Realistic optimism’s approach of accepting both the good and the bad helps us relate to others.
When working with others, and ourselves, we need to be compassionate as change takes place.
#Realistic optimism professional#
It requires professional support, and more importantly - a commitment by the privileged to disassemble oppressive structures, including by taking anti-racist, and feminist approaches. This intergenerational trauma requires a deeper form of healing than my privileged pep talk. Generations of oppression have taught some to expect negative experiences. For some, constant life challenges make it impossible to be optimistic. If this continues for days or weeks, we could be entering depression and may need professional help. We can become victims, believing we have no agency to create a better future. When the project looks doomed, it can have us question our self-worth, setting off a spiral of limiting beliefs. We take on massive projects to fill a gap in the universe, but also a gap in ourselves. Our belief in a better future is also essential to well-being. When we constrain our definition of success, we limit our ability to envision a better future.
set out to be a Baptist minister but became a social rights activist.
In 1998, Google’s co-founders tried to sell the company for $1 Million, but apparently no worse off for failing to do so. Some of history’s greatest victories have arisen from changing course. Realistic optimism may mean, counter-intuitively, acknowledging that your goal can not be achieved. Getting it back may mean diving into your problem to find a new path - talk to your customers, your voters, or your employees. If you’ve lost hope as a leader, you need to do your work to get it back, as people are depending on your commitment to a vision. Optimism is particularly hard and particularly important in the face of adversity - but we need enough belief it will get better to work to make it so.
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