Positive thinking. The name brings about the remembrance of many a book or show on its power and prestige, yet today in spite of all the advances we have made in society with health, longevity, technology, and other things — we are at a loss of something very important. That to me is being optimistically truthful.

Optimism is great. It is so important to aim high in your thoughts instead of dwelling in the murky abyss of the darkness we all know and share in. Even in scripture this concept can be seen.

If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory.

Col. 3:1-4, ASV

Psalm after psalm speaks of looking up. Song after song proclaims of it. Why… who can forget the song by Bobby McFerrin called “Don’t Worry Be Happy” with all the delightful peaks and dips of the words?

Positivity isn’t just important to remind others to keep pressing on. It is also important in business. In honesty… who has bought something from an provider if anything they said about their service, or product was bad? I would guess not many.

It is very important; however, to be optimistically truthful. Let me give an example. What happens when someone is very busy; they promise to be at an event that means a lot to someone, and they know full well they can’t make it? Would it not have been better to say “I’m sorry I can’t take off” or whatnot, instead of getting the person’s hopes up? It is better to say “I don’t think I can take off, but I can try” instead of promising something for it to be broken.

So here is the deal. You can present a truth that can be unpleasant with the sugar of hope, and have it taken better than saying something in a false spirit of optimism pertaining to something that you can’t fulfill.

As a person, as a business, as a group, or whatever — it works out better to be honest about what you cannot do; rather, than being fixated on being and delivering on something you can’t very well deliver on.

I hope this little thing I realized is useful to you. Don’t say it is okay when it is not. Don’t say you can when you cannot. Don’t promise something with the veneer of optimism when you can’t deliver. In doing that all you achieve is making something unhappy sound happy, and the end result is you deliver a lie. The people that you know and love deserve better. If you have a business — your customers deserve better.

I’ll close with this,

That we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; but speaking truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom all the body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each individual part, makes the body increase to the building up of itself in love.

Eph. 4:14-16, WEB

Optimism as an expression of hopeful truth is better than lying to prevent offense. Speak the truth in love.

Blessings.