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How to Stay Optimistic (Even When There’s Every Reason Not to Be)

September 25, 2020 By Sarah McVanel 2 Comments

How do you stay so optimistic?

This is what a few folks have asked me lately…oh, if they only knew.

I’ve been really open with you how I was in huge crisis mode at the beginning of COVID. First, all of my speaking engagements were getting cancelled. Then, maybe my coaching clients needed to put their work with me on hold because they’re either needed as an Essential Services Leader or their business had taken a swift and painful nose dive. Then, my daughter came home from high school sick.

Needless to say, my normally optimistic self threw a great big pity party for me, my family, and the rest of the world.

Would you judge me if I confess that the pity party lasted way longer than I care to admit? As in, a few months?

Judge me or not, I think it’s worthy of being honest about it. I’ve heard a number of folks saying “if one more person says that we are going to be better off on the other side” or “if one more person paints a Kindness Rock, I am going to scream”. That’s telling me we are in a serious optimism crisis. So although I don’t profess to be optimistic about everything, and I’m still deeply worried about the world, and I have austerity measures in my business, and I am keeping my kids’ bubbles as tight as I possibly can (AKA with great difficulty now they’re back to school), there have been some pretty powerful lessons in optimism rituals that I want to share with you.

Wake up optimistic

I have been listening to a lot of audiobooks these days. I’m wondering if you have to? One book that I borrow from the library about every other month is Brene Brown‘s Daring Greatly. Every time I listen to it I have another epiphany. Here’s the one the third time through: most of us wake up every morning from a place of deficit. Even those of us who tend to be pretty positive people probably still think, before their feet even hit the floor:

I didn’t get enough sleep!
I have such a busy day ahead!
How am I’m running behind schedule already?
How will I ever get through my to-do list?
What are we even going to eat for dinner today?

Can you relate?

Here’s the alternative: wake up optimistic.

As soon as you catch yourself in that cycle of deficit, reverse the inner dialogue.

Wow, I got 7 hours of sleep!
I’m excited about the meeting with ___ today!
I still have half an hour to get ready!
Which three things do I most need to get off my to-do list today?
I’d say scrambled eggs and beans on toast is sufficient for dinner, and if I get more creative than that, cool!

In other words, all of our deficit-based ruminations may be true. And, we don’t have to let it be the mental discourse in our brain before we even have a chance to have a good day.

Hang out with optimistic people

Do you have any of those family or friends that no matter what is going on in their life, they always have it worse than you? Or when things are going well, they’re always driving for the next thing? Whether they’re pessimistic or perfectionistic, they’re not good for you. And if that person that first comes to mind when I describe this individual is you, you’re not good for you. Optimism deflates with all-or-nothing extremes.

Here is the alternative: Pick your company wisely. Hang out with other people who prefer to see what is working versus what’s not. Give extra discretionary time to people who can focus on the future rather than spend all their time looking in the rearview mirror of life. You may need to put some boundaries up, of your time or energy or if they’re even allowed in your bubble right now. If your life is more abundant when you put those boundaries up, maybe you need to keep those boundaries up even after COVID is over and you can all go back to work or school cranks up full time.

This might just be the reset of relationships that you were looking for. Yes, blame it on COVID. And then keep it for yourself.

Close Out Your Day With Optimism

I will admit, I have to really check myself before I go into the house after a long workday. If I have had a back-to-back-to-back day, where I have barely peed (sorry TMI) and I did not eat enough lunch and my to-do list grew rather than shrunk that day, I often have no smile on my face, a furrowed brow, and the second that I have an opening, I tell my family how busy I am.

Guess who’s interested in hearing how busy you are? Only you. Bummer.

Here is the alternative. Reflect on what worked well and what you did get done that day. Give yourself some self-acknowledgement, even if it is small incremental signs of progress. It is so much easier to come back the next day more resourceful and resilient to tackle everything in front of you when you haven’t left the office with your head hanging low, your heart heavy, and your mind whirling. Nobody can recognize you for what you have done except you. I am very embarrassed to admit, as a recognition expert, I sometimes still need to remind myself that recognition starts with me first. So I do this for a living, and can sometimes forget it, you officially get a free pass to course-correct many times over.

