belgareth
09-10-2005, 12:11 PM
When you wake up every day you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; be an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. I see the glass as half full, not half empty. I realize that after every storm the sun shines; that there is a solution to every problem.
It’s like the two salesmen who fell on hard times and ended up broke in a small town in Montana. They needed money to move on and learned that the town paid $20 each for wolf pelts. They sensed the opportunity. That night they set out with a couple of clubs and some borrowed supplies and made camp in the distant hills. They were no sooner asleep than one was startled by an eerie howl. He crawled outside the tent to find himself surrounded by hundreds of snarling wolves. Back into the tent he crawled and shook his buddy. “Wake up!” He cried. “Wake up! We’re rich!” It’s all a matter of perspective.
You can whine because you have to go to work or you can be grateful that you are lucky enough to have work to do!
There was a shoe company that sent a salesperson to a newly developing country to check the potential market there. He came home and reported, “There is no market there. Nobody wears shoes.” The company decided to test it again, this time with a more positive salesperson. Within a few hours, an e-mail came in: “Start shipping shoes immediately. No competition.”
The pessimists don’t grow your business or even maintain the status quo. They make the job harder for everyone around them. And the worst part is that their surliness rubs off on others. It’s a no-win situation from any perspective.
Encourage your employees to look at each business challenge as an opportunity rather that a problem. As Winston Churchill so eloquently put it, “I am an optimist. It doesn’t seem too much use being anything else.”
There was a monastery on Montserrat that is a certain test of attitude. Set halfway up a 4,000 foot mountain, the monastery offers inspiration from every view. But the monks must maintain silence except for once every two years, when they may utter exactly two words. After his first two years, one young initiate was invited to speak to the abbot. “Bed lumpy,” he said. Two years later, the same young man again met with abbot. This time, his two words were, “Food awful.” Another two years went by, and the young monk went to the abbot and said simply, “I quit.” The abbot, shaking his head, said, “I was somewhat expecting this. All you’ve done since you got here is complain, complain, complain.”
Don’t wait for divine inspiration to improve you outlook. Some people see the positive in every situation, while others go through life waiting for their induction into the negative attitude hall of fame. Life is a matter of perspective. You choose.
Moral: Keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole!
It’s like the two salesmen who fell on hard times and ended up broke in a small town in Montana. They needed money to move on and learned that the town paid $20 each for wolf pelts. They sensed the opportunity. That night they set out with a couple of clubs and some borrowed supplies and made camp in the distant hills. They were no sooner asleep than one was startled by an eerie howl. He crawled outside the tent to find himself surrounded by hundreds of snarling wolves. Back into the tent he crawled and shook his buddy. “Wake up!” He cried. “Wake up! We’re rich!” It’s all a matter of perspective.
You can whine because you have to go to work or you can be grateful that you are lucky enough to have work to do!
There was a shoe company that sent a salesperson to a newly developing country to check the potential market there. He came home and reported, “There is no market there. Nobody wears shoes.” The company decided to test it again, this time with a more positive salesperson. Within a few hours, an e-mail came in: “Start shipping shoes immediately. No competition.”
The pessimists don’t grow your business or even maintain the status quo. They make the job harder for everyone around them. And the worst part is that their surliness rubs off on others. It’s a no-win situation from any perspective.
Encourage your employees to look at each business challenge as an opportunity rather that a problem. As Winston Churchill so eloquently put it, “I am an optimist. It doesn’t seem too much use being anything else.”
There was a monastery on Montserrat that is a certain test of attitude. Set halfway up a 4,000 foot mountain, the monastery offers inspiration from every view. But the monks must maintain silence except for once every two years, when they may utter exactly two words. After his first two years, one young initiate was invited to speak to the abbot. “Bed lumpy,” he said. Two years later, the same young man again met with abbot. This time, his two words were, “Food awful.” Another two years went by, and the young monk went to the abbot and said simply, “I quit.” The abbot, shaking his head, said, “I was somewhat expecting this. All you’ve done since you got here is complain, complain, complain.”
Don’t wait for divine inspiration to improve you outlook. Some people see the positive in every situation, while others go through life waiting for their induction into the negative attitude hall of fame. Life is a matter of perspective. You choose.
Moral: Keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole!