Optimism In Our Age of Anxiety

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I don't know if you saw that Gallup survey in February.

Oh yeah.

The fact that Americans are literally at an all time low in their future outlook.

In more than 20 years.

This is the lowest it's been.

And I think a lot of people stop and just say like, well, that makes sense.

But what are we going to do about it?

Because you can't make a forward movement from that place of collective negative outlook.

And I think right now like so many people are living in uncertainty.

There's heaviness and uncertainty.

We cannot make sense of most of the things personally and globally that are occurring.

And the brain when the brain is full of uncertainty, it is in threat mode.

The amygdala is firing up.

It is in threat response mode.

And when you are in that mode, your brain does something out of protection.

It's not because there's anything wrong with you.

Out of protection, it starts filling in the gaps and it fills in the gaps with the worst

case scenarios.

I'm John Favreau and you just heard from Dr. Deepak Chopra, a clinical psychologist known

as the optimism doctor.

We spent most of our time here talking about awful and raging news of both life and the

Trump era and particularly on this show, the way that information hits us every second

of every day through our phones and our feeds.

And all that makes maintaining a sense of optimism really, really tough.

I know that's true for myself.

And it's probably one of the most frequent things we hear from all of you who listen to

Carcans shows.

Of course, a sense of optimism is important, even necessary in this line of work because

otherwise, was the point.

Why fight for a better future if we don't believe one is possible?

Why organize, why vote if we don't believe that work will yield something better for us,

for our children, for our grandchildren.

We actually need to be able to process the news and the world for all of its awfulness

while still figuring out how we might be able to change it.

All of that is why today I wanted to talk to an expert in optimism, someone who can remind

us of how we can find optimism again when it feels out of reach.

In fact, Dr. Chopra actually has an unusual perspective on optimism, believing that it's

not really just a mindset, but a learnable set of skills that even the most pessimistic

among us can learn to apply.

I invited her on to talk about those skills, as well as why she believes optimism rather

than cynicism is the most logical reaction to this current political moment.

It was a great conversation and one that I'm very thankful to have had.

And before we start, as always, please consider subscribing to Friends of the Pod if you haven't

already so that you don't miss out on anything.

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All right, let's get into it.

Here's Dr. Deepika Chopra.

Deepika, welcome.

Hi, nice to see you.

It's nice to see you too for people who don't know.

We know each other.

We do know each other.

Our sons, our besties have become besties in school.

So cute.

They've also played T-Ball together.

That is really.

Coach by our spouses.

We were just talking about we are the little league lags.

We are.

Yeah, we just go to the games as fans and support.

I kind of help.

I help a little bit.

You do help.

Yeah, I just, I, I only call them.

I'm the dugout girl.

You're, congrats on the book.

Thank you.

You're in a wonderful book.

Thank you.

And so we've known each other for a little while.

I'll be honest, the first time I heard that you're known as the optimism doctor.

My reaction was, what kind of LA bullshit is this?

Yep.

I think it's my role.

I think it's my role.

And now, of course, I very much understand it.

Your doctorate is in clinical health psychology.

Your dissertation was literally on optimism and visualization.

You had a post-doctoral fellowship at UCLA and CETERS.

But maybe you could start talking about like how you got into this line of work.

Not linearly.

Let me tell you that.

My first, I didn't even major an undergrad in psychology.

And to be honest, I felt like psychology always interested me, but it felt like something

that was off the table for me.

I'm a really sensitive human being.

I was even more so as a teenager.

I mean, I talk about it in the book, but when the Titanic came out, the movie, I did not

go to school for two weeks.

So psychology was not something my family nor myself was pushing me into.

But I've always just been very drawn to humans and storytelling and emotions and just being

a listener.

And I just, I loved humans and human storytelling.

And so I think I was always curious about that.

And I at the same time had other ideas and passions.

I started my first, like, very first job.

I worked while I was in college at a punk music label, which was the best time in my life.

That sounds fun.

And then I went into investment banking for a quick year.

A very quick year.

That was all.

And then I worked in the public health sector.

And it was kind of, it sort of made sense to me.

I was doing a lot of M&A.

And the deal-making part was, like, what sort of lit me up, which again is a very psychological,

like, people-oriented part of the work.

I always had really amazing mentorship.

And people that were willing to, like, literally set me aside and say, I saw you light up during

this.

Have you ever thought of this?

My boss at the time was like, they brought in an organizational psychologist.

And he was like, I saw you light up.

In a way I've never seen you light up.

Have you thought about, he thought, organizational psychology?

I was like, well, that's something about that peaked my interest.

And I went back to UCLA where I did my undergrad and I knocked on every single door at UCLA

and a psychiatric institute and just begged for someone to let me work for free to see

what this was all about.

And so I took a year off after it.

