Optimism Part 8

This is the eighth article in a series on applying The Optimist Creed to help you succeed in your life and career. You can find all ten points of The Optimist Creed in the first article in this series.

The Optimist Creed Point 7

"Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future."

Let’s begin with a quote from A

Landers:

“If I were asked to give what I consider to be the single-most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye, and say ‘I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me’.”

I like what A

Landers has to say here because it is a bit of reality check. She’s right, trouble – and setbacks and failure – are an inevitable part of like. Self confident people look trouble squarely in the eye and move forward. They are not cowed by their failures, rather they embrace them and use them to move towards their goals.

If you read my www.SuccessCommo
Sense.com blog somewhat regularly, you probably know that I am a big tennis fan. The Australian Open, the first major tennis tournament of the year is played every year in January. In January 2008, I watched two great matches in one weekend.

James Blake, one of the two best American men tennis players, won a great five set match in the round of 16. He lost the first two sets to Sebastien Grosjean. Then he won the next three to win the best of five set match. He was down four games to one in the fourth set, but won in a tie break. In general, he was gritty.

To put it in terms of The Optimist Creed, James Blake was able to “forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.” In this case the past was the first two sets of the match.

Roger Federer, on the other hand, is the best player in the world. He had a terrible match against Janko Tipsarevic. He made 64 unforced errors and lost 16 of 21 break points. If you follow tennis, you know that this is a recipe for losing.

However, Mr. Federer won the match in five sets. Afterwards he said, “He (Mr. Tipsarevic) was just going for his shots and kept making them. In the end, I just tried to block out all the chances I missed.”

The Optimist Creed shows up again. By blocking out “all the chances I missed”, Mr. Federer was able to win the match.

I believe that James Blake and Roger Federer won these matches because of their self confidence, their optimism, and as A

Landers says, their ability to “look it (trouble) squarely in the eye, and say ‘I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me’.”

The common sense point here is simple. Successful, self confident people realize that mistakes are part of life. Then learn from their mistakes and they build on this knowledge to create their own success. n