I’m not sure that’s true. All the research I’ve seen on the subject suggests that successful people in most contexts harbor optimistic rather than accurate views of their chances, skills, and associates.
Optimism changes your chances; changes the risks you will take, changes whether or not you’ll employ your skills, changes how you interact with your associates.
Optimism changes your behaviour, that may or may not change your chances.
In any case, on the pessimism—optimism axis both extremes look like not a good place to be. To discuss where is the sweet spot in the middle you first need the ability (vocabulary and metrics) to talk about specific locations in the middle, otherwise it’s all just handwaving.
Being optimistic is not the same thing as living in denail and ignoring reality. Telling yourself only great thing is likely to make you not be in touch with reality.
That said, there’s probably a sweet spot.
I don’t think that’s a good model. You can be fully in touch with reality and be optimistic through exercises like doing a lot of gratitude journaling.
I’m not talking about having a generally sunny disposition, although that probably helps; I’m talking about quantifiable questions like “how likely am I to get this job?” Unrealistically high estimates could fairly be described as denial (though a relatively benign form); nonetheless they’re empirically correlated with success.
I’m open to the possibility that this isn’t causal, though.
They could be described with denial1, but I mean something more like denial2.
Denial2 is about not exposing yourself to feedback loops and thinking hard.
Chris Sacca who run the venture fund with the highest returns ever speaks of people strongly believing in their own success as one of the strongest signals for a good startup.
But he doesn’t mean that the startup funder is supposed to be in denail of reality. A good startup funder actually understands the problems that face him. He reacts to feedback.
I’m not sure that’s true. All the research I’ve seen on the subject suggests that successful people in most contexts harbor optimistic rather than accurate views of their chances, skills, and associates.
That said, there’s probably a sweet spot.
Optimism changes your chances; changes the risks you will take, changes whether or not you’ll employ your skills, changes how you interact with your associates.
Optimism changes your behaviour, that may or may not change your chances.
In any case, on the pessimism—optimism axis both extremes look like not a good place to be. To discuss where is the sweet spot in the middle you first need the ability (vocabulary and metrics) to talk about specific locations in the middle, otherwise it’s all just handwaving.
Being optimistic is not the same thing as living in denail and ignoring reality. Telling yourself only great thing is likely to make you not be in touch with reality.
I don’t think that’s a good model. You can be fully in touch with reality and be optimistic through exercises like doing a lot of gratitude journaling.
I’m not talking about having a generally sunny disposition, although that probably helps; I’m talking about quantifiable questions like “how likely am I to get this job?” Unrealistically high estimates could fairly be described as denial (though a relatively benign form); nonetheless they’re empirically correlated with success.
I’m open to the possibility that this isn’t causal, though.
They could be described with denial1, but I mean something more like denial2.
Denial2 is about not exposing yourself to feedback loops and thinking hard.
Chris Sacca who run the venture fund with the highest returns ever speaks of people strongly believing in their own success as one of the strongest signals for a good startup. But he doesn’t mean that the startup funder is supposed to be in denail of reality. A good startup funder actually understands the problems that face him. He reacts to feedback.