And I just, I ended up being able to volunteer and I went back to school and got my prerequisites

because I didn't even have prerequisites.

And then I applied to grad school.

I remember there was, like, a big, aha moment for me.

I always loved the science part and, like, the data.

And I loved the brain.

It just became really into the brain.

And I know that sounds creepy.

No.

It's, you know, fascinating.

A lot of it is unknown.

Yes.

I think I just followed my curiosity.

And I saw one bit of research that just changed and unlocked everything for me.

And what it said was, is that the brain is an anticipatory organ.

So the brain is constantly sort of working and acting in future tense.

It's like, it could be a few moments from now or six months from now.

And it could be like, I'm looking at this cup of water.

My brain tells me it is a cup of water faster than the visual cortex actually registers

it as a cup of water.

Or when you think about eating something, whatever it is, like, I'm imagining what I might

have for lunch right now.

My brain already releases the right amount of insulin to break down that food before we

even eat it.

And so the brain is just constantly in this future oriented work mode.

And I started to think at the same time, you know, this was many years ago now, but I,

most of the interventions that we were taught to work with clients, certain patients, was

many times past driven.

And that's fine.

That makes sense to understand who you are and why you are the way you are.

And then we were just starting to really talk a lot about the present, so cognitive behavioral

techniques, which I love.

But I didn't see much in the realm of helping people understand what are they expecting?

What are they projecting into their future?

And what I came to know is that when you think about something, whatever event it is, whether

again, it is a few moments from now, it's later in the day, it's six months from now,

whatever you are expecting to happen and predicting to happen impacts how you feel and then

how you feel impacts your behavior.

So for me, there was this.

It's exactly exactly exactly.

Like anticipatory anxiety.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And so I felt like, whoa, wait a second here, I'm really passionate about this idea of

understanding what people are predicting, even about like small, mundane things in

their lives, but then taking it a step further and saying, can we actually change that?

And so that became my passion, my niche.

In that time, I felt like the things I was curious about and studying were a little too

woo-woo for like the science community that I was in and way too sciencey for the self

sort of growth community at that time.

And so somewhere along the way, I think like a little before COVID, people really sort

of caught up with this idea of blending sort of the two and this idea of like optimism

and hope theory and just how important that was.

The optimism, Dr. Part, really came organically.

And I remember I was really interested in sort of, I would call my therapy work self-worth

work instead of therapy.

I would sit in front of a client and be like, okay, the first time I saw them, we're

going to be doing things a little bit differently.

Here's what we're going to do, X, Y and Z, we're going to look at your optimism, I'm going

to ask you some questions, we're going to focus on the things you want in your skills

and your strengths and what you're predicting and all this stuff.

And at the end of like 20 minutes of taking up 20 minutes of time of this client session,

he was like, so you're kind of just like my optimism, Dr..

And I was like, huh.

I guess that's it.

I guess that's it.

That is where the optimism, Dr. Peace came from.

What does the actual research say about optimism and how it works in the brain?

Like what have you learned?

Just to, I know what the whole book is about, but just as a summary of the research and

the science behind it, like how does it work and what has sort of surprised you about

it.

We have this idea of what optimism is.

And to be honest, it's like all wrong.

And I think most people think that optimism is about being positive.

It's about the silver linings.

It's about looking at the world through rose colored glasses and sort of in my mind,

like I visually see someone like skipping through like a field of puppies, like singing

and bliss while like the world's on fire.

Yeah.

It's like blind optimism.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what I, and doing this work, I feel like I have heard every single sort of stereotype

of what people think an optimist is under the sun.

Often very smart people are like, I'm not an optimist.

I'm a realist.

Yeah.

And they sort of separate it as in like you can't be a realist while being an optimist.

And I thought that was so interesting because I also felt that way.

And to be honest, I'm known as the optimism, Dr. and I am not the most optimistic person.

Even in my like microcosm of family, I'm probably the least optimistic naturally person.

And I like, the good news is what I've learned about it is what's a surprise is optimism

is not a personality trait.

And I think a lot of people think it is.

It is a learned psychological skill that can be trained.

And I am training myself to be more and I think the other thing is an optimist actually,

a real optimist as I call it, is so grounded in reality.

And like the definition that we use, you know, from this perspective is someone that is

deeply mindful and aware of the roadblocks and the setbacks and the less than ideal situations.

But the caveat is they see them as temporary and something that they have the ability to overcome,

even if they don't know how or when.

Like I've always thought about in the context of politics for sure the difference between

optimism and hope.

Yes.

I've always thought about it as like optimism is, or if I'm optimistic about the future,

it's people being like, I think it's going to get better, but like we'll see.

It's like a predictive.

Yeah.

And hope to me at least is more grounded in agency.

And it's this, like I can see the challenges, but I have the sort of ability to change the

future and change circumstances to a better future.

