When growing up this was pretty much the only option I had and the only option I nurtured. Complaining and bitching about life was really not allowed not because my parents didn’t want it but because we were so busy working. No matter what the government would release, we always found a way around it. I’m native of Peru, and back in the years of economic turmoil in the 1980′s we had to mold our schedules and businesses according to whatever the government launched at us. Suicide was really never part of our language, although I heard a lot of people who were very wealthy doing it. We were always surprised to hear in the news that people had jumped off a building because they couldn’t put up with the government economic crazy swings. Like devaluing our currency overnight, or creating a 300% inflation in a matter of days. A lot of people, big players of the Peruvian economy lost a heck of a lot of money.
In our case, my family had a store in a very rural area of Peru, in the district of El Agustino. We had moved to El Agustino after my mother couldn’t stand the desires of my father’s family in everything we did. My mother had to move out of my father’s parents home or else we would have always stayed in Peru at the mercy of my father’s family. So, when we left La Victoria my mother had no agenda but only her hopes and dreams that it was for the improvement and better future of our family. Now, keep in mind that we were moving from suburban area to a rural area with no infrastructure. But her hopes were always that we will learn the lesson of independence and that we will always take control of any situation in front of us even if it meant that we will go to a worse looking place. My father couldn’t believe my mother’s decision but he ended up accepting it after the rush of conservative anger my father had. My mother really had no agenda, but the biggest lesson we learned from my mother was that if you don’t like something, you can always change it right away. Just take a decision and go on with it. But what she was actually nurturing in us was her optimistic vision for what we could accomplish. She knew she could work on her own and do everything on her own without the need of a man. She knew she had my sister and I as her emotional strength and support. She really didn’t give a damn about the problems we were going to encounter coming to live in a place filled with bank robbers, prostitutes, and thieves. Yes, who happened to be our neighbors but they never really messed up with us, except only in one occasion where my father ended up scaring the hell out of the guy who was about to rob our clothes from the wires that were on the roof. My father ended up shooting up in the air with his Smith Wesson revolver he had. The second time my father used his revolver was to shoot a guy who wanted to mug him on his way back home from his job as a police officer. Even my father was optimistic he will survive the attack. That’s one of the things that I have learned from my father is to think on my feet, without any emotional involvement.
Just to evaluate at the situation, and have hope on the solutions you have created for yourself and always have a back up plan just in case things don’t work out. As a police officer, he has been trained with this, to be optimistic but always have a back up plan in case things don’t work out. My mother is more full throttle optimistic because she puts all her cards in one place, and this forces her to make it work no matter what. So she in a sense burns her boat, and leaves no other choice, and she arduously works day and night to make it happen. She has a very strong faith in herself, in the people, in God, in the circumstances. She’s a strong believer that things will work no matter what. One way or another, things have to work for the best, and if things don’t work out. Then she gives a positive meaning to the negative event, she interprets it as a learning path to something else. That’s exactly what I have learned from both. It’s necessary sometimes to burn your boat and work your ass off for just one thing, and in other situations it’s always better to have as many back up plans as necessary.
Now, one of the things I do to stay very optimistic most of the time is to think of future end result ahead of time. Plus I get enrolled into things that really empower me, things that really bring my juice out. I’m very visually oriented, and for me I must speak fast and communicate at a fast speed because that’s the only way for me to achieve optimism. For other people, it might be auditory, where you need to speak slower. Or it might be kinesthetic, where you really have to be very slow in your communication. So, to improve your optimism, find things that really bring your juice out at the speed you like. Once you know whether you are visual, auditory or kinesthetic, then go out and find the information in the format that you can digest it. One really quick and easy exercise is to ask yourself: what did I do yesterday? If you look up trying to find an answer, most likely you’re visual. If you move your head towards the left or the right, that means you’re auditory. If you look down towards the right or left, that means you’re most likely kinesthetic – meaning you must experience by doing it or getting engaged physically in the process.
So, find the mode in which you can learn and digest the information. After you do that, then go out and find all the inspiring information that will get you in flow and in the mood to learn more about, and become optimistic on whatever you have lost hope or interest. Maybe you are not optimistic because you’re not seeing the whole picture. Maybe you only have limited information about the topic. I will give you a quick example. When I started in the family business providing cleaning service, I really didn’t understand the workers. My parents would send me out with the cleaning team and they won’t want me to do the cleaning but to have the employees do all the work. So, it frustrated me because the employees were doing things that didn’t make any sense to me. I was really frustrated. So, I instead decided to get inside the team, think like they think, breathe like they breathe, get tired like they get tired, go through the whole experience. This exercise actually allowed me to be more optimistic about what they can do and where they can progress. It also helped me to understand them better from a humanistic point of view and not too much from a mere business operation perspective. No book could have ever taught me that, not even the most advanced course in Harvard.
First hand experience is paramount to anything out there. So, whenever I feel losing my optimism in something, I go out and learn more about it, and envision what I want to achieve. If I then see that I don’t have the strengths to grow in a certain area, then I shift to an area where I enjoy the most or where I can make the most contribution. If I’m weak in an area of the business I leave it to others to handle it. This doesn’t mean giving up, this means being smart enough to recognize your strengths and know what they are. It means enjoying more of what you do. It means allowing others to shine in areas where you’re really not good at. The other thing I do to increase my optimism in life and business is to learn from others who have achieved what I want to achieve, and to emulate them. Now, I’m not saying copying word by word. I’m saying using the concepts and ideas and trying them out in my own business and life, and see if they will work the same. What works for some people might not be suitable for you. But my main take on it is to be courageous enough to see how our lives would be much better off if we were to apply this proven concepts or results. How much time will be able to save? How many more lives will be able to make shine? How many more people will we be able to help? Now, this is not to be confused with being eccentric and wanting to do everything your way. That’s fine, you want to do everything your way, but if you use the proven steps then you can save yourself time and add your own flavor. If you like singing, you will be able to relate to this. When you sing, you use the lyrics that somebody has taken the time to weave together, what you do is to sing it with your own feelings and make it yours. You can still be unique, you can still be different, you can still keep your eccentric behavior. All you are doing is using something that works and twisting it your way, the way you feel it.