Your Optimism Contributes to Project Success
In a recent post on Entrepreneur’s Journey blog, Yaro has an interesting discussion on being a successful entrepreneur. To (crudely) summarise the post, his point is that to be happy and successful you need to have positive patterns of behaviour. Do what you know you should be doing, and positively reinforce that behaviour (think positively about the actions you’ve taken). Check out the link to read it in full.
I read this post and it struck a cord. This is a battle I am currently waging, and one that I am winning for the first time in my life. I used to believe that fixing my behaviour would make me more successful. However, I now believe that behaviour is a symptom, not a cause. If you are struggling to fix your behaviour, you are probably focusing on the symptom and aggravating the cause.
Ok, so what does this have to do with outsourcing? 
Both a lot and nothing 
Like many entrepreneurs I have a… shall we say ‘peaky’ personality. I experience high-energy high-productivity highs, and low-energy, low-productivity lows. For the last 6 months I’ve taken the conscious effort to ’smooth’ this out, by being more disciplined in how I think about things; in particular problems and challenges. I’m not bi-polar, but I’ve discovered that I do have some thought processes that promote ineffective behaviour.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a fluffy-wuffy touchy-feely kinda guy.
I am a big fan on the power of being positive, but I’m not into new age fluff. However, I recognise that I struggle to sustain ‘positivity’ and am prone to fall off the wagon. As part of a long search for a solution, I picked up a book called Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life written by a renowned psychologist Martin Seligman.
Without sounding like a vegetable-kissing-tree-hugging-hippy, this book has dramatically improved my life. It will help you understand your cognitive thought processes- it is not fluffy, and will not have you chanting-positivity or star jumping at dawn. It does give you a great set of tools to apply discipline to your thoughts. Read the rest of this entry