The Importance of Optimism

"We Need Optimists." That's the title of a front page Sunday Review essay in the New York Times this week by Arthur  C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of the new book, The Conservative Heart. He starts off with a quick story. His son had made a really bad grade on a test. After a parent-teacher conference about it, Arthur's wife broke the silence in the car by saying, "At lease we know he didn't cheat." That glass is always half full for the optimist, and ready to be topped off.

Brooks reports recent psychological studies that indicate optimists are generally healthier than pessimists, and more resilient in the face of setbacks. Optimists also self-report greatest levels of perceived happiness. In my own analyses of human performance, I've learned that optimists tend to have a more complete form of access to all their resources, inner and outer, than pessimists.

If optimists are, generally, healthier, happier, more resilient, and more resourceful, then why wouldn't everyone seek to be one?

Well, first, there's The Cautionary Tale of the Irrational Optimist - the many examples that almost any of us can produce of people whose enthusiasm for life and their own ideas makes them oblivious to problems, obstacles, and the real probabilities of a situation. This is the mindset so thoroughly critiqued by Barbara Ehrenreich in her scathing book, Bright-Sided. But to be an optimist, you don't have to be a simpleminded idiot or a stubborn fool. In fact, it helps greatly not to be either. You can be a realistic optimist - and that turns out to be, not surprisingly, the best kind there is.

A realistic optimist moves forward with eyes wide open, seeing obstacles, understanding challenges, and yet maintaining a determination to be creative in solving all problems. The realistic optimist never just hopes for the best, or blithely assumes the best, but works hard to make the best happen, in full realization that it may take longer than it should, and be harder to accomplish than anyone could have imagined. But it's precisely the element of optimism that fuels a hopeful and persistent struggle forward. Optimists don't prematurely give up, or surrender, in their efforts to create good things. And optimists like me promote the optimistic mindset, just like I'm doing now. Why? We really believe it works and that it can work for you.

Of course, pessimists want to convert us all to their alternative way of thinking. And I've always wondered why they even try. Don't they have to believe they're unlikely to succeed? They are pessimists, after all.

Martin Seligman, in his classic study, Learned Optimism, argues that you don't have to be born sunny side up. You can become an optimist. And you can benefit greatly from adopting this pervasive attitude.  Plus, if you're already moderately optimistic, you can enhance that proclivity.

I just know you can.

I really do.

Tom Brokaw on Luck

Parade Magazine recently ran a nice little article on the role luck has played in the life of newsman Tom Brokaw. He says some things of which we all need to be reminded.

I've long said that a rational person can be an optimist by being an activist. Unlike with slot machines or roulette wheels, the odds in life are something we can often change by taking action. Brokaw says this:

I believe you make your own luck. My motto is ‘It’s always a mistake not to go.’ So I jump on the airplane, try new things—sometimes I get in way over my head, but then I think, I'll work my way out of this somehow. A big part of making your own luck is just charging out of the gate every morning. The thing I love about living in New York is that I never fail to get up in the morning and think, Something adventurous is going to happen today. The energy is operating at full throttle all the time. And if you want to be lucky you’ve got to go out and take advantage of it.

This is what I call the activist approach to life and luck. The more I do, the luckier I get. There's a new adventure awaiting. But it won't wait forever. So go for it.

Brokaw has a new book out on all this. It's called A Lucky Life Interrupted: A Memoir of Hope. Check it out. It may spark something adventurous.

Defeat, Rejection, and Victory

"No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory." Emerson.

No one is in the world for the purpose of failure. No one was born because there was a need for more rejection, dismissal, and defeat.

Too many people operate on the old “Three strikes and you’re out” mentality. I once had a professor who gave me some unsolicited but very helpful advice about submitting articles to professional philosophy journals for possible publication. He said: “Don’t even THINK about being discouraged until you’ve been rejected at least six times!” Shortly after that conversation, my first book was rejected thirty six times. At that point, I must admit that I was thinking very seriously about being discouraged. It was an obvious option. Depression was even a possibility. But the thirty seventh publisher I approached said yes. And I was a published author at the age of twenty-two.

One author I’ve heard about has wall-papered his office with rejection letters. Some of the top all time hit songs have been recorded by performers who were told repeatedly that they had no chance at all. There are great actors whose first two or three or seven movies were all bombs.  We won't even speak of all the actors who dream about being in any kind of movie, even a terrible one, while they finish yet another long shift as waiters in LA restaurants, or clerks in stores there. How many times have they heard "No"? 

A professor out west mailed his prized manuscript to a major publisher hoping for a quick ascent to fame and fortune. A month later, an envelope arrived by return mail containing literally the ashes of his hard work.

Don’t let little defeats get you down. Even repeated defeats. As Emerson said a hundred and fifty years ago, we are indeed all born to victory. We can rise again from any ashes we encounter.