Health care reform is bringing dramatic changes to our industry, our profession and our businesses. No breaking news there. What can break in times like these, however, is a sense of optimism about the future.

Maintaining a positive attitude when it seems like the universe is conspiring to put you out of business can be understandably difficult. Yet maintaining a positive attitude is critically important to success. That's one of the key findings of the “Trailblazed Sales Study” I led to identify the practices, perspectives and processes that separate successful producers from their less successful colleagues.

There's an obvious logic to this. We all know people who see the glass as half full and we know others who don't. And we know with whom we'd prefer to be stuck in an elevator and on whom we'd bet to succeed. Of course, when you're achieving sales success it's easier to be positive about things.