But it sounds like that is real.

What I think about hope is sort of liberal optimism.

I see optimism from my world and perspective as much more related to resiliency and curiosity

than related to positivity.

So it's really much more about understanding and being very grounded in your authentic

emotion, whatever that is.

And a lot of times that is not feeling great.

That might be rage or grief or, you know, worry or anxiety, whatever those are.

But at the very same time of sitting in it, it's allowing yourself to be curious about

how this might change.

And you're not even committing to, I think it's going to be better yet.

You may not even get there yet.

But just being able to know number one that it will change because a lot of this is what

we call explanatory style and understanding that everything is temporary.

And that's a huge hallmark of being able to increase your real optimism factor.

You don't have to be someone that knows with certainty that it will be better.

You just have to have curiosity that I wonder how this will change.

And even from that, which I kind of call being in, it's almost like neutral plus.

It's like when you go and order a steak and you're like, I'll have medium-rare plus,

which people probably hate you for, but in LA it's okay.

The same kind of thing.

We don't have to be optimism doesn't always feel good.

And I think that's another surprising factor because we cultivate our optimism through

persevering through struggle.

And so I think people think that we really can only be optimistic when we are blissful

and feel good.

Well, you open the book with a very personal story about this.

And this was before we really knew you guys, but I knew Dio had been really secure.

Your middle son, his Charlie's friend.

Just learning the details from you writing about that period, the diagnosis, the uncertainty,

the physically hold him down for his medication.

And you mentioned that sort of it was interesting for you as the optimism doctor to realize

that the tools you teach other people to use weren't necessarily the ones you were reaching

for at first.

Right.

So can you talk about that experience, sort of what that taught you about optimism?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, at the time, it felt like cruel irony.

I was literally writing the manuscript for this.

And like many, many horrible things that happen, they surprise you and they come out of

nowhere.

And unfortunately, we were told that this medical diagnosis that literally came out of nowhere.

I mean, one moment he was, you know, wrestling with his older brother and asking for snacks

and wanting to, you know, play with trucks and watch lightning McQueen over and over and

over to having this earth shattering, you know, diagnosis that now is setting us off on a path

that felt like, you know, a huge mountain that was a long mountain, a year and a half of

treatment.

It just what it came out of nowhere and it was chalked to, as they said, bad luck.

There was like two and a million chance for a kid to get this.

And this rare child, you know, medical diagnosis is definitely not getting, getting the researcher

funding that it's going to be needing.

And so I think aside from just not knowing why it happened, which is a very scary place

to be in as a parent, but also not understanding even with the treatment, like what it was

going to mean for us and what the future holds.

And so I remember calling my agent and I was just like, I don't think I can write this.

How can I write this?

I literally am the most hopeless and helpless I've ever felt in my life.

I'm full of darkness.

I feel paralyzed.

I'm not writing this book on optimism.

And I kind of retreated to a lot of old habits that I went to when I was like grasping

for desperation, just like looking in front of the mirror and being like, my son is healthy.

Everything's okay.

And that doesn't necessarily work.

No.

And I felt almost like a responsibility that if it didn't work, I wasn't doing it good

enough.

And I asked the universe, you know, I know it sounds so silly, but you know, I imagined

him being like surrounded by white roses and all these things that I had like red and

just like this is this is a hologram and you make your own reality.

And I just like, you know, looked up to the sky and said universe like all I really

want is for my son to be healthy, like deliver it.

And unfortunately, you know, this was the time we were waiting the three weeks for pathology.

And none of that worked for me.

And I remember just sitting underneath my office desk when we were sort of told what the

uphill battle we were now up against our new reality, you know, we had just had the

surgery to remove this mass.

And now we know what it is.

And we have a year and a half ahead of us of treatment weekly and daily medication, but

also weekly, we had to go get another surgery to get a poor implant in his chest.

I mean, he's two and a half.

And I was just really struggling because I was ruminating over, which I think I'm sure

a lot of people can relate.

Why is this happening to us?

Why us?

Like we're good people.

And of all the people, my two and a half year old son, who's just this like innocent, sweet,

every, I mean, any kid at two and a half, you can't.

And it just, I was so stuck in that and I was so angry.

And I had a major shift at some point, like a few months in.

I was very paralyzed by this.

I was not doing writing at the time.

I was just trying to survive.

And you know, you have to pick yourself up and you have to administer the medication.

You have to get him to treatment every Tuesday because who out like there, I miss mom.

And so we were living this weird reality.

And I remember having this shift because I opened back up the manuscript and I was like,

okay, I, I'm just going to read a little bit of what I've been writing.

And from cruel irony, I feel like maybe it was divine intervention or something.

I don't even know, you know, I'm not necessarily a very religious person.

But having to literally write out the tools and beyond deadlines for it.

