Some people look at their business and question it for many reasons. Some might think their ideas are too “out there” or “far fetched” while others might believe that they are either too old or too young to run their particular business. For those of you who see that the description above is an accurate assumption of your business, please understand that you ARE able to change. Optimism is a matter of practice. You are not born to believe a certain way; it’s the way you are brought up that highly dictates your thought process and regardless of what others might tell you, this can be changed.
Cultivating optimism is done not through positive thinking like some believe, but through how you behave. Taking action is the main ingredient in an optimistic lifestyle and business. When you anticipate a better business, you will (or can) make a subconscious effort to take the steps necessary to complete any task in front of you to make your better business a reality.
When your business faces an obstical that it needs to get through, an optimist will know that the end result its after is only attainable by geting through the road block and will then plan an exact path to gain the positive results. A pessimist has trouble believing in themselves, their decisions and their business. This is the main ingredient in failure. Many people say battles are won and lost in your mind way before the actual fight and this holds true when looking at the optimist and the pessimist mindsets.
In the book Breaking Murphys Law: How Optimists Get What They Want From Life – and Pessimists Can Too, Suzanne Segerstrom recommends keeping a “good fortune” log. In the log she says that you should write down three good things that happen to you each day. Anything from someone holding the door open for you, to a client finally putting the deposit down on a new project. The key is to make a notice of these things and begin to convince yourself that good things DO happen to you, which will begin the training of your mind to think different about your business.
The main key in becoming an optimistic business is creating change. Even by taking baby steps, your changes will accumulate over time. If you place a penny in a jar every day of the year, at the end of the year your jar will be filled with 365 pennies. This can be applied to a bootstrapped business as well. If you call just ONE prospective client each day for an entire year, at the end of the year you would have called 365 potential clients. Now, if 1 out of every 10 calls leads to a sale, you would have made 36 sales. Multiply that by 2-3 calls a day and you could do well over 100 sales per year. If you’re business makes over $1,000 on each sale, this could quickly add up. Always remember, none of these things would have happened if you counted yourself up and never picked up the phone.
I challenge you to make a change today. Grab a notebook or moleskin and start a log of all the positive things that happen to you for the next month. In one month if you don’t see a group of positive things happening to you, post a reply here and let me know. I bet you can’t, because positive things happen to everyone, no matter how little or how big. And besides, making a change in your thought pattern is a great way to bootstrap your business because its completely free!
I have a list of inspiring & empowering quotes that I refer to. Keeping a daily log certainly takes it all a step further but life is all about confidence!