Optimism

So tonight Michael J. Fox had a TV special about optimism. He seems to have a lot of it despite having Parkinson's disease. He interviewed others who have optimism - people like Lance Armstrong and the Dali Lama. I watched it half-heartedly, not sure I was in a mood to be inspired tonight, but it did get me thinking about the topic -- again.

The burning question I have about this optimism thing is: how do you get it? If you weren't born with a type-A personality then optimism doesn't come naturally. If you weren't raised by parents who taught you anything and everything was possible in life if you worked hard enough for it and believed it would happen, or if they didn't teach you to think positively and believe that everything would turn out all right, then you grew up not learning how to be optimistic. So if you weren't born with it and weren't taught it during your formative years, then how do you get it?

Can you learn optimism late in life? If you're 45 years old and trying to find it, is it too late? Is it a skill? A talent? Or if it isn't already a part of who you are at this point in life, can you still become an optimist?

If it is possible to learn optimism then how does one go about it? Does one just wake up one morning and decide to be an optimist? Is just making a decision one day enough or is there some mantra that must be repeated? If so, for how long? Most habits take seven days to learn. Can one become an optimist in seven days just by telling yourself that you believe everything is going to work out OK? Is it simply an act of telling myself I will get the job I want, or the house I want, or live in the city I want? Is that enough?

And if I'm not an optimist does that mean I'm a pessimist? Does one have to be one or the other? Personally I think being a realist lies somewhere between the two. Being a realist means always having a Plan B in case Plan A doesn't work out. Does the need for a Plan B make me a pessimist? I hope not. I'd like more optimism in my life. I'd like to wake up tomorrow and believe that some of the impossible situations the people I love are facing are all going to work out - but I don't know if they will. I don't know if the situations in my own life, far less impossible, will work out. Am I being negative or realistic? If I wake up tomorrow and decide to become an optimist will it change the course of my life? Maybe. And maybe I was born to be a realist. A realist in the sense that I'll hope things will work out, I'll pray they will, but knowing I'm still going to need a Plan B. So maybe I'm an incurable realist - and maybe that's not so bad. Still, it couldn't hurt to experiment - to find a mantra - to wake up making a concerted effort to try optimism out for a few days. Maybe for a week I could wake up treating every morning as if it were New Year's Day - isn't that the feeling we have on New Year's Day? The feeling that we're getting a fresh start. That this year will be better. That this year everything will work out. A week of New Year's Days - it might be a fun experiment. But just in case it doesn't work out - I'll have to try a Plan B.