday, and here I am. Part of my commitment comes from what I want to create, but also there's a story about Jerry Seinfeld that inspires me. When someone asked him, "Jerry, what does it take to be a great comedian?" He said, "Don't break the chain." And the questioner said, "What're you talking about?" Jerry proceeded to tell this young comedian to get out a calendar and every day, write a joke. When you write a joke, put an X on that day on the calendar. Then, don't break the chain on the calendar. So, every day, write a joke. For me, it's every week, do a blog. So, here we go.

This week, I finally got around to reading Good to Great by Jim Collins. Great book, and over the course of the week, I came up with this idea about the Stockdale paradox for this blog; i.e. would you rather be an optimist or a proactive realist? If you haven't heard about the Stockdale paradox, it's based upon the true story of Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was a Vietnam prisoner of war for eight years. He was the highest-ranking officer in his prisoner of war camp. So, he was in charge of all the other prisoners. He did all kinds of things to make it through eight years, including,  actually beating himself up with sticks or whatever to disfigure his face so that the Vietnamese wouldn't put him on propaganda videos. He also taught his men how to communicate via tapping on the walls, the ground, or whatever, and this helped many of them survive the ordeal together.

When he was being interviewed by Jim Collins, Jim asked him about who didn't survive. Admiral Stockdale didn't miss a beat, he said "The optimists." And Jim Collins was like, "Well, what do you mean, the optimists?" He said, "You know, the people that are optimistic and think that we're gonna get rescued and be out of there by Thanksgiving, by New Year's, by Christmas, or some holiday that's coming up." Then the calendar would go by, there would be no rescue, they'd still be a prisoner, and slowly, they started to die inside. They lost the faith because they were initially optimistic, but things didn't pan out. Then Jim Collins asked, "Well, who survived?" Admiral Stockdale said that it was the realists who survived because they where the people that were willing to face the brutal reality of the situation they were in, deal with it day by day, all the while holding the faith that they were going to get out at some point in time.

I was talking to a very good friend of mine, Arijit Mitra, this morning about this and telling him the story of Admiral Stockdale and about being realistic about what's going on in your life. And he said, "Yeah, that's great, and you have to be a proactive realist." So, he came up with this term 'proactive realist', and I said, "That's great. I'm gonna write a blog on that today."

So, now let's get back to why the blog was late. Well, my life this past week was kinda crazy, and I was getting lost in the doingness of my businesses. I've got a lot going on, and I was into the doingness, doingness, doingness, and along the way I lost track of my beingness. I lost track of my center. It took a couple of conversations with a couple of people that are close to me to kind of reset me and say, "Hey, look, you're doing the doingness, but you're not taking time for your beingness. You're not taking time to connect to source and be guided by spirit, and you got your priorities messed up." And they were absolutely right.

One of the things that I was sad about this week, and initially I didn't recognize the sadness as sadness, but my son Alex, who's 15 next weekend, is growing up. As part of the growing up process, he's wanting to spend more time with his friends than with me sometimes, and that makes me a little sad. However, I wasn't helping the situation at all because I was busy in the doingness. So, when I finally got real with myself, and I understood what was going on, I went to him and said, "Alex, I've been into too much doingness. I want be with you. I want to spend time with you. But I don't want to spend wasteful time with you, I want to spend high-quality time with you." And I asked him, "What would you want to do to consider it high-quality time with dad?" And he said, "Let's go play golf." And I said, "Great, how 'bout you take ownership of finding out where we're going to go play golf, and let me know when, and we're going to go do that so we can spend quality time together." He got all excited and started looking up all these golf courses.

The point of this little story about my week is, at some point in the week, I finally got real and I faced the reality of what was going on in my life, and I proactively took action on that to make it better, and by Saturday, I'm feeling great. So, that's why the blog is late, and I wanted to be a little bit vulnerable with you this week and share what was going on.

Now, I want you to take this lesson from my life this week and look at what's going on in your life. Instead of being an optimist, maybe, about what's going on in your life, be a proactive realist. Look at what's going on. Look at what's in the way of your greatness, and take action on it. Take action on the dreams that you have inside of you, and go out and make them happen. If your not sure where to get started, check out my group coaching program that is happening this fall. I'd love to have the opportunity to work with you to help you implement a proactive realist plan for you life and your business!

That's all for this week. Again, I want to thank everyone for being here every week. Please invite people that you know, and let's go out and change the world.