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Are You a True Optimist?
Are You a True Optimist?
A commentary by Victor Perton
“Are you a ‘true optimist?’”
It is an excellent question I read this morning in Alex Pattakos’s essay, “Coping With Life’s Challenges Using True Optimism”.
It made me pause.
Am I a true optimist?
I often describe myself as a radical optimist, a realistic optimist and even a Pollyanna optimist. I have collected scores of these expressions of optimism.
But what makes optimism true?
What is a true optimist?
Let’s begin with our definition:
Optimism is a belief that good things will happen and that things will work out in the end.
The word “true” adds something important.
It suggests optimism that is genuine, faithful to reality and reflected in how we live. It is more than saying optimistic things. It shapes what we believe, what we see and what we do.
Pattakos writes:
“True optimism involves more than positive thinking or good intentions.”
Drawing on the work of Viktor Frankl, Pattakos describes true optimism through three choices:
- Choose a positive attitude towards the situation at hand.
- Choose an attitude that helps you visualise what is possible.
- Choose an attitude that generates passion for the action needed to make the possible real.
This is optimism as a practical discipline.
We choose an attitude that helps us face the situation. We see possibility within it. Then we bring energy and commitment to turning possibility into reality.
Pattakos reminds us that we cannot always choose what happens to us. We retain some freedom in how we respond. That choice can help us find meaning, recognise what remains possible and take the next wise step.
True optimism as an optimism superpower
At the Centre for Optimism, we include “true optimism” among the many superpowers of optimism.
An optimism superpower is a distinctive expression of optimism that people can recognise and strengthen in themselves. It gives language to how optimism manifests in our beliefs, attitudes, relationships and actions.
Our Optimism Superpower exercise asks:
What is your optimism superpower?
How does your optimism superpower manifest in your life and work?
True optimism belongs among these superpowers because it invites us to examine the authenticity of our optimism. It faces reality, helps us see possibility, deepens our belief in human potential and strengthens purposeful action. It helps us persevere, learn and take the next wise step.
It is more than a label we claim. It is an optimism superpower we recognise, strengthen and practise.
True Optimism is Conviction in Human Potential
Looking back through my interviews and essays, I found that we have approached true optimism from several directions.
The Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda offered one of the most profound formulations:
“True optimism is based on unwavering conviction in our innate human potential.”
Ikeda grounds optimism in a belief about people.
If we believe people can learn, recover, create, change and contribute, possibility remains alive. If we treat people as powerless, action begins to feel futile.
Ikeda’s true optimist experiences adversity, rises again and continues towards hope. Optimism becomes a conviction that human life contains potential which present circumstances have not exhausted.
The confidence that we can succeed again
My conversation with neuroscientist and story expert Angus Fletcher added strength to my sense of self-reliance.
Angus invited me to remember something difficult or extraordinary I had already accomplished, and then to hold that memory without needing applause, attention or external validation.
Reflecting on my conversation with Angus, I wrote:
“And that is where true optimism lives. Not in external validation. Not in slogans. But in the inner knowing that you have succeeded before, and you can succeed again.”
Past success does not guarantee future success. It gives us evidence that we can learn, adapt, endure and act.
True optimism draws strength from experience without becoming imprisoned by the past.
True optimism is a shared effort
Anvita Kotha added another dimension after her internship with the Centre for Optimism:
“I became a true optimist by learning that optimism is more than just an outlook or a personality. It’s a collective effort that someone can be a part of to make the world and our surroundings a better place, bit by bit. And I’m proud to add my name to the list of optimists.”
This matters.
True optimism is personal, but it need not be solitary. We strengthen optimism in one another. We share stories of progress, draw attention to possibility, help people recognise their agency and work together to make things better, bit by bit.
Optimism can become a collective effort in families, organisations, communities and countries.
True optimists keep going
Western Australian parliamentarian Dr Steve Thomas gave me a leader’s test of true optimism:
“The good leaders and the true optimists keep going despite the best attempts to impede their good intentions. I'm still here, and I'm still making it work.”
Steve also emphasised the importance of appreciating small victories.
