The Personal Power of Optimism

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The perception of optimism in our current culture has morphed and been re-branded to be synonymous with naïve realism. Optimists are often critiqued by pessimists who masquerade around as realists and I wanted to shed some light on the power optimism has. However, before I dive into my thoughts on the topic, I want to take a moment to define what optimism means to me. Let’s start with the text book definition and work into my understanding of the term. Optimism is defined as “hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.” Although I don’t disagree with this definition it does vary a bit from my own. I view optimism as a perception shift on personal experiences to reduce or change negative emotions. Optimistic realism in a sense. The confusion is stemmed from lack of context of a situation, an ignorance to how we naturally compare our own experiences and how those continued experiences shape the way we think. What I believe true optimistic people practice is changing the perception of the situation to find an end result in which meaning can be found. Let me give you an example. 

Romantic break ups are a common cause to have a negative end result. A pessimist would view a break up as a situation in which they aren’t surprised the relationship went wrong because everything always goes wrong and relationships are just a scenario in which two people go in fine and two people always coming out hurt. They’ll judge on a conscious (or even unconscious) level that every relationship will end in heartache and they’ll most likely never be loved again. A realist would analyze a break up in order to understand the core differences of why it didn’t work and will be sad but understands that not every couple that gets together will stay together. An optimist will take the sadness and then begin to re-work their perception on the situation. They’ll turn loneliness into gratitude for realizing the value of togetherness and how it will be cherished when someone new is found. They’ll reflect personally on what they have done wrong to better learn what not to do next time. They’ll realize and reflect about times in the past and how they’ve felt this way once before, but eventually met someone else and understands that love can be found again and when it is found we’ll have a stronger appreciation having better understood heartache. I know this because it’s normally my line of thinking after I experience a break up. I share this because I need to focus on how perception of a situation is so important. One of my favorite quotes is “When it’s snowing outside you can choose to enjoy the snow or not. The only difference is you’ll have the same amount of snow, just less amount of joy.” This quote is a simplistically beautiful way to grasp perception in which optimists use to their advantage. However, there are some distinctions that need to be made.

When I mainly talk about perception, I’m referring to a personal experience context. I’ll acknowledge traditional optimism stills lives outside the realm of our own personal experiences, but personal optimism is key to a healthy way of life because how we view the world is in our control. I like to talk about the classic example of the half glass of water scenario. Traditional optimists would say the glass is half full. I say the water in the glass is irrelevant because I can shift my perspective to understand the glass can always be refilled, so I choose to not focus on the glass half empty or half full. I always see the glass as the container and no matter how empty the glass becomes I can always fill it back up. We all would be in a much better place if we applied perception shifts to our own experiences. Looking back at my own life I realized my father’s passing when I was 16 became the first big moment of learning how to shift the way I viewed a negative experience. As any teenager would be, I was full of emotions (anger, sorrow, sadness, heartache, etc.), but after a week I realized that if my dad was still here he wouldn’t want to see me, my mom, or my brothers sad or suffering. I was confident that he would’ve wanted me to continue to make the best life possible for myself. I thought about my own death and how the last thing I would want after I’m gone is for my family to suffer. My perception shift helped me channel my grief into determination to succeed in life for knowing with 100% certainly my father would approve of that choice. If you are following along so far, I could imagine a thought is coming to mind in the form of “easier said than done” and I can’t fault you there, but like anything else, practice, practice, practice will begin to make the process seem second nature. Before I write about my process, I want to touch on negative emotions and how they are linked to perception. Even though I work hard to eradicate negative emotions, they do play a pivotal role in understanding and finding positive emotions. 

I’m only human and I’ve still felt and had my fair share of anger, jealousy, pettiness, sadness, hatred, etc. and it’s been beyond important to feel these emotions. When I speak of negating negative emotion I’m more so referring to the idea of shorting the life span of these negative emotions and eventually replacing them with emotions that cause a better state of mind and being. My optimist view point is becoming aware that comparisons of experiences is what leads to wisdom and understanding. Comparing my experience to seeing a terrible movie will help me understand my idea of a great movie. We all do this whether we are aware of it or not. When I played football in high school, I remember running drills in 90 degree weather and when it was time for a water break the water never tasted so wonderful. Unknowingly to me I had a direct comparison from what it was like to be dehydrated, hot and running drills to taking a break and getting a drink of water. That new comparison in turn gave me a strong appreciation for water breaks; this is the first step of optimism. Being mindful of how our experiences shape our views of other experiences, even those we’ve yet to have. My father passing away was an experience that made other minor tragedies in my life seem bleak in comparison. I self-reflected and have always thought if I can get through the passing of my father then I know I have no problem getting through a flat tire or a bad day at work. I started to care more about the people around me because I had a new-found appreciation from experiencing loss. Kahlil Gibran says it best in his book The Prophet when he says, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” We all have a rolodex of experiences at our disposal to tap into and learn from. The more one self-reflects on what they feel or have felt the more they can use other personal experiences to shape perspective. 

