A safety net can make you super-productive

Yes, definitely foster a positive mental attitude, by all means. You’ve heard me say this time and again. Maintaining a positive mental attitude is one of the most important things in life. But, in truth, life can be harsh, as we all know. And that can make it really hard to maintain a truly positive attitude in the face of failure or defeat. And the last thing I would want is for you to think I’m just churning out the same old ideas about staying positive at all times. If it were that easy, it would be fine. But sadly life gets in the way sometimes and throws a spanner in the works, and then all the positive thinking in the world can actually backfire and make you start to doubt everything, even yourself.

Every time something goes wrong, or some project doesn’t make it unscathed on the trip from the drawing board to reality, we suffer a setback. And not just a setback in terms of the project – your strong, rigid attitude of positivity can be damaged and weakened. And you find yourself feeling miserable, let down, and as though everything you’ve worked for has failed.

You can feel like it’s not worth carrying on

At times like that, you can feel so despondent that it hardly feels worthwhile to carry on. You might lose faith in even trying to make progress, since it so often seems to blow up in your face, despite your positive attitude. It’s almost like you’re trying to climb up a metal pole, and the longer you climb, the more slippy the pole becomes. Life is dripping oil onto the pole just above your hands, and laughing as it slides down under your fingers and your grip fails … or at least that’s how it feels.

What’s needed is some way to strengthen your grip. Something to take the sting out of a temporary setback so that it doesn’t morph into a major catastrophe.

And here it is:
Have a positive attitude, and expect things to go according to plan … that’s important, to expect success … but be realistic. You know, through years of hard experience, that things go wrong. Sometimes they do, that’s just life. So accept that things will go wrong from time to time, that not every part of your plan will work unfailingly, that sometimes it’s just not going to happen. With this little twist to your PMA, you can take the bitterness out of the situation when things do go bad.

Be positive … but with a twist!

So … be positive! Expect success! Aim for the stars! Visualise your achievements in advance. Have faith in yourself, and in your project (whatever it might be). But just protect yourself with the knowledge that in the real world it’s not going to go precisely to plan every single time. Maybe it will, in fact maybe it will most of the time, who knows … but one thing you can be certain of: the wheels are going to come off sometimes and it’ll all go to hell.

Huh? But … this isn’t a positive mental attitude!

Yes it is, actually. But with a twist. And the twist is that with the acceptance that sometimes it won’t go to plan, no matter what you do, you’ll be prepared to handle the situation if and when things do go bad. You’ll have a safety net below you just in case. And that will take the sting out of it. It’s like setting sail with the best of intentions, but making sure the lifeboat is fully stocked and there are plenty of life jackets. That’s not assuming your ship is doomed – it’s just being prepared in case the worst does happen. And everybody on board sleeps a little sounder in their beds knowing that there’s a backup plan.

Without this layer of realism surrounding your mental attitude of positivity, you’ll be headed for a painful fall every time something goes wrong. And it can be very hard trying to stay positive at times like that. But with that layer of security, or realism, firmly in place, you’ll be tightly focused on success, but still aware, even if only peripherally, that sometimes things go wrong … and from that perspective you can easily move on, without crashing and burning.

This little twist can make all the difference. It can mean that when things fall apart you don’t feel all that bad. You don’t feel massively let down. You don’t feel despondent. You just feel like … hey, so what, things like this happen. Let’s move on. And you can move on, with a smile on your face, and without missing a beat.

Without a safety net in place, you risk losing hope

The alternative, when you try to force yourself to remain blindly positive at all times, even in the face of defeat, is that you risk becoming so jaded and disillusioned that you abandon the project altogether. And maybe you’ll abandon all hope of ever succeeding … so you just give up and quit trying. That’s the death of your dreams. And without dreams, life can become pale and unfulfilling, and frankly, hardly worth living.

A real-world example of this is doing door-to-door selling, whether it’s something physical like double glazing or something less tangible, such as insurance. Whatever you’re selling, it’s tough. This type of selling is one of the oldest in the world, and one of the toughest. The only possible way you can do it is to be positive in your attitude, but at the same time be realistic and accept the fact that more often than not your approach will end abruptly with the door more or less slammed in your face.

Without this realistic attitude you won’t get to the end of the first street before you quit in absolute despair. But with that honest and realistic acceptance of the truth, you’ll be able to move on from each negative encounter without any huge loss of enthusiasm, and without losing your sense of positivity.

Selling is a numbers game

Because you’ll know that, above all else, it’s a numbers game. If you stick with it, you’ll get some sales – eventually. Your strike rate might be only one in twenty-five, or whatever, but that’s okay, that’s four sales in every hundred encounters. Which ain’t bad! In sales, a hit rate of 4% isn’t regarded as terrible. Not great, obviously, but not terrible. And all it means is that every “No!” brings you one step closer to the next “Yes!”

So basically, it just means you gotta keep knocking on more doors! But if you tried to force yourself to believe that every single door would open and reveal someone smiling welcomingly and eager to buy from you, the disappointment after the first seven or eight rejections would be more than you could possibly bear.

And everyone in business knows this. Selling this way, or online, or any other way for that matter, all comes down to one thing in the end – it’s a numbers game. And the way to win at that game is to hit big numbers! So, if you’re selling online, for example, you need the biggest possible mailing list you can get. Grow your list at every opportunity! Spread the word! Attract as many as possible to your site, or your blog, and add their names and emails to your ever-growing list (with their permission, of course).

And keep in touch with your list, email them every few days, and provide interesting and entertaining content. Pass the time of day with them. Keep it light, easy going, fun. And then … every once in a while, maybe once a fortnight or so, include a recommendation to a worthwhile product you’re promoting. That’s not too often to annoy people, and you’ve already made an effort to be regarded as a friend, not just some guy shoving an endless line of products in their face.

Now, if things aren’t going too well, you might only get one sale for every 50 or so on your list, but if that’s the case then it’s obvious that you’ll do far better with a mailing list of 5,000 than with a list of around 100. It’s a numbers game, like all selling!

Your backup plan

Look on this as your insurance against failure. Your safety net. Your backup plan. And nobody goes into a project without a backup plan, not if they’re sensible. The most successful and experienced stuntmen in Hollywood wouldn’t go near a set that wasn’t equipped with the right safety gear. It’s not being negative, because you still go into everything with a totally positive attitude. It just means you’re not trying to trick yourself. You’re not lying to yourself that you’re one hundred percent convinced that this, like every other single thing you take on, will be a stunning success. Because you know, deep down, that’s simply not true. And it’s time to stop lying to yourself.

You know very well, and it’s undeniable, that things do so sometimes go wrong. So trying to force yourself to believe the opposite of that is lying to yourself, and that’s just plain foolish. Time to wake up and start being a little more realistic! Yeah, realistic, not fatalistic.

Be prepared to fail. Then move on.

So do yourself a favour – be honest, brutally honest … and admit to yourself that sometimes … just sometimes … it’s not going to work out. And once you’ve accepted that fact, and put an end to the lies, you’ll find it much easier to buckle up and get back in the driving seat when things fall apart. You’ll be able to keep smiling, and just move on. And that’s the secret to making faster progress … keep smiling … keep moving on.

And that’s infinitely better than telling yourself, again and again, that this … this … is going to work perfectly … and then, when it fails, totally losing faith in your project, and maybe even in yourself. The best you can hope for in that situation is a temporary lull in progress, a plateau where you stay, immobile, while you can rebuild your confidence.

And the worst case scenario? You realise you’ve been here way too often and you lose all hope.

That’s when your dreams start to die, right there.