True optimism does not require one heroic transformation. It often appears in persistence, adaptation and gradual progress. The purpose remains steady while the method changes as we learn.
Gino Blefari, CEO of HomeServices of America, similarly grounds true optimism in preparation, effort and persistence. Believing that something good lies ahead encourages us to keep working, remain focused through difficulty and recognise opportunity.
The long history of true optimism
The expression “true optimism” has a long and rich history, reaching back through centuries of philosophical thought and perhaps drawing upon ideas explored for thousands of years.
The earliest explicit use I have found so far comes from the French philosopher Francisque Bouillier. A detailed bibliography of his writings records an 1846 work titled Sur le vrai et le faux optimisme, or “On True and False Optimism”.
Bouillier distinguished true optimism from the belief that everything is already perfect. His account instead presented creation as unfinished and capable of further improvement. That resembles what later came to be called meliorism: the belief that the world can be made better through human effort.
I cannot yet say that Bouillier originated the expression. What matters here is the distinction he drew. True optimism does not assume that everything is already perfect. It sees a world still open to improvement and human beings capable of helping to improve it.
Imagination and humour
In his 1908 essay “On Running After One’s Hat”, collected in All Things Considered, G. K. Chesterton wrote of:
“The true optimist who sees in such things an opportunity for enjoyment…”
Chesterton was writing about ordinary inconveniences such as delayed trains, floods, runaway hats and jammed drawers. He distinguished them from genuine suffering and physical pain.
His true optimist uses imagination and humour to adopt a different emotional point of view. An everyday annoyance can become the beginning of an adventure.
Chesterton distilled the idea in a memorable formulation:
“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.”
His true optimism does not remove the inconvenience. It changes what we see in it and how we respond. The obstacle remains, but so does the possibility of enjoyment, imagination and adventure.
The Formidable Rock
That same year, American writer and poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox offered an even more active formulation in her essay “What Is Optimism?”, published in New Thought Common Sense.
Wilcox rejected the idea that optimism means describing something as bright when it is plainly dark. Practical optimism, she argued, turns things over to find the bright side or works to create one.
Her true optimist first acknowledges the obstacle:
“This rock is formidable; it will require all my force to open a way through it, but I can and I will.”
Then, Wilcox adds, the optimist opens the way.
This is a powerful picture of optimism faithful to reality. The true optimist recognises the rock, gathers the necessary force and works to create a path.
Making the best happen
In his 1912 book Your Forces and How to Use Them, American New Thought writer Christian D. Larson carried this active understanding forward:
“The true optimist not only expects the best to happen, but goes to work to make the best happen.”
Larson’s next sentence develops the point. The true optimist does not merely look upon the bright side, but trains their capacities to produce more brightness in life.
For Larson, optimism aligns expectation, imagination and purposeful action. We picture something better, organise our abilities around it and work to bring it closer.
Elsewhere in the book, he offered another powerful contrast: the pessimist waits for better times, while the optimist works with what is available now and begins creating better times.
Across these historical formulations, a clear pattern appears.
Chesterton’s true optimist reimagines the inconvenience.
Wilcox’s true optimist acknowledges the formidable rock and opens a way through it.
Larson’s true optimist expects the best and goes to work to make it happen.
The true optimist does more than expect. The true optimist faces reality, sees an opening and acts.
Am I a true optimist?
I believe I am, although it is a choice I must renew.
My radical optimism tells me that possibility can be found even where others have stopped looking.
My realistic optimism asks me to face the facts and work with the world as it is.
My Pollyanna optimism looks for the good that remains present, even in difficult circumstances, and asks how it can strengthen action.
True optimism brings these together.
It is the sincere belief that good things will happen and that things will work out in the end. It faces reality, sees possibility, believes in human potential, draws strength from experience, joins with others and takes the next wise step.
A true optimist does more than declare optimism.
A true optimist practises it.
Pattakos closes his essay with two direct questions:
“Will you choose an optimistic attitude to cope with whatever life throws at you? Are you a ‘true optimist?’”
I will.
Will you?
Will you make a Comment?
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