119“You can’t leave a place you’ve never been.”) The sec-
ond step is to build a case for the optimistic view.
Start to argue against your first line of reasoning.
Pretend you’re an attorney whose job is to prove the
pessimist in you wrong. Start off on building your case
for what’s possible. You’ll surprise yourself. Optimism
is by nature expansive—it opens door after door to
what’s possible. Pessimism is just the opposite—it is
constrictive. It shuts the door on possibility. If you re-
ally want to open up your life and motivate yourself to
succeed, become an optimistic thinker.
55. Make trouble work for you
One evening, many years ago, my then-14-year-old
daughter Stephanie went for a walk with a friend, prom-
ising me she would be back home before 10 p.m. I didn’t
pay much attention to the clock until the 10 o’clock news
ended and I realized that she hadn’t come home yet. I
started to get nervous and irritated. I began pacing the
house, wondering what to do. At 11:30 I got in my car
and started cruising the neighborhood looking for her.
My thoughts were understandably anxious, part fear and
part anger. Finally, at 11:45, I drove back past my own
house and saw her silhouette in the window. She was
home and safe.
But I kept driving. I realized that I was thinking
completely pessimistically about the entire incident and
I needed to keep thinking before I talked to her. As I
drove along I observed all the pessimism I was wallow-
ing in: “She doesn’t respect me. She can’t keep a prom-
ise. My rules and requests mean nothing. This is the tip
of the iceberg. I’m going to have problems with her for
the next four years at least. Who knows where she went
and what she was doing? Were drugs involved? Sex?
Make trouble work for you