Faith VS Optimism

I just got this email from a friend who is also big on trying to be positive and how that can help move a business forward to success. His comments are around having faith and being optimistic.

I never really understood what faith meant, i always use to relate it to religion but today i got it a little deeper.

I consider myself an optimistic person, i am positive and always see the glass as half full. But today i realized that could be neagtive and here is the point.

An optimist will always see everything as great, and if its not great they will just be positve and things will eventually turn around. Well turns out this is not true and will not work. I am living proof of this. I used to always think like this. Oh dont worry about it everything will be ok. Its all good! and so forth... the optimistis never really get anything done cause they always just beileve everything will be fine.

On the other hand having faith is something at a higher level of awareness. Let me explain. To have faith you must stare directly at all the facts in the face (even the negative ones) and acknowledge them. You must have faith or believe everything will be ok in the future but constantly doing this by looking at the facts of the situation and nothing else.

I will give you an example for you to better understand what i mean.

There was a general who was kept in captivity and tortured for 8 years. He was asked why did he make it and who were the others who didnt last in the prison. He said the optimists all died, and the ones that kept the faith all lived. Isnt that counter intuitive a little. You would think that optimists would live... He says they kept setting these deadlines by when they would get out of jail. Like by December we will be out, or by next easter or by next thanksgiving and it never happened. hIs response to them was we are not getting out anytime soon face the facts and deal with it. He kept is faith by saying he knew he would get out eventually but focused on what he could do ni that present reality with the facts he had in front of him to better his situation....

I think this happens in business a lot! And to be an optimists is not bad, but to be an optimists who faces the facts as they are true not as how we would like them to be is to have faith. Or so I think a good term would be a faithfull realist. I know where I am and I know where I am going.

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