Being optimistic is a competitive advantage, because your the amount of times you are prepared to accept failure become much higher. Your potential, your “ceiling” of what you can REALLY do becomes staggering.
Most of us will have experience of quitting after we fail something once, or even worse many will be too scared to try something at all, especially as we age.
History and experience has taught me that failure is only a lesson, and we only really fail if we keep trying the exact same thing every time.
Once we fail, we should take out the positives, and try to eliminate the things that are holding us back.
For example, we can hit the gym regularly, and have success, we feel better and our bodies and minds begin to change. But that approach will only take us so far if we don’t change what we eat and drink.
So we have a choice, we either get frustrated at the declining amount of results, or we say “can you imagine how well I would do if I ate right too, if I didn’t have takeaways more than once a week, If I didn’t drink in the week, and if I got to bed earlier can you imagine the energy I would have to train even harder”?
This is why we NEED optimism in our lives instead of quitting at the first hurdle and the first time it starts getting tough, all we need is to keep changing our approach, what we KNOW to be true but we’ve always been afraid to have a good go at, because the truth will not actually change.
It’s often difficult for most people to knuckle down and do it right, fads and gimmicks are initially FAR more attractive but soon get found out when they reveal their lack of results and even dangers, and that feeling of betrayal that we have “been had” again can destroy our confidence, and make us want to never try to get healthy again.
The healthiest, most productive path is clear but it also requires a bit of grit and determination, requires you to keep showing up, and stay within the vital state of optimism that although you wont be perfect all the time, you won’t always be as fit as the person training next to you, but as long as YOU are improving every week, then THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS!
