It Is Better To Re-Set Your Sails Than To Curse The Winds

by Rick Stecker

Motivational speaker and writer William Arthur Ward said this:

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The realist adjusts his sails.”

A rising tide of pessimism rarely serves anyone well for very long, as it carries you into the jet-stream currents of cynicism and doubt which are hard to escape.

An attitude of optimism on the other hand enables you to persevere in your journey despite rough waters and heavy seas, and even to reap rewards left behind by those hapless pessimists who veered off their course too soon.

Yet, optimism by itself rarely carries you above the waves. You have to learn to act on its influence and adapt yourself to the currents moving in the moment.

You must keep yourself afloat and continue moving toward the destination you inner optimist informs you lies straight ahead.

As a realist, you learn to rig and set your sails in order to take advantage of those winds of opportunity, so that they will blow you toward and not away from your goals.

As Admiral James Stockdale – who survived in captivity for seven years under the most hopeless of conditions as a prisoner of war in Vietnam – put it – it is those who possess the paradoxical combination of optimism tempered with realism, who find they can actually achieve the extraordinary.