Character forming

I’ve been carefully crafting who I want to turn out to be for 13 years now. Analyzing realistically who I am and cutting out the negatives. Looking in the mirror and logging things I do so I don’t glorify my own achievement too much from the internal dialogue. This is all because of the simple fact that 80% of us overrate our own abilities. The reason why I want to avoid this inflation of one’s ego is so that when I do my presentation and pitch, I can target my audience better.

So far, the decisions has been easy and I never had to think about what’s bad for me and what’s good. But then I run into this character flaw which was pointed out to me when they prepped me to be an exec. The basic premise is that I tend to look and react to events with the consideration of the two extreme opposite outcomes as the first and foremost concern. The VP and I had a long back and fourth about how bad this is as a trait for a corporate leader. I personally think it is one of my qualities, but also understand that the event that comes to fruition is usually the one outcome that we keep in our mind the most. So this is not a very good trait to have when you are running a business. What is needed is usually optimism and a sort of muddle through mid ground.

Obviously, for normal life, the guarded optimism and muddle through attitude is an obvious way of life. Nobody likes a narcissist, nor a complainer. Always considering the extreme worst/bad scenario in business is kind of like someone who complains all the time.  The ability to quickly take in data and assess the most extreme outcome of the two sides was carefully developed for investing and trading. It’s a great skill to have as it cut through the rainbows and unicorns spit out by corporate CEO and vetted by their PR firm. For stocks, it is perfect and it is the major contributor to the performance of my portfolio in the past decade, allowing me to be where I am even though I had to trade through The Great Recession of 2007/2008.

But it is not great for business.

Sure, I call the VP’s bull and thinks he’s pulling stuff out of his behind. As if a properly run business don’t go through simulations of all possible outcomes before making a decision (Or maybe they don’t!). But he has a point and I know it. Optimism is necessary to lead and to properly switch context and re-frame my mindset would mean taking an either or approach on the road to take. Here I go on the extremes again, but in any case, I don’t think this is a personality trait that I can sit in the middle with.

If I want to move forward with just business, I need to reframe myself to be constantly looking for the most optimistic outcome in all encounters. EVEN if it means that I end up believing and falling for a Nigerian scam.