Recently, I looked into a mirror and told myself,
"Cheer up! Things could be worse.”
So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.
In times like these, you may have second thoughts about the overall wisdom of being optimistic in the face of escalating terrorism, global warming and a radical shift to the right in many major world governments.
What can you, as an ordinary little guy or gal, actually do without your own billion-dollar enterprise, with neither fame, nor power nor fortune?
How can your voice be heard in the face of hysterical news media mindlessly obsessed with the worst possible interpretation of everything that happens around you?
Meaning of Optimism
Optimism implies something far more than a positive emotion. Sometimes you are high; sometimes you are low. If optimism depended solely on how you feel each day, it would seesaw with pessimism.
Optimism is actually much deeper, having to do with who you are in this world, how you feel about your Supreme Being and the Universe.
Optimistic people are convinced that this is not all a senseless accident or a bad joke, that there is Someone or Something out there Who really cares, that we are ultimately not alone.
Optimistic people are in touch with their own divinity, whether or not they call it that. They may simply talk about the irrepressible power of the human spirit.
Optimism is a firm outlook that no matter how challenging circumstances may seem to be, there is always a silver lining, a light at the end of the tunnel, another chance. They feel it is never too late, because they worship a God of love, and are convinced that “He Who is within you is greater than he who is in the world.”
Blind (Unrealistic) Optimism
You may have possibly seen the delightful Walt Disney movie, Pollyanna, shot way back in 1960.
A lovely young lady, Hayley Mills, is gifted with an infectious cheerfulness that impacts everyone on the set, a small American town with cynical people who are completely comfortable dwelling on the downside of everything.
The young lady’s faith and good humor begin to influence each character until the whole town is converted, including a hell-and-brimstone preacher who suddenly decides to speak out on the power of love.
Unfortunately, the young lady has a fall, breaks her legs and suddenly loses her confidence and her faith. No one can believe it. She has transformed every one of them, yet she, herself, needs their help.
Optimism means having a healthy respect for what we call “reality,” especially the newspapers. Reality has been defined as that which, no matter how you feel about it, is still there when you wake up the next day.
Optimists and pessimists may see the same conditions, but optimists and pessimists interpret them in dramatically different ways.
Pessimists automatically assume a negative outcome; optimists assume the opposite, ultimate victory in every situation.
Learned Optimism
A fortune few, including my partner, are born optimists. They are inherently cheerful as children and that cheerfulness never seems to go away as they move into adulthood.
Others of us may have had an unhappy childhood, divorced parents, sudden loss of income, or a national disaster, such as people in war-ravished zones seeking refuge.
This does not mean that those not born cheerful are doomed. For example, half the families in America now undergo at least one separation or divorce.
If everything depended upon our circumstances, a good share of us would be wretched by now. Clearly, this is not the case.
You can learn to be optimistic, as optimism is ultimately about the spirit.
You can engage with life on a much deeper level. You can tap into the many sources of inspiration in our global society; from the New Thought movement to Eastern Religions to Transformational programs to “born again” Christians whose lives are irreversibly altered by a direct encounter with divine love.
Related article: If I Showed My True Self, Would You Still Accept Me?
Perpetual Optimism as a Force Multiplier
You are not an innocent bystander, nor a hapless victim. This world does not really exist outside you, so much as it lies within your absolute being. As the great Alan Watts once put it, “You are an aperture in the Universe.”
It is out of you that the Universe sees and experiences itself.
The world is your extended body with concentric circles. Everyone knows what happens when you drop a big stone in a calm, limpid pool. You suddenly see ripples after ripples after ripples.
You are a change agent, the light of the world, a son or daughter of the Living God. Even though you find yourself in a drama that often looks truly hopeless, underneath it all, you know better than that.
Right now, we can enjoy a spectacular (and quite dark) digital TV series on Amazon, The Man in the High Castle, which portrays America in the early 1960’s when the Germans and Japanese have won, and have made fascism the rule throughout this country.
Immense technological progress with a wholesale dumping of human rights. While those conditions may bear an uncanny resemblance to recent political turns, the underlying truth is that this show is an alternative history on a different track, one that never really happened.
We are deluding ourselves when we suppose that this is the Devil’s World and Evil has carte blanche. More specifically, the memory of the hard-won rights of anti-slavery, civil rights and women’s liberation can never really go away.
That memory is deeply embedded in a critical mass of people worldwide, such that it is more than enough to checkmate the forces that would rewrite history.
As has been well put, a hero is an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances.
These times are truly extraordinary. Now even Y-O-U can be a hero. The darker it gets, the greater the light from the true optimists.
Immediate Steps to Become More Optimistic
- Practice some form of meditation or contemplation.
- Commune with our Source in a way and a form that deeply resonates with you.
- Start a spiritual community, even if it is your best friend, your next-door neighbor, or your colleague at work. (As Christ maintained, “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.")
- Study a great spiritual master who changed the world. Mahatma Gandhi would be an excellent start, and that is as easy as viewing the incomparable feature of Richard Attenborough and Ben Kingsley, Gandhi.
- Decide to become a transformational catalyst. This is as easy as placing a call to the White House about a deeply held opinion. Pollsters know that one call to the President is counted as the equivalent of 10,000 voters.
There could never be a better time than NOW for you to be optimistic!
Can Optimism Actually Work? appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.
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