Reasons to be Optimistic

He was a quite kid. He stayed home a lot and read comic books. He often played with his dog and kept to himself. His mother could never tell what her son was thinking. But inside this quite introvert was a novice, but tenacious, athlete waiting for his moment to defeat all odds.

His ambitiousness was demonstrated on the rarest of occasions. For example, before every school day, he would walk with his siblings to the bus stop, but after the school bus pulled up and all the kids got on, he would stay behind. Dumbfounded, all the other kids would beckon him to get onto the bus, but he refused.

Instead, as the bus pulled away, he would tighten up his shoe laces and run directly behind the bus. It did not matter if it was raining or snowing, he practiced this routine every school day. All the other kids thought he was nuts, but he did it because he did not want to be like the other kids. He did it to be different. He did it to defy the norm. So when people told Sugar Ray Leonard he could not be world-champion boxer, that he was nuts for thinking he could be the best, he laced up his boxing gloves and defied the odds again. The kid that was a quite introvert became a thundering six-time world-boxing champion. 

 New York Times journalist, Thomas L. Friedman, once said, "Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists." Coinciding with my previous blog post, majority of people meet hardships in his or her life, but our outlook on how to overcome these obstacles and oppositions determine our character. Now pessimists may be right 99.9% of the time, but could you imagine if the great leaders of the world quit once he or she had a tough break? We wouldn't have the Sugar Ray Leonards of the world that continued to be optimistic after reaching these hardships. There must be a sense of optimism in the established goals. So in a sense, courage plus optimism leads to success. And if you're not convinced, here are a few more examples:

• Marilyn Monroe's first contract with Columbia Pictures expired because it told her she was not pretty or talented enough to be an actress.
•  R.H. Macy had a history of failing businesses, including a flopped Macy’s in NYC. But Macy kept up the hard work and ended up with the biggest department store in the world. 
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Several more of his businesses failed before the premiere of his movie Snow White. 
• Albert Einstein did not speak until age four and did not read until age seven. His teachers labeled him “slow” and “mentally handicapped.” But Einstein just had a different way of thinking. 
• Dr. Seuss' first book was rejected by 27 different publishers. He’s now the most popular children’s book author ever.
• Henry Ford's first auto company went out of business. He abandoned a second because of a fight and a third went downhill because of declining sales.

Finally, for all the Harry Potter fans....

• J.K. Rowling was unemployed, divorced and raising a daughter on Social Security while writing the first Harry Potter novel.