High performance coach Todd Herman is partnering with Entrepreneur to talk about the Goal Standard Challenge. It is a series of videos serving as a tool that helps you achieve better results in your personal development. In this particular video, Todd is talking about the feeling that you get when something in your plan goes wrong – resistance. So what should you do when you start feeling it?

You may have heard from the personal development field or leadership groups that what’s most important in order to be successful is to be positive. However, let’s talk about being a bit more negative. As unbelievable as it may sound, negativity plays a big part in success. Todd calls it “The Positive Power of Negative Preparation.” Yes, we always need optimism because it makes us feel comfortable and motivated, but the best and smartest people know that it’s critical to keep their feet firmly on the ground where they are aware that anything can try to get in their way. This negative preparation is simply to ask yourself: What are some things that could go wrong? For example, what if an athlete goes to the field of play in a game and he has in his mind the perfect game with the perfect outcome and he expects it to be that way. However, suddenly when he steps in, at a certain point he realises it is not going the way he wanted. Then, his inner game starts to fall apart.

Check out: The Psychology Behind Irrational Decisions (Video)

The inner game plays a big part in our lives. However, when you think through what you want to achieve, think about the things that could go wrong and what would be the most accurate way to respond, so you could prevent total failure. If you don’t do that, you risk being totally disappointed about the outcome of the circumstances and thus you get stressed, angry and these feelings could prevent you from acting smart after being put in this situation. Apply this way of thinking to your business or the thing that you are striving for. For example, if something goes wrong in your business, who is going to take care of that? Are you going to be responsible or is there someone else who you can turn to? By thinking this way you start to build a system in your business to help you take care of things. Being flexible and adaptable to different situations makes you mentally tough. That is the positive power of negative preparation.