EVERYONE GETS TIRED
Norm was at an all-time low. He took the pile of pages (his man-
uscript and life’s passion) and threw it in the garbage. That was it.
Forty-plus rejections from 40 different publishers were quite enough.
His hopes had been raised and dashed one too many times.
Norm’s wife, Ruth, came into the room and was horrified to
see his book in the garbage. She went to pull it out.
He said, “I forbid you to take that out. I’ve had enough.”
Ruth was troubled. She didn’t want to go against her husband’s
wishes, but neither did she want to see his life’s work go to the land-
fill. He had been rejected so many times by so many people that he
had finally run out of energy—even though he had always had so
much energy.
She decided to follow his wishes—well, sort of. She left the
manuscript in the garbage, wrapped it up, and sent it to one more
publisher.
The publisher took notice. He’d never before received a man-
uscript in a garbage container. He read her explanatory note and
then the manuscript. He decided to publish. Little did he realize it
would become one of the top-sellers of all time.
The author? Norman Vincent Peale.
The book? The Power of Positive Thinking.
—Excerpt from The Daily DoseEven the most optimistic of personalities is bound to suffer dejection
and see his optimistic attitude wane in times of rejection, defeat, and ad-
versity. If it happened to Norm, it’s probably going to happen to you and
me. Optimism is the lifeblood of anyone who hopes to succeed in the sell-
ing profession. Those who allow themselves to be seduced into pessimistic
thinking patterns and cynical synapses poison their own lifeblood.
DEFAMATION BY USAGE
If you pay close attention to the way people use the word optimistand to
the way people respond when you tell them that you are an optimist,you
might find that not everyone has a high regard for the idea. The unneces-
sary baggage the word has picked up in its journey to modern usage disturbs
me. Many have loaded their own personal baggage onto this word—which
more than likely describes their former approach to matters before things
went badly. To hear some people describe the optimist, you would think
Redefining Optimism 99