And my brain cannot unsee what I am typing and what I remember, and sharing with a past

patient or a client or the research that I'm including.

Like I had to literally, I was typing it so I was processing it and I was using it.

And I remember like very distinctly one day writing something for the book and thinking,

oh my gosh, like I had this major shift from rumination to agency.

And the shift instead of why is this happening to us?

Because your brain can't go anywhere from there.

Right.

Like the prefrontal cortex is not on, you know, it is, you cannot go anywhere from there.

And I remember just softening that and thinking, why anyone?

Why not us?

And that didn't make me feel better, per se.

It still really sucked.

But it took away some of the anger and it took away some of the sort of threat response.

And immediately after that I was able to just say, what's my next step?

And the next step was maybe packing the hospital bag, you know, preparing for the next treatment

or, you know, dosing out the medication or calling insurance companies or whatever it was.

But it sent me more into the mode of agency and like what is my next step?

And that was a really big shift for me.

It didn't make any of it easier.

It was all awful.

And I wish I could have learned a lot of what I learned in a different way.

But that is the way I learned it.

And I remember just thinking now at that point my son, you know, at the end of writing this

book, like I literally wrote the book throughout the entire treatment.

And at the end of it he was, we were approaching the last few treatments.

And I said to myself, wow, this should be really a happy time for me.

And it actually was the most anxious time because again, it was going to be a time where

I was not doing anything, at least like every Tuesday, which I hated, we were doing something.

We were going.

We were taking an action.

Taking an action, I had some sense of control.

We were doing what we were supposed to do.

And I remember thinking like, wow, this is, I don't want to project this onto my son

now.

He's four.

And hopefully he's got, you know, a life of head of him.

And every day if I'm like, is this it?

Is that it?

Is that I don't want to project that onto him.

It's already hard enough to be a kid growing up in the world.

Well, interestingly, I mean, we started talking about through the brain and how the brain

thinks about the future all the time, right?

Yeah.

We're always very future oriented.

And I do think, at least for me, when something bad happens like that, the first instinct

or the way that my brain has worked for a long time and I'm sort of fixing it is you're

like, you just think about all the bad things that could happen.

And like, well, do you know where that happens?

It's like the brain, this is so important for right now because I think collectively, I

don't know if you saw that Gallup survey in February.

Oh, yeah.

The fact that Americans are literally at an all time low in their future outlook.

Yes.

In more than 20 years.

This is the lowest it's been.

And I think a lot of people stop and just say like, well, that makes sense.

Like, yes, that makes sense.

We can all understand why.

There's so many reasons why.

But what are we going to do about it?

Because you can't make a forward movement from that place of collective, negative outlook.

And I think right now, like so many people are living in uncertainty.

There's heaviness and uncertainty.

We cannot make sense of most of the things personally and globally that are occurring.

And the brain, when the brain is full of uncertainty, it is in threat mode.

The amygdala is firing up.

It is in threat response mode.

And when you are in that mode, your brain does something out of protection.

It's not because there's anything wrong with you.

Out of protection, it starts filling in the gaps and it fills in the gaps with the worst-case

scenarios.

Yeah.

It's funny.

I've always been an anxious person.

And I think the moment where my personal anxiety about life and what's going to happen

and medical stuff or this other thing sort of intersected with why what I do professionally

was during the pandemic.

Yes.

And I remember a lot of times sitting there at night being like, is this ever going to

be normal again?

Are we going to see our friends again in our family?

Are we going to get sick?

What's going to happen when the kids are, you know, when Charlie's born and we have to

do this and now we have it like, and it was just like constantly and then reading the

news and then going to all the, and then you're looking through the news because you're

looking for the piece of information in the news that's going to make you feel like,

oh, it's fine now.

Right.

Or I can do something.

And make sense of this.

Right.

And I think the crazy thing about that is they like media has really figured out like neuroscience.

Yeah.

It really like honestly has figured it out perfectly like great job, but not really.

Because our brains like one of the truths about the brain that I talk about in the book

is our brains like to collect evidence to make a thought that we already feel is true

more true.

That is part of the efficiency of the confirmation by us.

And I myself have really like, I, I, this is kind of a silly story, but I only downloaded

TikTok like very much late in the game.

Like it was only a few years ago.

No, I'm similar.

And I can do like one thing like I'm on Instagram and even that like who knows what I'm doing.

But we were in Italy, Alex and I, we were like on one of our first like vacations without

the kids.

And I remember it was the time that that Bayesian sink.

Oh, yes.

I forgot about that.

And of course, I turned on TikTok just then.

And I started like watching it because it was sort of in the region that we were in.

And I got like really, I mean, it fed me all kinds of things, which obviously I was like

interested in.

And then all of a sudden it was like this girl loves conspiracy theory.

