Optimism as a life hack

I must confess: I am an optimist. Sometimes this actually makes me quite self aware: I try hard not to always be that friend or colleague who is cheerful all the time, to the point of being annoying.

But the truth is that optimism doesn’t come particularly natural to me: every morning I wake up and I choose to look at life and work with optimism.

I believe optimism is a strategy, a mechanism to empower your own self to make a better future. Because believing the future ahead is bright, means stepping up and taking responsibility for making it happen.

As Noam Chomsky (certainly not a renown optimist) pointed out, if you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope: only if you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better life for yourself, and a world as a byproduct. We always have that choice to be optimists, but sometimes the difficulties filling life might make that choice look very distant, or mood disorders might hide it completely from us.

But optimism is a crucial part of life and business: it is a mindset that allows us to move through life with hope and confidence, while also enabling us to take risks and achieve success. Optimism is the belief that all things are possible, the belief that there is always a way to turn a situation around and make it better. Optimism allows us to face challenges and come up with solutions, allows us to look at a problem from different angles and discover creative solutions. Optimism also helps us to stay positive in difficult times, it allows us to look for the silver lining and remain hopeful that things will improve, SO THAT they can improve; it gives us the strength to keep going even when things are not going as planned, and helps us to stay focused on our goals and strive to achieve them.

Ultimately, optimism is the difference between setting goals and achieving them.

The good news is that there's a way to shift our mindset toward more optimism, hack our minds and shift our attitude in a more optimistic direction, no matter our natural inclination.

A great article from the University of California's Greater Good Science Center, explores the benefits of priming our minds for optimism, and provides practical tips for incorporating priming into our lives: it's a useful resource for anyone looking to cultivate a more optimistic outlook. Personally, I love how the author calls out humor as a key aspect of hacking optimism: cracking a joke is always the best way to take the hedge off a bad situation.

So, I see no better way to wrap this up with a quote from Herm Albright, a decorated veteran who fought 3 wars and saw some serious s#@t, but never failed to look at life with optimism, and made an excellent point:

"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."

Disclaimer

What's above represents?my personal views?and not the opinion or policy of my employers or any other company, organization or individual I can be associated with.

The facts expressed here belong to everybody, the quoted sections, stetements, and imagery belong to their respective authors, the opinions only to me: the distinction is yours to draw...