It’s too easy to get bogged down in the current state of affairs with its toxicity and focus on division. That’s why I believe it’s important to pay closer attention to the inner dialogue and mantras we repeat to ourselves. With so much insanity going on around us, it’s easy to get caught up in critiques and limiting beliefs. Does your inner child say that you’re not powerful enough to influence the direction of society? Meanwhile, we know we are able to shift our paradigm towards realistic positivity to reinforce our attitudes and levels of confidence.
We are told by influencers and self-help gurus that we do not need to be hypersensitive to people’s words. The old yarn, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is easier said than manifested. In reality, insults and snubs are ways to pierce our mental armor. We are able to dampen the sting by considering the insult might have arisen through that person’s pain and psychological issues. This doesn’t erase the attack, but it puts the snarkiness in perspective.
I woke up this morning with a minor headache and a type of grogginess that is unfamiliar to me. I took my temperature and discovered I’m running a slight fever. It’s nothing earthshattering nor worthy of initiating a “gofundme” campaign. It’s not even worthy of self-pity. However, it is highly inconvenient. I wondered where the virus came from–was it the woman in the supermarket yesterday who didn’t cover her sneezes? No matter, I can’t go back in time to avoid her inconsideration. I took an analgesic and decided to carry on with the day as normal. I am confident the cold will soon pass.
Everybody on this planet has endured difficult times. Relationships end, loved ones die, we are hurt by circumstances largely beyond our control. Time passes and in most cases we recover. There may or may not be a silver lining in the cloud, but there are other aspects of life that bring us joy. We accept setbacks and ready ourselves to resume living. We understand that martyrdom is not the answer to life’s difficulties.
That said, we allow sufficient time for healthy grieving to acknowledge our losses and feel gratitude for the fact that we were able to share a loved one’s company. If the pain comes from the loss of work or other situation, we accept the circumstances so as to enable the healing process to occur. We are not obligated to display false optimism to satisfy other people’s expectations. True optimism takes the full scope of life into consideration. We have the human right to grieve and eventually let go of the heartache.
We all experience challenges in our lives. The problem might be international in scope, the loss of a loved one, or some type of illness. I find it helpful to think before I speak yet remain unafraid to say what is in my heart. After all, isn’t complete integrity the manifestation of true optimism? Doesn’t true optimism and integrity yield the confidence we need to carry on and thrive?
Namaste
The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes retired Canadian Forces general, Rick Hillier. “Optimism can be more powerful than a battery of artillery or squadron of tanks. It can be contagious and it’s necessary to be a leader.”
bluejayblog 
It’s so terribly easy to get caught up in our own heads and feelings. I try to step back when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the constant crisis-mode and look at things from a different perspective.
I hope your cold passes quickly, Swabby. Take care.
Thanks. Going for walks is a big help.
“. . . I woke up this morning with a minor headache and a type of grogginess that is unfamiliar to me. I took my temperature and discovered I’m running a slight fever. It’s nothing earth shattering . . . ” I am tempted to add, ‘these days’ to it because of how ‘these days’ your voice is not your income, but waking up that way knowing you were hosting an all-night radio broadcast might have tested your quotient for optimism a little more (I’m daring to presume that, and ask to be excused for doing so).
Using it, though, to stretch as an illustration of something we all went through in late 2020 and early 2021, waking up that way was the start of years of optimism testing, it then making us hope against hope we weren’t infected with what hasmet-suited ambulance attendants would treat as akin to the Black Death, ending up rather quickly wheeling us into an ICU. That went on to be less and less medically-catastrophic, yet still quite capable of testing the fibre of our ability to see glasses as half full. In particular, I found that here in my mid-sized Canadian city, it seemed to test our level of accommodation and politeness of others–the insipid fighting over availability of essentials at the store, obeying those arrows in the aisles, responding with understanding when scolded for squeezing a tomato and then putting it back, seeing irritableness beneath the mask when someone didn’t adhere to the six feet apart rule at the cash.
My particular internal hunch over the next optimism-testing crisis is that it will come as a result of (dare I even say it) global warming, and how these current extremes of weather-related calamities again stretch our willingness to be of practical and needful help to those whose ability to cope and survive is paper thin. The temptation is to relegate visibly-obvious needs to those professional care people like community police officers and social workers, presuming they’ll arrive any minute to handle whatever it is.
I don’t have a deep well of bouncing-backness over negativity, or a jumping-in instinct when witnessing a real-time crisis, there’s an age-related frailness at work to some extent. I stew over words spoken. My go-to reaction is self-reproach and immediately believing I did or didn’t do something, instantly feeling I should apologize for ‘this or that’, hesitating instead of responding, remaining silent instead of defending–all those traits.
But the beauty (if there is any) of that litany of self-analysis is that I know this. I know it, and in knowing it, I have, in my way, learned to be less so and more, well, optimistically-capable and a work in progress over changing my responsiveness.
I have a similar mindset to yours. I lable it “reality based optimism”. This was arrived at by trial and error.
Do you mean that integrity would crumble without optiimism? I have to thing about that.
No. I posit that integrity is the foundation of authentic optimism. The other way around is basically wishful thinking. IMO