What are some of the optimism strategies you use?

And by the way, my Essential Services in healthcare friends, I have a really juicy resource for you. Fellow professional speaker and all-around amazing human Renee Thompson, has put together an optimism calendar. We have provided the link to it here.

Even if you’re not from essential services, and you know somebody who is, please forward it to them. We’re battening down the hatches for the potential of another wave. I suspect you, I, and everyone around us can use all the optimism we can get.

Looking for more optimism? Check out these other blog posts that will help fill your cup:

The Benefit of Failure in Shaping Your Ideal Life

September 10, 2020 By Sarah McVanel 2 Comments

To say it’s been a little tough this last six or so months is like saying “babies are kinda cute.” Babies HAVE to be cute (ask any parent of a colicky baby).

Undeniably, indisputably, undoubtedly, our work or life has been impacted in many not so great (and maybe some great) ways during this pandemic (just like life throws us curve balls when there’s no global health crisis). The benefit at least is we’re all in this together. We have a shared understanding in this worldwide situation.

Even if we are in this together, it still begs the question, how do we manage this protracted period of stress, frustration and strain? Here are four lessons I pulled from podcast episodes over the last year. If you are looking for insights to help your health and wellbeing, or that of someone you care about, read on and forward.

Failure Empowers You to Stop Settling

Resiliency Expert Mark Black could have looked at his life of being born with a “defective” heart (and having had to have two major heart transplants before the age of 20 as a result) as a bad lot in life. but he didn’t. In our conversation on his podcast Level Up your Life, we dove into how our greatest obstacles in life turned out to be the very thing that allows us to follow our path, level up our life, and set bigger goals than we ever would have otherwise. I really mean it when I shared with Mark: “Once you truly start to look around at your life, and all of the things that you have been putting up with, you actually realize that you’ve been settling.” Key points in our conversation:

A crisis moment that leads to a massive life transformation.
A wacky idea that ended up being a great one.
What’s conditional, what’s optional, and what’s not
What does levelling up look like to you?
What is the Flipside of Failure?

Failure Enables You to Reflect on Why Things Aren’t Worse

Psychotherapist and Mental Health expert Roxanne Derhodge has seen a spike in her practice during COVID. Although we recorded this episode on Authentic Living with Roxanne pre-pandemic, the advice is still relevant. We talked about how failure and disappointment may make you initially think things like “why me”, “why bother”, “why this is happening” and the link, it also enables you to ask “why aren’t things worse?” If you are looking for perspective, lean into what’s irking and roadblocking you to consider if there is an even worse case scenario. Here are key points in our conversation:

How my latest book almost failed. 2:30
Sarah’s journey. 8:25
The theme of failure. 17:30
Dealing with failure as a leader. 24:45
The failure resilient mindset. 29:45
Why aren’t things worse? 40:50
The “gift” of failure. 43:30

Failure Can Bond Us (Better than Success Ever Can)

On Beth Buelow’s podcast How Can I Say This, we did a dive deep about the misconception that failure is divisive versus unifying. Who among us hasn’t experienced deep frustration, heartbreak, humiliation? Yet we often keep it to ourselves. We don’t ask for help. We think people will judge us if we show weakness or need help. In the midst of this global health crisis, maybe we finally have a chance to let down the wall and connect through what’s tough and what’s working. If ever there has been a failure tolerance (in ourselves and others), it should be now. Listen to part one and part two for tips on how to have failure-resilient conversations. Here are key points in our conversation:

From Part 1:

What we can learn from authors like Brené Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert & Anne Lamott
The importance of knowing how failure resilient versus failure resistant you are right now (quiz here)
That our failure mindset impacts the types of conversations we have

From Part 2:

