moonlighting as an optimist 🦸
why I failed to publish my first post over 50 times.
Most days, I feel like a nihilist moonlighting as an optimist.
I wear my optimism like Clark Kent wears his fake glasses. I inhabit the role so well during the day that I’m convinced it actually is a genuine alter ego. But then the sun sets and the evening creeps in and the glasses start to slip.
By 11pm, they’ve slid down the bridge of my nose and I’m hazily looking through two lenses: one where my passionate fervor to create real systemic change has merit and the other where I’m disillusioned with progress in any context because of the sheer amount of negative forces counteracting it. By 2am, the glasses are on the ground and I’m staring at my ceiling with 20/20 vision feeling empty at best and like an imposter at worst.
Why am I sharing this strangely personal assessment of my mental state in a newsletter that’s supposed to be about sustainable business models?
Because I created this newsletter when I was Clark Kent with the fake glasses and every time I try to write my first post, I feel like Superman with the perfect vision. But if Superman was more like Batman and super nihilistic. (Okay, I’m not sure the metaphor is working anymore lol)
What I’m really trying to say is that while I genuinely do feel passionate about sustainability, especially in the context of business, I often don’t feel particularly optimistic about it. Sometimes I feel downright cynical as if everything is getting worse by the minute and I’m just awaiting the inevitable. (Encouraging fun fact: Most climate scientists feel this way too.)
So, where does this leave me?
Conflicted mostly. I desperately want to be an optimist, but continue to find reasons not to be. I think that’s partially due to the physical isolation forced by the pandemic and my generally introverted nature. It’s a lot easier to rabbit hole when it’s just you and your brain which is why in an attempt to get out of my own head, I turned to the most optimistic people I know: founders.
Over the course of the last few weeks, I spent hours parsing through the stories of social entrepreneurs focused on tackling “big goals” from hunger and poverty to education and climate change. With each profile, I grew increasingly confused at the origin of their seemingly unbounded optimism. How are they so optimistic and how do I become like them? In my quest for an answer, I stumbled across this PG tweet (part of a thread worth checking out) from a couple years ago.
I have my gripes about Silicon Valley and the sort of attitudes and culture it enables, but I do admire its contagious optimism. Most founders, in my experience, are often so optimistic, they even come across as a little delusional. But I suppose you sort of have to be if you want a fighting chance against the odds.
Intentionally adopting this sort of optimism myself feels uncomfortable and even irresponsible to a degree, but also… necessary?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for a naive form of optimism where critical thought, healthy skepticism, and hard doses of reality all fly out the window. But I am proposing a mental self-reconditioning of sorts where I focus, say, 90% of my mental energy on solutions and the spaces adjacent to them and limit just 10% to the bigger picture to keep myself grounded. Right now, those numbers are flipped so I don’t expect this shift to be easy. But as an exhausted neurotic, I feel a sense of relief in committing to letting the negativity go.
This sort of positive thinking doesn’t come naturally to me. I wish it did, but it doesn’t. And if I’m being completely honest, I’m a little scared that I’m setting myself up for debilitating cognitive dissonance in the distant future, but I’m more scared of resigning myself to complacency. So this newsletter is going to be my exercise in optimism.
And if you don’t mind the extended Superman/Clark Kent metaphor, I think there’s also something inherently heroic about choosing to be an optimist in the face of impending doom. It can seem (or maybe just is) pretty dumb and in real life, the good guys rarely win, but I’m definitively sure it’s the side I’d rather be on.
So on that note, here’s a list of a few tactics I’ve been trying out recently in an effort to become more optimistic.
Diversifying my Media Diet — I make a pointed effort to balance my media consumption with positive news. Not just the “feel-good” type stuff, but real reporting on tangible progress. I can’t stress how vital media consumption is to internalization.
Meeting more People — I’m taking a stab at finding my people through Twitter & Slack communities. It can be exhausting to be on these platforms all the time, but it’s helped me connect with so many positive people who are laser-focused on moving forward and I inevitably feel a gravitational pull towards the direction they’re headed in after almost every conversation.
Reciting my Mantras — Sometimes, I get waterboarded by the existentialism and just need to let it happen. I then find my footing by repeating my mantras for not turning into a potato a few times to make myself really believe it.
Compartmentalizing — Other times, I just need to forcibly push the negative thoughts away and put myself in ‘Go’ mode.
Finding my Heroes — Wrestling with purpose, motivation, and the strength to care isn’t unique. I think the people dedicating their lives to social impact especially struggle with it the most. So it’s helpful for me to understand how my role models (mainly social entrepreneurs) grapple with their doubt and channel it into something productive.
All in all, this whole optimism thing is a work-in-progress. I think this newsletter is going to be a really important part of it, so thanks for reading! I’m feeling pretty good about giving it a second-go, glasses and all 👓
Love this! I can relate to this...it can be overwhelming to imagine progress when it feels like there are problems on problems overlapping, and no one business/person can impact all of them. But, progress is being made slowly & I think like through things like this newsletter, encouraging people to take action can be the most important step!