“All confident people have three things in common: Self confident people are optimistic, they  face their fears and deal with them and surround themselves with positive people.” – Ben Bilanich

The Optimist Creed is a 10 point guide to self confidence,  success and becoming more optimistic.   By following these “common sense” rules, your personal and business success will boost and continue to grow.  I will go over a couple points that I have learned to apply to my  life and have made me a more successful person.

The first is “Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.” This is one of those “easier said than done” statements but you can make it possible with the right attitude. When I was in college,  I worked in a portrait studio taking pictures of families and kids.  During the Christmas season, we had photo sessions every 10 minutes – literally impossible to do. Before I got to work, I already knew I was going to have a bad day because no matter how hard I tried or how good our photographers were, customers were going to be angry because of their long wait. I was already convincing myself of the bad day I had ahead of me before I stepped foot in the studio. I decided it was time to change my way of thinking and not let things I couldn’t control affect my attitude. While the customers waited, I gave them books to browse so they could have an idea of what they wanted before their session time. This way the customer did not feel neglected and it got them in and out of the studio faster so other families wouldn’t have such long waiting periods. I took control of the situation and by choosing to be strong, it helped the flow of the studio and I kept my peace of mind.

Another point in the Optimist Creed that I can relate to is “Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of your past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.” Set backs and failures are an inevitable part of life.  Self confident people are not intimidated by their failures. They embrace it and move forward towards their goal. A good example of this would be an athlete. The goal in any sport is to win or be number one. What does a boxer do when he looses a fight? The boxer and his trainer will sit together and review a tape of the fight and see what he did wrong and what he can improve on. Even though he lost, he gained  knowledge for next time.

These are just two of the ten points on the Optimist Creed that I relate to. For a free copy of Optimist Creed click here. What the author suggests is hanging a copy near your desk to continually remind yourself of these self confident rules to become a more success peron in your career and personal life.