How healthcare has made strides because it acknowledged that it’s the highest incident rate industry (and put legislation in place like the Canada’s Apology Act of 2009)
That there is a movement of embracing and learning from failure (e.g., FailureCon, Museum of Failure, Failure Lab
That any organization wanting to truly embrace a continuous improvement culture values the surfacing of issues so they can be fixed (this is the Toyota Lean way)

Failure Can Clarity What you Love (and Don’t Love) About Your Life

On the Charge in Business and Life podcast, Gary Wilbers and Sarah talk about their shared experience that if you don’t love what you do, you won’t do it as well as you can. Sometimes that means trying some things that don’t work and realizing, “hey, this isn’t for me.” We need to not judge ourselves when this happens. This realization allows you to clarify the value you uniquely offer. If you charge forward without a direction, it’s like running around in the dark.

Sarah McVanel’s success habits include getting up early to make a cup of tea and reading before she starts work; setting a priorities list; creating vetting criteria in which to make decisions.
Charging into the things you love (and how for Sarah that was specializing in recognition)
Why Sarah sold everything and quit her career
“I do everything” = I do nothing
You’ll be further behind if you don’t make mistakes and try
Failure is not necessarily problematic. It’s only problematic when you don’t get a lesson and don’t learn from it.
Every person needs to feel valued, appreciated, and heard (even when they fail)

If you know someone who would benefit from listening to one of these podcasts, please forward this to them as say, “you are worth seeing the value I see in you.” We are #inthistogether as we find the #flipsideoffailing.

In case you missed the past couple of weeks and want more great ideas for flipping failure into something fantastic, check out the links below:

The Benefit of Failure in Your Career or Business

September 3, 2020 By Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

In last week’s post, I shook the trees a bit. I acknowledged that many of us are struggling and that part of this is we’re not cutting ourselves a break. Now is the perfect time to strengthen our failure resiliency muscles, to ensure we’re in a failure resilient context, or both.

This week and next week I’d like to share four podcast episodes that take a dive deep into this. Some you may have missed, or some time has passed and they might be even more relevant now to go back and have a listen. This week is business and career focused. Next week is a life and wellbeing focus.

Lessons from Failing

How can failing actually fuel greatness in our businesses and careers? Well, in four very unique ways.

Failure Lowers the Waterline to Reveal (and Fix) the Cracks

On Speaker Coach, Jane Atkinson’s podcast The Wealthy Speaker Show, we got real about how we’ve both experienced many challenges in business as a result of COVID. At first, it felt like the sky was falling. Then, we realized that the pandemic forced us to take a good hard and honest look at our businesses. We noticed, addressed and improved things that would have remained hidden (or we could have ignored) otherwise. If you feel your business has taken a hit (or it’s made you gunshy to go out on your own), tune in. Here’s some highlights:

Finding your identity through COVID. [2:00]
When the distribution channel dries up. [7:45]
Riding the “mental rollercoaster”. [10:30]
Keeping your routine in uncertain times. [15:00]
Finding cracks in the foundation. [18:15]
Look for the positive and cut yourself a break. [21:15]
Shifting your business model to adapt to change. [29:00]
Tips for writing your book. [33:00]

Failure is a Strategy for Peak Performance

Dr. Cindra Kamphoff knows a little bit about peak performance. As the performance coach for the Minnesota Vikings, she helps athletes at the top of their game surpass their limits. Join us as we chat about what the great Canadians in Sarah’s book and Cindra’s experience with top athletes have in common. Ultimately, if you’re not willing to fail on the short-term in your career, you’re not going to win as big on the long-term. Here are key points in our conversation:

How Sarah defines failure. [9:53]
What is the flip side of failure. [12:09]
How people can praise themselves. [15:29]
A story where Sarah failed, what she learned from it and how she used the flip. [19:56]
A story where Cindra failed and what she learned. [27:38]
Why we need to fail. [32:15]
Talking about deflate, elevate, mitigate. [39:14]
How to adapt a high performers mindset of always looking for failure. [43:23]
How expectation connects with our belief that we failed and not having a failure resistant mindset. [49:29]
Failure resistant mindset. [55:21]

