How can you use optimism to your advantage?

For his standard work Learned Optimism the American psychologist Martin Seligman carried out a study of the salespeople of the insurance business Met Life. Two thousand people participated in the study. It was mainly about the stress and obstacles encountered in the difficult profession of the telephone sales . After 3 years it turned out that 75% of the people who called themselves 'pessimistic' had resigned. After 1 year people who called themselves 'optimistic' had a turnover that was 60% higher than the turnover of people who called themselves pessimistic. Optimism in itself does not change the situation and reality, but it does change the way to which you respond to it. And the way you respond changes the outcome. The 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the country through the second World War was badly affected by polio. He himself said about that disease: 'This terrible condition is not me. It is a big part of me. It forced me to fight, to save myself as well as the rest of the free world. ''