For me, 11am and 5pm are the bleakest hours, the moments when I’m most prone to lose hope, to feel like the day is not going well or has failed to live up to expectations. One thing I’ve found particularly powerful is to schedule time for optimism. So, whatever tools you use to bolster your mindset, write hope into them and hold space for optimism. In particular, optimism is an orientation towards the future and the possibility of improvement. Optimism is as much an orientation as a belief, or even a feeling. Implementing Optimismīringing optimism into our lives requires making some choices in relation to our mindset, or schedule, and even how we live. Whether it’s getting better sleep, exercising and eating well so you’ll feel better, or learning and reading so you’ll have better ideas, optimism is just another word for better. We choose and stick to our habits because we’re optimistic they will be good for us. Habits are something we’re often thinking about here. It’s impossible to fix something if we don’t believe it can be fixed.

In this way, optimism is essential to problem solving. Optimism also embodies our need to believe solutions are possible. Why would we pick up a brush, or camera, or musical instrument without any hope that someone would experience something as a result? Even the angriest and darkest work carries with it a longing for connection, a cry for love, a hope for meaning. Optimism and CreativityĮvery creative act is an expression of optimism. But even in those situations, imagination works as long as we don’t give up on a better tomorrow.

Bitter disappointment and difficult circumstances can fuel our imagination. That’s not to say your imagination will work only if things are going well. But imagining that future – bringing it clearly to mind as a mindset amid the fog and confusion of this crisis – felt hard. Sure, we knew we’d eventually get through this. I chose the yearly theme of Imagination because last year was so heavily focused on just getting through this pandemic that it felt hard to imagine things ever getting better. We risk collective and systemic burnout if we don’t allow ourselves to feel some optimism. The situation is better for many of us, but not for all, and there’s still a long way to go. And in the US, where the vaccination programme has been even more successful, there’s even more cause for hope. Here in the UK, the end of another successful lockdown, combined with a strong vaccination programme, is providing a lot of hope. In places like Australia and Japan, there’s deep frustration with the slow deployment of vaccines. Two weeks ago was the worst week so far for new cases of Covid-19, driven by the horrific rise of new infections in India. Okay, we’re still in the midst of a pandemic. But, I’m picking Optimism as the theme, because in this moment it feels right to reach out for some hope. Now, as winter slowly gives way to spring, I need something that complements the yearly theme of ‘Imagination.’ It’s mid-May, wet, and barely 11˚C. Map-making was my response to this general malaise, the languishing, which many of us have felt in the past year. For winter, my seasonal theme was ‘make a map.’ I wanted a better sense of where I was after a year in isolation and various forms of lockdown. It’s time to choose another seasonal theme.

Word for unrealistic optimism