And it was like the, it was like all this stuff.

And I looked at Alex and I was like after like hour like I was just like consuming this

stuff.

And then I looked, I'm like, what are you watching on TikTok?

And his were like this guy walking down the street that would like stop people and play

like 10 seconds of a song.

And then they would have to guess what the song was.

And I'm like, that is so fun.

Why can't so I literally had to actively retrain the algorithm, which by the way is so fitting

because that is what we have to do with our brains.

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In this information environment, like I do think that it has become

harder to be optimistic.

Because obviously there's like two parts of this.

There's the psychological retraining of yourself.

Right.

But we don't exist in a vacuum.

No, we do not.

And we are I think very dependent and also easily persuadable by the social context that

we exist.

Totally.

And I feel like for the last 10, 20 years now, 10 years for sure, five years for sure,

we are just constantly bombarded with negative bad information.

Everything that's bad that's going on in the world, which things have been bad in the

world and bad things have happened in the world since the beginning of time.

Right.

But we were not always exposed to it.

Every second of the day.

Every second of the day.

And I do wonder like how that sort of the obstacles that puts in the way of someone

who's trying to become more optimistic.

Big, big obstacles.

I mean, like you said it yourself, you hit the nail on the head.

Our brains were not like made to experience this much exposure and stimulation to, first

of all, just like the sheer amount of whatever it is, good or bad, like that much information

and stimulation and exposure.

But it's completely like you said, it's the bad news cycle.

And we are living in a 24, 7 news cycle.

And we know things and we're carrying things and holding things as deeply, you know, feeling

humans.

Like, people that we have people that deeply care about their own lives, but also the lives

of others that are just walking around this world.

And I think you are one of those people, obviously.

And what I think is so scary and not what I want.

And a big reason why I think this, I wrote this book and this book is so timely is because

what we talked about before, like what happens to the human when we're exposed to that

and we don't have the tools to equip ourselves is we go numb.

Or again, we might be cynical about something.

We might be someone that understands that whatever it is we're seeing or reading is not

something we like and not something good and we might have thoughts about it.

But we're stuck in this idea of cynicism, which actually comes from overwhelm, which

I said before and there's not a lot of agency that you can move forward and take action

with that.

Or we turn away.

Or we turn away.

We look away.

We look away.

We look away.

We say, you know what?

I know the news is bad and it's not making me feel good.

And a lot of colleagues like of mine are just like turn off the news.

And I think that's also scary.

We need to boundary, but we cannot go through the world with eyes closed.

Like we still have to know what is going on in order to make change.

So it's not about being ignorance as bliss and deciding to put blinders on and know nothing

because all of it is too much and too overwhelming.

But at the same time, it's not about give it, we cannot handle all of it like we're handling

it now.

We need to come up with boundaries and tools to equip ourselves on how and part of that

is regulation tools.

I know this like sounds it's such a buzz word now to talk about self-regulation and

nervous system regulation, but the brain doesn't prioritize growth.

It prioritizes safety.

And we are all walking around this world for the most of us, not feeling safe.

Yeah.

What are some of those regulation tools?

I mean, everyone has their own unique tools, but for me, breathing tools really help

and one in particular, the force of an eight breath, which has a lot of science behind

it.

It helps to regulate the parasympathetic nervous system.

And again, this doesn't change the circumstance or what you're worried about.

There's also this part of the book that's called The Way to the World Syndrome, which

a lot of us have right now.

But what it does is it gives your body and your brain a sort of reset from the rumination

and the negative worry loop that we are now constantly in, you know, ancestrally, I think

our ancestors might have gone through fight, fight, freeze mode, like once a week when

they were like hunting.

There's like research to show.

We're literally in it all day long.

Yeah, breathing techniques are really big for me.

I know it sounds, this is just me, but music is a big tool for me, always has been.

And just like moving to it.

So like I do something in the morning called Wake Up and Dance.

The first thing I do to like regulate myself.

That's cool.

I mean, I just made me think that like I do think that having kids has helped this, like

I'm having them now at this age, you know, Teddy's two and Charlie's five and spending

time with them.

Like I think when I tell people I was spending time with my kids, because they're the

most common question I get.

And the most common question, like we get from listeners too, is like, how do you, how

do you stay hopeful?

Like we actually joke about it now because when we ask for listener questions, inevitably

10 of the questions are like, what gives you hope?

And then there's people who are just like, I've been following politics for like 10, 15

years.

And I can't do it anymore.

And I'm like, how do you do it?

I can't do it.

What should I do?

And when I say like, oh, I hang out with my kids, I think people take it as, oh, will you

avoid politics now or you turn away?

But like, it's the actual, it's the, it's the playing, you know, and it's the dancing

around with them or it's like chasing them around.

It's joking about them.

Yes.

