The Dark Secret of Optimism

The bad news is all around us. The good news? You can do something about it.

The Debate.

That’s all I need to say and you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

Within the first 5 minutes of seeing the President’s performance, my heart sank and it seemed every part of me filled up with pessimism.

Any good hope for the future vaporized. And all I could see was a long, dark road ahead.

All of my optimism disappeared, replaced by a heavy pessimism.

It was easy for pessimism. It’s actually my natural state. It’s probably yours, too.

You see our DNA has not evolved much since we were cave-dwellers.

As Yuval Harari writes in his excellent book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind:

“Our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah.” He said and continued, ”Our mental and emotional world is still adapted to a hunter-gatherer mode of life, where immediate dangers and opportunities matter much more than distant possibilities.”

It seems the real debate is within ourselves. We are born negative and we have to learn positivity. We have to train ourselves.

Earlier in the week, I heard Brene Brown on the Pivot podcast. Brene is a brilliant research professor at the University of Houston. Her “Power of Vulnerability” TED Talk is a must-watch. Her books, must-reads.

On the podcast, Brene was discussing her observation about the pervasiveness of pessimism. More precisely, she said she’s never seen more people in more places feeling so much “hopelessness” these days.

But fear not, she explained that “hope” is something we can create. She said on the pod, “We think of hope as an emotion…but hope is a cognitive behavioral process.”

A cognitive behavioral process, by the way, is when you change your thoughts and actions to feel better and handle problems better. (Thanks for the explanation, Chat GPT!)

Back to Brene. She went on to explain that “Hope is three pieces: goal, pathway, and agency.”

Ah-hah. Set a goal. See how you can get there. And work like hell to make it happen. Maybe hope is a strategy, after all!

Easier said than done. But even though we are all born at the corner of doom and gloom, we don’t have to stay there.

I can tell you as a “recovering pessimist,” it’s an every day battle.

But optimism is always a moment away.

When circumstances show up darkly, ask yourself a few questions.

1\ Ok, this sucks…but what actually is good about it?

2\ Is anything here in my control?

3\ What’s the dream scenario? Is there any way I can get there from here?

4\ What can I actually learn from this?

I will tell you that just by asking a question or two when you are served a shit-sandwich will help you avoid eating it.

And understanding that optimism is a choice, something you can create, that should help too.

You know, just by writing this piece right now, things are starting to look up.

Image: Tadao Ando’s “Church of the Light” shot by Naoya Fujii