The SCORE 2015 Issue 1 | Page 25

and over again how important it was to please the boss and not rock the boat. Maybe they were told,“Get what you can get because it’s a jungle out there”or“We’re not the kind of people who lead groups; we’re more the doers than the thinkers.” In addition, the culture at work may be one of constant fighting between employees and departments. It becomes like a silo mentality on steroids. Everybody is fighting their turf wars with nuclear weapons and blowing up each other’s careers. Any trace of idealism the person had coming into the organization has been wiped away. How can you combat negative programming from your home life or work life? I believe you need to find a purpose in your work beyond just making money. And then I encourage you to remind yourself of that purpose frequently. Why do you do what you do for a living? If you don’t have a very strong sense of your purpose for your work, you can quickly lose your desire to make a positive difference in your organization because of the negative subconscious programming you are receiving or have received from other people. If you really care about that purpose, you will rise up above all the negative energy flow and continue to try to make a positive impact. Remember: Desire is maintained by purpose. Trait #2 Develop a strong sense of personal dignity. Stay optimistic in good times and bad times. Optimism fuels resilience. It helps you persevere when others might give up. If you believe things are going to go well in the future, you will persevere through good and bad times. With a strong belief in the future of your organization, you will be more likely to persevere when trying to make a positive difference. If you think pessimistically and think things are going to go poorly in the future, you are likely to give up and not even try to make a positive difference. Not only do you benefit as an individual through enhanced optimism, you can also help people throughout your company see the future of the organization with a greater degree of hope and genuine optimism. This can have a multiplying effect throughout the organization. And what’s the secret to maintaining optimism? The way you talk to yourself. Dr. Martin Seligman wrote the classic book on optimism a quarter of a century ago when he wrote Learned Optimism. He explained that the key to being optimistic is to see the causes for a bad event as being temporary, specific, and outside of yourself. You might say,“I missed that sales number last month, but it’s a temporary thing. The market changed overnight, but with some additional training I believe next month will be record-breaking for me because my skills are effective with a huge range of people.” Now you’re ready to get back out there and start selling again. You have a positive belief about your future sales. Continued on Page 25 23 SCORE | 2015 Issue 1 THE With a strong sense of personal dignity, you can make a positive difference in your organization. If you lose your personal dignity, it’s going to be very hard for you to make a positive contribution. In the book, Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow essentially said that true self-esteem rests on a feeling of personal dignity—the feeling that you are in control of your own decisions and your own destiny. No matter how bossy your supervisor may be and no matter how much you are told what to do by other people, you can still maintain a very strong sense of personal dignity. Let’s make this as practical as we can. You can always choose to control two areas: your mouth and your brain.You get to choose what you eat and what you drink. You get to choose what you say.You get to choose what images and ideas you allow into your brain, you get