Americans all think they are going to make it big, don’t they?
“Half empty or half full? Test your optimism” by Diane Levin at her MediationChannel.com got me thinking. Running a business does require a bit of realism, and a pessimistic streak can help. You can discipline yourself to get that in your make-up, even if your Mom growing up was the Midwestern version of Pollyanna. Still, I’ll take optimism as a “default” position for the kind of people I want in my orbit. Some western Europeans seem genuinely alarmed but intrigued when they utter the following, which is said to me frequently and out of the blue: “Americans all think they are going to make it big, don’t they?!”* The idea, I gather, is that the great expectations generated by the free-for-all and break-neck culture of American life is a design for failure, disappointment and humiliation. They have a point. According to the Boston Globe, and as Diane points out, as many as 80% of us Yanks, have the sunny-side thing going–and it can work against us. But that is who we are.
*Brits who say this will then throw in, for effect, a loud and somewhat dismissive guffaw.