When I say “practice optimism” I think about a commitment to a better future for myself and my family. Hence the website title, my consistent reminder to be grateful while also working hard towards a better future. When I discuss taking a positive approach, people tend to ask questions about reactions. How do you remain optimistic when a family member passes or when you lose a lot of money?

Practicing optimism is an active phrase. Practice is dissection. Optimism is a positive mindset and attitude about life’s events and outcomes. Slow it down. Break it apart. Create your own version. What piece will you work on improving today?

Committing to an optimistic mindset in life does not mean ignoring the negative things that happen. Think about anticipation, intuition, and setting yourself up to feel good about what you are doing and then taking what comes. Nobody consistently predicts the future, especially when the worst happens.

I find it difficult to draw from cliché’s about hard work and dedication to anything. Telling you to commit to optimism and work as hard as you can could help a little bit. But it won’t help enough. Instead I think about what goes into becoming an optimist and doing my best to teach others about the process. There is preparation mentally and physically, anticipation, and execution. Those who do not execute often fail, but sometimes even when people fail, they still win.

Whether competing on a sports team, in business, or working on your relationships, those who fail still win. I don’t just mean learning from failure to eventually find success in the future. I am talking about the person who struck out four times only to see their team win, the person who could not answer the questions during a presentation but the deal was still made, or the person who storms out of the house during an argument but still comes home to dinner on the table. Failure within success is perplexing.

How does failure relate to optimism?

Failure is inevitable. Optimism and its positive actions are not designed to overwhelm or avoid failure. As mentioned before, acting positively can be a reaction or not, but preparation is key.

There is so much build up to any situation. Taking a moment to sit back and reflect on these seemingly small things works wonders. It takes time to think, act, assess, adjust, and repeat. Allow yourself the grace to spend enough time working on your mindset.

A quick story for you:

I love sports. I grew up playing all of them. My dad was a teacher and my mom owned her own business. My dad was responsible for most drop-offs and pickups from school as my mom worked endlessly to cater to new clientele and grow her client base.

My dad felt most prepared by getting to work around 6:45am before class started at 8:15am. It was a great life lesson and one I will always carry with me. That meant a 6am rise for my brother and I so we could be dropped off at school by 6:30am.

For those familiar, most kids are dropped off to teachers waiting for them in the parking lot or just inside the building. For my brother and I, it meant finding the nearest teacher, most often Jack the Janitor, and bugging them to let us play catch outside in the summer, or get shots up in the gym in the winter until other teachers showed up.

Funny enough, my dad’s work ethic trickled into the afternoon as our school ended at 2:25pm and his 3:30pm. As teachers know, students and parents love connecting with teachers at the end of the day. That meant attending the afterschool program. Time to repeat the morning. Football, basketball, baseball, climbing and running all over the playground. What many of our classmates saw as a disadvantage was really the start of my lifelong commitment to making the most of any situation, a mindset I relied on heavily as I grew up and now in my adult life. People know me for my positive, hard working approach.

Another reputation was born during those early mornings and late afternoons though. I was injury prone. Call it going too hard or bad luck, injuries followed me throughout most of my athletic days. Check out this list:

• Glued my cheek bone shut after getting tackled into a marble fireplace – 4 week recovery
• Fell 15 feet from a tree, landed on the back of my head – unknown injury, potential concussion
• Got my front adult tooth stuck in a basketball net, nearly lost it – surgery, 4-6 week recovery
• Broken big toe – 6 week recovery
• Broken rib (multiple times) – 6 week recovery
• Broken ankle – 8 week recovery
• Broken nose – 6 week recovery
• Torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in thumb – 15 month recovery
• Torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in knee – 18 month recovery
• More sprained ankles than an entire NBA team

The timing was never ideal. The recoveries seemed to get longer but eventually I realized that once something happened, it couldn’t be undone. I had to slow down, assess the situation, commit, adapt, and repeat. As I think back, I found some success in these injuries. I tore my thumb stealing third base. It led to me scoring on a later play before exiting the game. We won. I learned some of these processes naturally as a kid but their effectiveness always helped me move forward with a plan as I grew up.

No matter what you commit to in life, know there is always time to figure out what needs to be done to improve your situation. It could be a game, a job, a relationship at any level in any capacity. Sometimes you win while failing. Sometimes you get humbled. The most important thing is to keep working at whatever pace you can manage consistently.

An Optimistic Perspective

In baseball, the small things count the most. The most famous plays are the walk-off homeruns or when a pitcher throws a no-hitter. But the odds of throwing a no-hitter are .0013 percent. That equates to 317 no-hitters in roughly 146 years of Major League Baseball. Only 317 (including the 23 perfect games) in 220,000 games. No-hitters don’t win championships, so how are teams successful when their pitchers give up hits and runs constantly?

Optimistic Failure: Tips for Staying Positive

1. Zoom out.
   1. Almost everything that happens is part of a bigger picture. Zoom out. Did the team win? What looks important now?
2. Turn off your phone.
   1. Close your eyes. Take 50 deep breaths. Now 50 normal breaths. Get back to it.
3. Make a list.
   1. What will you do next time?
4. Can you laugh about it?
5. Take a real break.
   1. Understand that it will prepare you for your return. Your return from injury, from sadness, from doubt. Move forward.