How to be positive with skill

Replying to your emails yesterday, I noticed myself answering many of the same questions about how to be positive, loud, tough, and loving.

• Don’t judge cynics, pessimists, or negative people. Care about them. If you’re positive, prove it here first. Deep empathy + high expectations.

• Belief is a show-me activity, not a tell me activity. If you want more positive effort, put it out there and do it. Keep doing it.

• What I appreciate about resistors is their work ethic. I’m serious. They don’t worry about sustaining their effort. They wake up, show up, and put in the work. I don’t agree with their standard. I do appreciate their commitment to it. If positive people showed half that resolve and endurance, most organizations would see massive performance increase.

• Optimist need to be better at execution. Cynics’ strategy is just wait for optimists to lose steam. Positive energy fades when it meets extended resistance. Effort drops, execution lacks discipline, the project stalls then fails. Cynics say, “See I told you.” In these cases they’re right. If you don’t execute well, overcome real obstacles, and see it through to success, don’t blame someone else.

• Optimists start off positive then become negative about the cynical resistance they face. Guess what group that puts you in? :)

• The primary two reasons I’ve observed the past 15 years on why positive people tend to be more quiet and cynics tend to be louder:

1. Positive people are usually worried about offending and hurting feelings. Cynics mostly aren’t.

2. Positive people doubt their voice will make any difference, so they revert to self-preservation.

Embrace the chase. Do the work.