And it's not just taking your mind off it because my mind is not taking off it.

I'm not reading the news, but my mind's still thinking about it.

Right.

But it's like, oh, the movement, the hang, the laughter, like the oxytocin, you get

it.

It's like hugging your children like that kind of stuff really does make it different.

It doesn't.

It's actually giving you the tools to equip yourself to be able to keep staying engaged.

That's the part where it's like, this is an end situation.

And we, I don't have to remind my clients or patients.

I don't have to remind people to worry or to write, right?

Because we all do.

It's part of our human existence.

I do actually have a practice where I have people contain their worry.

They literally schedule worry into their day, into their schedule, into their calendar.

Because it's like, yes, people are always like, what?

You tell people to worry.

I'm like, I don't have to tell you to worry.

You're going to worry.

And anyone that promises you a life without worry is selling you snake oil.

Right.

We're going to worry.

It's part of our existence.

But like, containing it is really, really such an important practice to develop because

just floating worry all day long completely derails your everyday life.

And it will.

It's what's happening to all of us.

It's distracting.

It paralyzes us from any forward movement.

Because when worry comes in while we're working on something that we have to get done or

show up as a colleague or a mother or a friend or whatever.

All the roles we play.

Another worry comes in in the middle of it.

We forgot what we were doing.

And now we haven't...

We have all these open files in our brain.

Yeah.

A lot of open tabs.

a lot of open tabs and a lot of this is coming up with tools to stay engaged rather than look away.

And I think that's the part that's really important right now because change is only made

when someone actually understands and can imagine that something can change and something better is out there.

And I think a lot of people they can understand being angry about something or just being exhausted and overwhelmed

because it just keeps coming and coming.

And the idea of allowing yourself to imagine a possibility that's different seems indulgent and silly.

But it's survival.

You have to imagine your brain does not put forth energy or attention to come up with solutions,

whether that's something personal or more global, for you if it doesn't think that it's a possibility.

So we have to train ourselves to live in possibility more too.

One example of this, just in the political realm that we deal with a lot is people saying,

well, what if we don't have a mid... what if he tries to steal the election?

You know, what if he tries to steal the next election? What if he tries to cancel the midterms?

What if there's ice agents by the polls all that kind of stuff?

And I've really thought this through kind of from the perspective of what you've written about,

which is like, okay, let's just take it one step at a time here.

We don't know.

Right.

It's not like, don't worry, he won't steal the elections.

Or they'll definitely be elections. I can't tell you that.

I don't know.

But how would you act differently right now if you knew that there would be elections or there would be elections?

Right.

What would you do differently?

And the question is, what can we do to make sure that we...

What steps can we take to make sure that we do have elections that we can protect them as best as possible?

And then once we do those steps, what else are we going to do?

Right.

We just have to move forward do all the other work as if we're going to have an election.

Right.

We've got to go convince people, persuade people, get people out to vote, all that kind of stuff.

Because if worrying about the fact that we may not have an election or that he might try to do something

prevents us from doing the work we need to win that election.

Right.

And that's doubly bad.

Exactly.

That's doubly bad.

It's asking yourself, when you are ruminating over something that is a worry,

it's asking yourself not to put away that thought as a possibility because it might be a possibility.

You might be right.

It might be possibility.

But what other possibilities exist as well?

Like it is up to us to ask ourselves that question.

Like this may be the case and it's not the whole story.

We don't know how unfolds.

What other versions of the story could be to allow ourselves to have that possibility

and at the same time, you know, in visual imagery and science-based visualization.

I think a lot of people understand it to people think it's like just about manifestation

and sort of visualizing what you want.

But actually what the science shows and what I write about in the book too is we also must visualize the setbacks.

We must visualize what we might do when the things don't turn out our way.

Like you visualize like a circumstance in all its possibilities.

And that doesn't mean that you're like putting bad jujoo out there.

It's being prepared.

Right.

And it's understanding back to that root of, you know, optimism is not about denying the dark.

It's about giving us the tools to see in it when it is dark.

Like optimism is not about knowing what certainty.

It's about what you do know is that whatever might come you'll meet it.

And that's based on your own personal historical resiliency.

That's where the optimism is cultivated from.

You've been through hard things before.

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So you have a quiz in the book that helps people understand how optimistic they are.

Yes.

Can you talk about how the questions are connected to optimism and sort of what you've learned from the people who've taken the quiz?

So the quiz actually is adapted or inspired by a sort of more research-based scientific research.

A scientific test that Martin Seligman came up with, who's like the founder of positive psychology.

And what always surprised me in that is people that take the quiz that think they're optimistic,

oftentimes come back less optimistic and people that think that they're more pessimistic go in and take the quiz and go,

whoa, I'm so much more optimistic than I thought.

And I think that's because most people have been defining optimism and their understanding of it in the wrong way.

