I once watched a football match a few months back. At the 85th minute, one side was leading by 2 goals. Almost everyone that was watching the match thought that the other team has already won the match. But just a few minutes to the 90th minute, the other team scored one goal. Then by the few additional injury time, they equalised. This pushed the match to extra time, and they later won. The team that was 2 goals down later came up to win the match. One thing I observed in the match was that they kept pressing until the final whistle. I mean, they never gave up, and they have hopes of winning even when they were losing. This is unshakable optimism. In life, always keep your hopes alive.
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You have to understand that optimism is not a naive refusal to see the reality. It is not a denial of the prevailing circumstances. It is also not a blind hope that everything will just suddenly work out without putting in any effort. These things are not optimism but mere wishful thinking. Optimism does not deny the existence of problems, rather it believes that there will always be a solution for every problem, and that you possess the ability to find it. Which means that it is actually a mental discipline. It is an active commitment to find opportunities even when others are seeing just challenges. No matter what is happening, you are not to judge the outcome by the situation, but by your ability to create a change.
Unshakable optimism will reshape how you explain reality to yourself. Something may happen and everyone may see it in a certain way, but it is left for you to interpret it the way that will prompt you to take actions. If a crisis or any other negative thing happens for example, a pessimist will see it as a disaster, or even take it personal. They may even believe that the situation has ruined their day, or even their life. But an optimist will reframe the situation in their mind, and process it differently. They do not see a closed door as a closed life, rather they see it as an opportunity for other doors to be opened. This will make them to view problems as temporary setbacks, and not permanent life sentence.
You have to train your mind to find solution, and to look beyond the problem. When a friend of mine was posted to one village for his National Service, and he got there, it was not what he expected. The village had electricity challenges for a couple of weeks before he arrived. The only transformer that served the community spoilt, and they wrote to the authorities for repairs because it had been faulty for long. But they took longer to respond. The community was without light for about 3 months. Within those months, others complained about it, but my friend saw solution in it. He came with a small generator, so he decided to use it to service the needs to the people.
He started rendering phone charging services to people after work. He would power on the generator and then connect extension sockets to it, and people would come to charge their phones and other devices, for a small token. The number of people coming to charge their phone increased. The money he made from the business was able to cover the cost of the fuel he used to power his generator, and even his feeding, that he never needed to touch his salary for the 3 months until light was restored. His mindset positioned him to take advantage of the situation. He was able to spot a solution even in the midst of the problems.
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Optimism can fuel you to go beyond your limit. I have seen people who have hopes for the better, and this made them to do the seemingly impossible. A lot of the world renowned inventors and innovators moved beyond what others saw as impossible, and did the incredible. They may not have been motivated by others, but they were motivated by their optimism. That is, the hopes of getting solutions even in the midst of challenges. The truth is that you cannot stop problems or negative situations from arising, but you have a choice to focus either on the problem or to look beyond it to get the solution.
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