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Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes podcast today. I'd like to discuss one message. I received recently from a project manager asking me Ricardo how can I Become Optimist if I'm absolutely Surrounded with Pessimism. If everybody's pessimist how, I can turn this challenge into a more optimistic one. And I said, wow, this is not an easy thing to do, because if you go to the news, if you turn on your TV even more now with this COVID-19 pandemic, you get really scared and very pessimistic because look, first, we need to understand that since we were stablish as a society, pessimists punishment, the negative side has a much stronger influence than the positive one.
Ricardo (57s): For example, when you see the news, if you turn on your TV and to watch a one hour of news, trust me probably 59 minutes will be about tragedy, about crime, about economic crisis, people dying bad things nobody say, Oh, Today lets start this journal. I want to tell you that Today everybody woke up happy that John went to his office and in the middle of the way, he saw a bunch of flowers, beautiful flowers. Then he started to take a picture of these does not happen because this is not news because people do not care too much about that because we were educated to look for tragedy and to relate to this kind of behavior.
Ricardo (1m 44s): So how you can turn these into a more optimistic way. I told many times if you hear at several of my past Podcast I talk about, if you want your project or your initiative to fail, you don't need to do to much you to just let it go, let it go. Because entropy will naturally bring chaos, bring disorder and bring challenges. So how to be optimistic. So I try to create four statements that will help you. And this look, I'm not a psychologist, so I'm a chemical engineer, but these are things that I use in my life. And in my projects to shift and flip this coin to a more optimistic way.
Ricardo (2m 26s): The first one is focus on possibilities and not obstacles or challenges. It's very easy that you look your current position and the desired position. For example, you are developing a new software, using agile methodes it's very easy to say, which are blocking me instead of saying, which are the possibilities which are the possible paths that will drive me, you know, instead of focusing on the wall, you focuse on different paths to cross that challenges and reach out to your objective. So thinking about possibilities and not only challenges and walls that you need to overcome the second.
Ricardo (3m 9s): And for me, these is something that is in my mind. Since I read a book called 48 laws of power from Robert Greene. And one of the initial laws is the contagious law, the contamination law. So do you see that when you start walking and getting together with someone that is negative over time, you become negative. Imagine that you have a relationship, which someone that is negative. You know, everything is bad at, it's not good everything who is going to collapse. What happens over time? You start thinking about that. Do you remember? I know many of you do not are too young for that, but do you remember that Hardie?
Ricardo (3m 52s): That was, ah, you know, I'm so unlucky, you know, from the cartoons. So it's that So you attract things that our bad for you, So in a very practical way. You need to stop using negative words and not, I'm not telling that I'm perfect on that many times during this crisis. on COVID I get sad I get depressed it is natural, but you need to stop this kind of negative words. If you say we have this problem, we have this problem. We have this problem. We have this challenge. We will not met the deadline we will not deliver we will be overbudget. what happens? You start contaminating people with the same feeling.
Ricardo (4m 33s): So you can say it in a different way. Look, folks, if we do that, we have a great possibility of meeting our deadline. If we change that, maybe we'll have the possibility of benefit from that unforeseen opportunity. So it is the way you behave, its the way you communicate. So you need to stop saying negative words because negative words are directly related to Pessimism. I'm not telling you to lie, but to reframe the way you say and the way you talk about things, the third one be flexible.
Ricardo (5m 13s): Let me tell you every time you decide that there is only one possibility it's black or it's white, you are restricting what success looks like for you. But if you say a range, okay, between these gray and black, is good for me. You are opening and widening your possibilities. You are being flexible. Let me give you a simple example. Many times when I put deadlines down, because that line is part of the life. I tried to put a range for, the deadline, instead of a point, because if I put the deadline on December 31st and like deliver on December 30 or January 1st, technically am not meeting the deadline.
Ricardo (6m 0s): But if I put the range or look between December and January, I'm given to myself and my team, some flexibility to work. So success is a much more the broad range. Then just the single point. This is to be flexible This instead of saying, look, I will only be happy with my next meal. If it's a beef Tenderloin with broccoli and vegetables and carots. And if I change that and say look or any kind of a steak or any kind of steak with vegetables will make me happy. I'm a widening my possibilities. And this is to be flexible.
Ricardo (6m 42s): These is to increase the chances of getting the results you want. And last but not least, you look for inspiring stories. So if you are sad or if you're feeling pessimistic, the word is full of amazing people, amazing people, even more in this times of crisis. When we see, for example, we are all affected. I'm in lockdown, probably all of you listening to this are in lockdown. So when you see these great stories about people that changed their destiny, people that just decided to help others, people that just decided to create something innovative.
Ricardo (7m 23s): This inspires because crisis is a great moment for creating inspirational leaders. So you need to have these inspiring stories. Every time I'm thinking I'm stuck at home. Of course I get a little bit pessimistic, but then suddenly I tried to put myself in perspective, comparing my life with other people's life and comparing what I'm doing with what other people are doing. And these created an inspiration for me to be much more thankful for what I have. And also to inspire me to be creative, to have more ideas. So Optimist is a sense that you need to create as much as you can in your project environment, in your organization.
Ricardo (8m 11s): It's not an easy task, but if you focus on possibilities and avoid thinking on obstacles, stopp negative words. start to become more flexible and look for inspiring stories. You can reduce the chances of being pessimistic and you start contaminating your team and all around you with an Optimist and a positive mindset. Think about that and see you next week with another five minutes podcast.