And I think the part that's interesting for me and I don't want to spoil it too much for anyone that's going to take the quiz,

it is in the book and PR just put out the quiz today digitally.

So if anyone wants to take it and check it out, what is interesting is optimism really lives on a continuum.

And I don't believe after doing this work that you were either an optimist or a pessimist.

You exist on this continuum and in some circumstances or aspects of life, you are more prone to being optimistic than others.

And it's really like about seasons and aspects of life.

Like for me, medical health stuff, I am so low in optimism.

Like I am really like probably clinically low when it comes to health and medical stuff.

Whereas other things and even things that are more macro, I tend to be more optimistic.

Or even smaller things like when you make the wrong turn or you set backs at work related or whatever those are that are also skill related,

I tend to be more optimistic.

This is sort of a spoiler but a little tidbit.

But really interesting to see how people qualify good things that happen to them and bad things that happen to them.

Like are they personalizing which one?

This is what I was going to bring up because I am someone who took it who thinks I've always thought I was incredibly optimistic.

I took it and I got a 14 which falls in the 12 to 17 category that says you are naturally quite optimistic

but still take a pessimistic view of the world some of the time.

And so I thought about it and I went back to the quiz.

And part of what I think I scored lower on some has less to do with my outlook on the world.

And more to do with my own self confidence.

Yes.

Which is an aspect to optimism that I hadn't thought about before.

So it's like when you, you know, did you make everyone laugh because you're really funny or because everyone is having a good time.

Exactly.

I would naturally be like, oh everyone is having a good time because I don't know comedic genius.

And I would not have thought that has to do with optimism.

With optimism.

And it does and it's really about the three p's of optimism if you will.

It's like one of the p's is personalization.

And so what we find is people that score higher in optimism are more readily able to accept responsibility for good things that happen.

Personally, like they had a part in that because of their own skill or, you know, their own actions.

Where a lot of people, and this is where I score low to.

And I think it's really interesting.

But yes, and then the same people will attribute, you know, if you're in a more pessimistic score, you will attribute like when something bad happens, you take a lot of personal accountability.

Like this happened because of me.

Yeah.

You know, we, my team didn't do a good job because like I didn't do my part as well as I should have.

And the flip is true too.

So someone that's more optimistic might see it as like, well, you know, maybe we were all having like a tough time or a bad day or, you know, I worked as hard as I could.

But these other like circumstances that are outside of me also come into play and have a reason for the impact of the result.

Yeah.

But you know, a lot of people are surprised by that because when something good happens or a win happens, they're like, oh, it was good luck.

Or I was at the right place at the right time.

Or yeah, everyone was having a good time or the opener was really funny.

Yeah.

Or like someone told this story before and like prepped everyone for a good time or everyone was drinking.

Yeah.

Whatever that is, instead of saying like, I tell a great story or.

It's so funny.

It's funny because when on the questions about when the bad things happen, I think that's where I'm more optimistic and I'm like, I get it.

Like I might have screwed something up, but also it doesn't mean there's a lot of different things.

But when a good thing happens, I really feel like we are taking any credit for it.

And that actually makes a lot of sense.

And it's where a lot of people like that was my, that was that was the big surprising part of this test with people that kind of generally thought they were optimistic.

Like that is the place in which they sort of the score tipped them a little bit lower.

It is funny because Emily took the quiz we were talking about this today and she scored very optimistic.

And it now makes sense to me because Emily is much better at being like, I'm good at this.

And I'm good at this and I'm not as good at this and that's okay.

And it's very uncomfortable because our brains tend to like really prioritize the things that we're not doing well or that need fixing or that are unfinished.

Like that's just how our brains are.

And some people are just better at like really spotlighting the things they're good at and the skills they have.

And it's not like arrogance.

It's literally confidence.

Yeah, it's confidence.

It's confidence.

Yeah, and that's that's a key ingredient optimism.

It is.

I want to sort of end by bringing it back to parenting.

Yeah.

How do you think about modeling optimism for your kids when a you're not always feeling it yourself and b the world is the world.

Yeah.

Well, I love how you said modeling because I think that in itself is sort of the key there.

I think a lot of people think and myself included like it was so pressured into when something happens.

Like my kid comes home with something that happened to them at school or like a story or something they read, not read yet.

Well, my older one, yes.

You know, or kids were talking about something or something happened on the playground.

Whatever it is, whatever struggled or going through or something was hard, you know, that they had to do in sports or school.

We feel pressured that we have to have this like perfectly packaged response for them in that moment of like this is how you deal with it.

But kids don't learn from that.

They learn from modeling.

And so if you are someone that is working on your optimism and optimistic outlook and now you might know something like,

oh, confidence is a really big part of increasing optimism.

And like one of those aspects is when something goes really well, like you can't unsee that now that you know that.

