Page 77 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

There was a woman in one of my seminars in Las Vegas who told me that

this one concept—the optimist’s habit of looking for partial solutions—had
made an interesting difference in her life.

“I used to come home from work and look at my kitchen and just throw up
my hands and curse at it and do nothing at all,” she told me. “I’d think the exact
same thing as the pessimist in your garage story. Then I decided to just pick a
small part of the kitchen and do that, and that area only. It might be a certain
counter, or just the sink. By doing just one small part each night I never resent
the work, it’s never overwhelming, and my kitchen always looks decent.”

Pessimists like to set their problems aside. They think so negatively about
doing the whole thing perfectly that they end up doing nothing at all! The
optimist always does a little something. She or he always takes an action and
always feels like progress is being made.

Because pessimists have a habit of thinking it’s hopeless”or nothing can be
done, they quit thinking too soon. An optimist may have the same initial
negative feelings about a project, but he or she keeps thinking until smaller
possibilities open up. This is why Alan Loy McGinnis, in his inspiring book The
Power of Optimism, refers to optimists as “tough-minded.”

The pessimist, as far as the use of the human mind goes, is a quitter.

Recent studies show, says McGinnis, that optimists “excel in school, have

better health, make more money, establish long and happy marriages, stay
connected to their children and perhaps even live longer.”

To witness one of the most profound illustrations of the practical
effectiveness of optimism in American history, you’ll want to watch the movie
Apollo 13. Although the job of bringing those astronauts back from the far side
of the moon looked daunting and overwhelming, the job was accomplished one
small task at a time. The people at Mission Control in Houston who saved the
astronauts’ lives did so because even in the face of “impossible” technological
breakdowns, they kept on thinking. They never gave up. They looked for partial
solutions, and they declared that they would string these partial solutions
together one at a time until they brought the men home safely.

While the astronauts’ lives were still in doubt, there was one glaring
pessimist in Houston ground control who made the comment that he feared that
Apollo 13 might become the “worst space disaster” in American history. The
ground commander in Houston turned to him and said with optimism and anger,