Optimism Is A Practice
What’s behind a cheery disposition
Published in
3 min readMar 12, 2023
Weird day of lessons.
Recently, I was having one of those days where strange things kept happening.
An older gentleman at the gym came up to me. Unprovoked, he told me a long story about his kid sister, dance, her career, and his career.
He allotted me a couple of comments about my own life but I could tell only 10 percent of him was listening. He began questioning me about my career.
And then he offered me an unsolicited pep talk.
He said, “You’ll figure it out one day, God has a plan.”
He more or less walked off after dropping that line.
My reaction.
As I stood there, I saw two choices.
- Anger. Annoyance. Dismissal.
- Who the hell is this guy? He doesn’t even know me. What makes him assume I don’t have a career or a life? Blah, blah, blah.
2. Gratitude. Optimism. Honesty.
- Wow, I actually did feel a little lost today and…
