to do it right the next time. Thereby, I would always keep a very positive attitude and told the players that they were doing well, but they just had to do it better next time. I know that the way I approached the problem helped maintain a positive attitude among all the players. This approach led to the team playing better and winning more.Another application in which an optimistic attitude has proven to be very beneficial has been in academics. Notably, there have been classes in which assignments were difficult for me and led to less than sufficient grades. Even though I was disappointed with my poor performance, I always stayed optimistic about bringing the grades back up. The one time that stood out among all the rest was when I was taking the SAT. All through my sophomore and junior years, many people had told me to prepare heavily for the SAT, and I did not. I wanted to take some review classes at the beginning of my junior year, but both sports and my job interfered; consequently, I did not have time for the class. I had also hoped to take the exam fairly early so I would have time to retake it if I had not scored well enough. Of course, once again, other things took priority, and I registered at the last minute for the last exam of my junior year. I took the SAT at eight o’clock in the morning on June 5, 1999. Even though I had not prepared in any way before taking it, I went with the attitude that I was going to score excellently. Every time I got to a question that was a bit difficult, I would simply repeat to myself, “Every question has an answer, and there’s a way to find it.” Then I decided on an answer that satisfied me and moved on. I omitted not one question and achieved an overall score of 1310 on the exam, a score I was very proud of. I attributed my having scored so well on the exam without any preparation completely to my optimistic attitude.A person’s attitude can have...
