The Groove Issue 18 - The Case for Optimism
Welcome to the eighteenth issue of The Groove.
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Why Optimism Matters
Why optimism matters? Most artists and entrepreneurs are systematically and continuously taking risks. With every move and every chance taken, there is a slim opportunity for success that increases over time as they try different approaches and don’t give up taking innovative twists and turns in their art or their businesses. There are two theories:
either people cultivate their sense of optimism and end up becoming artists or entrepreneurs;
or artists and entrepreneurs learn how to constantly nurture their sense of optimism to keep them going in whatever new project they decide to embark upon.
Doing the Work in The Present but Being Future-Oriented
Many artists and entrepreneurs like to see the future as better than the present, no matter how good they have it today. This doesn’t mean they aren’t mindful and appreciative of their circumstances, but it does point out at the quality of being an optimist.
One of the findings that psychologists of the University College London and NYU concluded in a study published in 2007 is that “the ambiguous nature of the future allowed optimists to distance themselves from negative constraints and approach positive outcomes, creating vivid, colorful images in their mind.”
A presumed Da Vinci self-portrait currently located in Florence's Uffizi Gallery
Leonardo Da Vinci was an eternal optimist. The guy who mastered the fields of engineering, painting, and science, like no other in his time, was brimming with vivid and exciting internal images about the advances that humanity was witnessing during the Renaissance and those that were in the making. Living during various outbursts of bubonic plague prompted Da Vinci to sketch an alternative design for the city of Milan, and he was constantly pushing himself to form new connections and to innovate. The thrill was in the process and in knowing that whether his inventions and creations would be used today or in the next five hundred years, there was always something exciting awaiting to be discovered.
From the sketches of the first parachute ever designed with the right proportions in 1485, three hundred years before the actual device was invented, to being the first person to correctly explain why you can see light between the two points of a crescent moon (a phenomenon we now call earthshine), Da Vinci’s wheels were constantly in motion. His mind was insatiable and with every new finding was the possibility to open new horizons, for him and for everyone else. I could say that his imagination was the basis of his optimism.
A map of Milan, drawn by Da Vinci in his Codex Atlanticus. He had a proposal for segregating the various aspects of a city and in order to maintain sanitation, he created a very tangible functional zoning, an attribute adopted centuries later by modernist urban planners.
When Failures Breed Optimism
Walt Disney was equally accomplished as an artist and an entrepreneur. Even 55 years after his death, his biographers, the people who knew him, and those who have learned from his legacy still categorize him as an optimist.
In 1928, Disney was in New York City for business meetings and needed to get back to California – a three-day trip on the train - but right before boarding, he sent a telegram to Roy, his brother and business partner: “Don’t worry, everything okay, will give details when I arrive.”
What Disney omitted telling Roy is that in those business meetings in New York, he had lost almost everything: the distribution of his cartoon, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and the rights to use him, which were owned by Universal Pictures. At the same time, his animators deserted him to start a new studio without him. Instead of suffering all the way back home, Disney did the opposite: he took his sketchbook and created a brand-new character that was more fun and had more soul than Oswald: a mouse who’d later be called Mortimer and eventually, Mickey.
Early Mickey Mouse sketch series from 1928, drawn as Walt Disney envisioned a new character after losing rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, his most successful creation until then.
Optimism Can Be Learned
Many scientists have also arrived at the conclusion that optimism can be cultivated and eventually learned. One of the best studies in this area was led by Kent State University researcher, David Fresco, who in 2009 concluded that we need to practice refuting self-defeating views if we want to come out stronger and more optimistic on the other side.
In that study, 112 college students with a pessimistic explanatory style identified from a larger screening sample were asked to identify both the best and worst events they experienced over thirty days and to offer explanations for their causes.
Some participants were randomly assigned to “Self-Administered Optimism Training” and were tasked with brainstorming “alternate” causes of events they perceived as negative, and then sent off to record daily diaries that captured this new and “alternate” information every day for 28 days. The experiment demonstrated that with enough repetition, a minimally supervised, self-directed change in perspective resulted in greater drops in pessimism than those in the control group who didn’t do anything.
The examples of Da Vinci and Disney symbolize the value of optimism for creativity, leadership, and relevance. True optimism isn’t being blind to the current circumstances, or varnishing reality using a phrase like “I’m a cautious optimist,” which I cringe at every time I hear it, and which to me cancels everything about what it means being an optimist.
Nobody should be oblivious to the fact that we have been through complicated and trying times, but when you embark upon a new venture, project, business, artwork, you have to do it with all your heart, hoping for the best.
The disappointments of unrealized goals, failures, and rejections don’t make the whole thing less painful if and when they end up not materializing. However, the quality of being an optimist, even in the midst of so many challenges, not only can be learned but its halo effect extends outside professional dreams and sets the tone for a more fulfilling and creative life.
Thank you for reading this far. Looking forward to hearing from you anytime.
PS: You are all invited to a live Zoom webinar on Thursday, January 21 at 1:00 pm EST to learn all about Jumpstart, my Creativity for Business course, before I open doors for enrollment in the next few days.
If you are interested, you can register by clicking here.
THE EXTRA GROOVE
Read:
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler
Self-Administered Optimism Training, a 2009 Study
Neural Mechanisms Mediating Optimism Bias, a 2007 Study
Watch:
Leonardo Da Vinci, Behind a Genius. A BBC documentary
Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow: The Futurism of Walt Disney, a CM Films documentary
Harvard professor Steven Pinker makes the case for optimism, a video by Freethink