Failure Encourages you to Consider What Else is Possible

Elfie Czerny and Dominik Godat are internationally renowned solution-focused practitioners. In our interview, we dive into a solution-centric lens to failure; although we often see failing as a problem, we can also leverage it as an opportunity to consider what else is possible (a key tenant in a solution-focused approach.) Although this interview took place last year, the interview is still relevant given how we’ve thrown the status quo right out the window. Since we don’t have a choice but to reinvent, why not do it on our terms? Here are key points in our conversation:

recognition of greatness when working with teams
how people handle failing
solution focused questions refocus and elevate
redefining the stories we tell each other and ourselves
being involved in the community or how Sarah started and has grown her business
The Challenge of the week: Think of a label you give yourself, decide if it is working for you, and if no, allow yourself to envision a different possibility and a more helpful description

Failure Can’t Be Avoided in Creativity

Through the lens of authorship. publishing expert and writing coach Mark Leslie Lefebvre of the Stark Reflections Podcast explores how failure is an inevitable part of the creative process. Mark’s experience is that authors – first time or serial authors – don’t expect failure, resist it, and sometimes let roadblocks stifle versus invigorate their creative process. Sometimes it stops or seriously delays authorship. Sarah shares, ironically, the many failed attempts before Flip Side of Failing to write the book, but that it was a much better book as a result of those failures.

Similarly, my conversation with Bruce Outridge on Cashing in on Creativity Podcast explored how failure is true of every creative profession; illustrators, designers, musicians, dancers, etc; all ameteur and professional artists experience many roadblocks on their way to the success on the canvas or stage. We debunk the “overnight success story” myth, and encourage artists to lean into their struggles versus let it be seen as a sign they’re on the wrong track.

If you know someone who would benefit from listening to one of these podcasts, please forward this to them and say, “you are worth seeing the value I see in you.” We are #inthistogether as we find the #flipsideoffailing.

To find even more benefits to failing, check out these other blog posts:

What You Focus on Grows (So Choose Wisely)

September 3, 2020 By Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

So, here are some of the themes I’ve been hearing lately:

I’ve gained so much weight during COVID that I am so mad at myself
I have completely lost momentum with my routines
I have no motivation and my productivity has tanked
I really need a vacation but I don’t feel I can take the time

I get it. I’ve struggled with feeling like my normally positive, glass-half-full, greatness-is-everywhere self.

Here’s the thing though. Beating ourselves up and wishing for something else isn’t getting us back on track. It’s not making us feel any better in the middle of this pandemic. (She says after just getting back from a much needed vacation.)

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

We’ve probably all had someone in our life, at some time, tell us that it’s okay to not be okay. (If you haven’t, it’s time you got less perfectionistic friends.)

It’s true though. It’s okay to struggle, try things and fail, not always be on our “A” game (unless you’re a pro ball player and then, well, it’s probably somewhere in your contract you have to be “A” game material ;-] ). Particularly during times of strain like now, we may find ourselves struggling with things we had on track six months ago – healthy habits, socializing, separating work and home – because nothing is normal!

To struggle is human (I think someone said it and if they didn’t, there, I said it).

Not feeling better yet? It might be that you have a failure resistant mindset. Or those around you and where you work, you’re not allowed to fail. Or both.

What You Focus On Grows

You will always find the evidence for whatever you believe. Think you’re not eating right lately? I bet you recall every unhealthy thing you ate today. But have you only eaten unhealthy things today? Doubt it. If you focus on what you did well, you will see evidence of that too. What you focus on is what you see.

Even if you see way more evidence something is not working (“I really haven’t eaten a vegetable since last Thursday”) then look for the exception to the rule. This is called positive deviance. And when you see where the positive exception is, you can consider why that exception existed (maybe you had prepped healthy veggies in the fridge, you weren’t starving by the time you prepared your meal, you went for a walk and didn’t want to “ruin” your healthy start for the day, you were with your BFF versus your teenage sons who could eat ten Big Macs and the only problem they’d have is some water retention).

So what has this got to do with work? Well, glad you asked.

