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Geoff Ramsey, co-founder of eMarketer, wrote an awesome tactical article on “How Staying Positive is Good for Business.”  As you know, I’ve been writing blog posts for the past 3 months about how fear is so 2008 and that this year, 2009, is the Year of Optimism.  Well, it keeps getting harder and harder to truly believe that 2009 will be optimistic as the news media keeps reinforcing doomsday news constantly.  So, take a minute to Geoff’s 5 guiding principles of positivity:

1. Understand Your Locus of Control

2. Tighten the Spigot

3. Focus on the Opportunities

4. Leverage Data to Construct Opportunistic Experiments

5. Invest in the Future

I especially like this quote from the article: “I don’t care how hard this period is. You have to have the combination of believing that you will prevail, that you will get out of this, but also not be the Pollyanna who ignores the brutal facts. You have to say that we will be in this for a long time and we will turn it into a defining event, a big catalyst to make ourselves a much stronger enterprise.”
—Jim Collins, management guru, as quoted in Fortune, February 2, 2009

I’d also like to hear from all of you about a specific positive personal or business experience or news that you’ve read that stood out above the rest – please comment below (in haiku format, of course).

Many many cocktail conversations with friends this 4-day holiday weekend and the general tone of them was very upbeat, while still being quite realistic.  My favorite conversation was when a neighborhood friend and I were talking about how fear breeds fear and the media, the blogosphere, and everyone’s psyche is consumed by fear.  Towards the end of the conversation, we completed the following phrase after a long pause with the same exact word “fear is so………..Bush.”  This blog post isn’t intended to be negative or political.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

I’m experimenting here, but I’m deeming December as the month of optimism.  Many will call it naive. Others may say it is a pipe dream. But, I think that it will produce positive results, reduce stress + anxiety, and make it a far better month all around.  It’s not going to be easy to take this stance – the stock market rose 17% over the past 5 business days, and media is refusing to write about anything that doesn’t focus on “disaster”, “crisis”, or “depression.”  F*** it – I’m going with optimism – join me – it’s the good side of life.

BTW – today is Haiku Monday, so write about some December optimistic memories, experiences, or themes.

I believe, believe
in optimism optimism
Life is better that way