The next step is to always practice having conversations with yourself. I know how that may sound initially but hear me out. Once you take away the stigma it is an effective tool. I was driving to work one day, and a gentleman had changed lanes and cut me off. My immediate reaction was frustration and annoyance and as I was in the middle of imagining all the profanities I’d say to this person, I checked in with myself. I though “Josh hold on turbo, is it really going to help being upset by this and letting it affect your day?” I thought “well no”. I thought “aren’t you already going the speed you would be going if that guy wouldn’t have cut you off?” I thought “well yeah.” Then I thought “So let it go and put on that new awesome song you found, and we’ll be to work in no time.” I then thought to myself “that is a solid plan.”  In that example I chose to recognize when I was feeling a negative emotion and I used the tool of conversation with myself to be mindful of what I was feeling and if feeling that way was worth it. My go to question is always “Is feeling this way going to better my situation at all?” and if I can’t answer the question, I almost instantly feel better. Self-conversation is what I’ve found to help me be mindful of emotions and who better than myself to convince myself to let a negative emotion fade. On the surface this may seem obvious, and to a point it is, but in my experience having conversations with my friends (especially when I notice they’re feeling negative emotions) they often let their thoughts run rampant and can’t break any other context but the one they tell themselves. 

Which brings me to the next part of my process, context. Context of a situation is so important, but rarely considered when emotions are high. Emotions, even positive ones, can change the way we think and even behave. I believe being mindful of context causes me to have a life line on my ability to reason. Let me give another example through a personal experience. I was living in Southern California as a door to door salesman. At the time I was pitching for Child Fund International which was a charity in which you chose to sponsor a child by paying monthly to provide the child with food, water, care, etc. Famously known for the late night “less than a dollar a day” commercials. I was working in a neighborhood and as I stopped in front of the next house I was about to pitch I watched two men from Child Protective Services walk up, knock on the door and proceed to take away a 6 year old girl and as the mom is crying and the gravity of the situation settled, she finally looked over at me and asked me what I wanted. I just said I was working, I apologized for the intrusion and I left. Later that evening I kept thinking what if all of that would have happened 30 minutes prior to me showing up. I imagined knocking on her door and asking her to sponsor a child in need. I would have easily been met with much justified sass. I would’ve whole heartily judged that women for being rude or unnecessarily hurtful without any context to what she had just gone through. I learned something extremely important that day. I was shown first hand that most of the time we have no idea what people are going through we encounter them. Most of us simply write people off as being terrible people when they just could be experiencing something terrible in their own lives. If you don’t believe me, then just check in with your own personal rolodex of experiences. I can remember many occasions where I was ruder than I intended to be. My prayers go out to the Best Buy guy I snapped at once, but I learned in that moment being hangry is a real thing. What I find amusing especially in the context of driving is how many stories I’ve heard of my friends being angry at the person who honked at them when they cut someone off. We all want others to understand our own contexts but can’t seem to return the favor. 

The final part of my process involves compassion. Everyone has heard of the phrase treat people as you would want to be treated. This is such a simple concept to me and I’m always baffled by how little I see it practiced. We all have the ability to relate and connect because even though we all have different stories, if you strip the stories away, we all are human beings who feel the same emotions. Being angry at a favorite sports team for losing or being angry for being ignored by a spouse are different stories, but both lead to anger. My Shakespeare studies professor in college said he believes the reason why Shakespeare has continued to be done for over 400 years is because the emotions, drives, and situations of his plays still hold true today. This also holds true in the opposite direction in that stories have followed the same plots and structures repeatedly, but what makes stories unique are how they’re told. When I find a root emotion, I go through my own rolodex of emotions to find a time in which I felt the same emotion and compassion easily follows. Optimism isn’t naïve nor is it a way of living that should be met with an eye roll. I believe optimism a healthy way to learn about ourselves and others to ultimately optimize the lens we view our lives to reduce so much unnecessary suffering or am I the only one?