A lot of my (totally brilliant, amazing, talented) coaching clients find when they’re stuck, it’s when they’re focused on “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”. We call this the “s” word. It’s an external, super judgemental and completely unhelpful frame of reference that’s often myered in comparitis, partial information and unexplored biases.

Now, you may be thinking, but Sarah, I really should ________ (fill in the blank) and I have no “excuse.” Okay, I get it. Maybe there could be more veggies and taking on task and less Netflix. I’m just saying fixating unrelentingly on what’s not working is only going to keep you stuck, and in the process, rob you of your opportunity to notice and live into your greatness.

Flip Failure to Refocus

If you’ve read my book Flip Side of Failing: How to Recognize and Leverage Greatness in Work and Life, you will know that to get out of this unhealthy cycle of problem fixation, we often need to challenge our very notion of failure.

We feel like failures often. More often than we realize. It’s in a very socially acceptable form called labels. You may disagree with me that they’re acceptable because we don’t use all of the negative, hurtful, and derogatory words quite as frequently and publicly as we might have in the past. However, I challenge you to go a day without labelling yourself or someone else in your head. Go ahead, try. If you do it, you’re a better person than me.

What are some of the labels I see? Low performer. Divorcee. Bad Mom/Dad. Unemployed. Clown. Bossyboots. Uneducated. Manic Depressive. Millennial.

Labels aren’t the whole story. Let’s deconstruct a few labels:

Underperformer – you had a poor performance review
Divorcee – you or your partner chose not to be in the relationship any longer
Bad Mom/Dad – you haven’t spend as much time/patience/attention with the kids as you’d like
Unemployed – you are currently looking for work
Clown – you like to have fun (and not everyone gets you)
Bossyboots – you have strong opinions you vocalize
Uneducated – you have less formal schooling than peers
Manic depressive – you have struggled with a diagnosed mental illness
Millennial – you are in a demographic category (and again, not everyone gets you)

You see what I mean? You’re not your labels. Your labels are not you. You’re not a failure. Failures are not you. Missteps, obstacles and frustrations are all a part of the package of life, goodness knows it’s part of the package of a pandemic.

The Great Fail Too

If you’ve read Flip Side of Failing you will know the story that it was supposed to be a book about greatness. The team and I interviewed over 30 amazing Canadians about their greatness. When I went to write that book, well, it was boring. It was uninspired. It was fluffy. In other words, I failed in writing my book. Not once. But twice (if at first you don’t succeed…).

Why? The real story is that the road to greatness is paved with failures, disappointments, rejection and barriers. By talking about greatness, I learned that valuing and even seeking out failure, and then finding a way to use failure to your advantage, gets you farther ahead than playing it safe.

I know this is resonating as my most required keynote (virtual or live) is the Flip Side of Failing keynote (and believe me, I don’t think it’s because I do hip hop dancing during that speech.) It’s also the most requested topic when I’m interviewed for podcasts.

I thought now might be a time for the friendly reminder that there are a whole host of great podcast episodes where I had some pretty cool conversations with even cooler people about how to flip failure – anytime and during this zany pandemic time. Over the next two weeks, I’ll share the eight key lessons that are particularly relevant right now.

To ensure you don’t miss these posts, please ensure you’re subscribed to Your Greatness Magnified.

In the meantime, stay safe and stay well.

Here are more resources to help you Focus on Flipping Failure:

How do you stay so optimistic?

Wake up optimistic

Hang out with optimistic people

Close Out Your Day With Optimism

What are some of the optimism strategies you use?

Failure Empowers You to Stop Settling

Failure Enables You to Reflect on Why Things Aren’t Worse

Failure Can Bond Us (Better than Success Ever Can)

Failure Can Clarity What you Love (and Don’t Love) About Your Life

Lessons from Failing

Failure Lowers the Waterline to Reveal (and Fix) the Cracks

Failure is a Strategy for Peak Performance

Failure Encourages you to Consider What Else is Possible

Failure Can’t Be Avoided in Creativity

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

What You Focus On Grows

Flip Failure to Refocus

The Great Fail Too

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