Yeah.

And if you are able in the moment, maybe before something went well in front of your kid, you're just like,

someone congratulates you on something, you know, and you're like, yeah, just, you know, it was being at the right place at the right time.

You might say something differently now.

Yeah.

And they hear that.

They look at it.

And they learn from modeling.

And I think one of the biggest things that we can do is our language is really understand what kind of language we're using.

Are we using language that is saying this is permanent?

I think that's one of the biggest ones.

This is the one, like I think we can try to tackle one thing at a time.

And for me, like we have so much going on.

This permanent piece is what I try to be mindful of for myself.

And while I'm being mindful of it myself, I try to see if my kids are able to do it.

I try to see if my kids are listening and they are because now they call me out on stuff and I call them out on stuff.

But it's like when you're trying to the other day and I wrote about this in the book, it's such a mundane silly example.

But I was trying to open a bottle of pasta sauce.

And I like, I was just about to say it.

I can never open those things.

And I literally said out loud after two tries, I can never open these things.

I'm never going to be able to open this sauce.

And our kitchen is one of those kitchens that's part of the family room.

And Dio, my son, who the one, you know, both.

But Dio looked around because we've had this conversation before.

And I think at that age, four years old is when I started.

That is an age where they start saying language like that a lot.

And it's just developmentally appropriate.

But because I'm trying to work on this.

And I also show them the process of me trying to work on it.

I just said it.

I'm not hiding that from them and going, and he, I hear him go, Mom,

don't say you can't breathe three times and try for another seven times.

So like seven times and just keep trying.

And I was like, oh, and I was like, you're right.

I am not able to open this right now.

And I'm going to keep trying.

And maybe I still won't be able to open it right now.

But I'm not going to say I'm never going to be able to open.

It's the same way of, you know, when you're driving with them.

And I don't know, you miss a turn or late.

And it's always at those moments.

And you start, it's just like, how are you?

Or, you know, he's, he's learning to ride a bike, you know,

and one of those things, it's like, when he learned how to tie his shoes,

he was so adamant about it because he's the little brother.

Yeah.

And it's just that language of like, I can never, I can,

and then they learn that they can and you remind them of that.

And you yourself, however you are going through struggle.

And I, I share that with them a lot.

I mean, I think partly because I'm pretty open book.

And of course, I have boundaries.

I don't need to know all of our struggles.

But I'm not a parent that like hides that from them or shoves things

underneath a rug.

I make many mistakes all day long.

And I feel so bad about them.

A lot of times when they're asleep.

Of course.

Yes.

I'll look at Alex and be like, should we wake them up?

Because like, I yell, I did this today.

I did that today.

It wasn't great.

But I remember the next morning, there's always room for repair.

And the repair part, that's the modeling part that is so important

for them to see.

So if you're working on yourself and you're trying to have an optimistic outlook,

or hopefully if you are reading the book, and like, there's a lot of these little moments

that are like, oh, I never thought of it that way.

And the whole point of it is like, once you see something, you can't unsee it.

And so it's sort of programs into you.

And if you start sort of doing that, or you're even reading a book,

like even just having this outside, like my kids have it in their room now.

And they're like, we're working on optimism.

Like even just that.

Yeah.

Modeling. Like, what are we doing?

The permanent point is so interesting to me.

And something I think about when this is a maybe disconnected example.

But I think it might not be.

Which I certainly knows enough about Trump now, right?

Because I'll, that talks about Trump all the time.

Yeah.

So we finally asked about it.

And because, you know, he's watching all these shows now where there's good guys and bad guys,

he's like, oh, so Trump is bad.

And then everyone else is good.

And I was like, look, Trump does bad things.

Everyone can do bad things and can do good things.

And they can be a good person or bad.

But you are not, because I don't want him to think.

It's not about Trump.

Right.

But I don't want him to think that the condition of being bad or a bad guy or a villain

or all the shit he sees on television now is a permanent state.

Because that means that for him, he's going to think either I am good or I am bad.

And that like I don't have the agency to change and that people don't have the agency to change.

And I want him to, and Teddy, too, I want them to think that like that it is not a permanent condition

on whether it's the president, whether it's you, whether it's anyone.

Like we're all sort of, we can work on things.

And we're all human.

Yes.

And I think that's part of it because that, I think that's so important, especially in this age, you know,

I see it with my own kids.

And one of the places that I feel like really a lot of worry about is like their relationship to perfectionism.

And just like when mistakes are made or when things happen, they immediately are like identify it as part of them of like, am I bad?

Or am I good? And that's that piece of it.

And you're right.

Like I think that's so, that's amazing that you're even thinking about it at this age.

But this is a really good age to start like understanding nuance and continuum.

And you know, what you do and how you behave and either if it's a mistake or if it's on purpose, all these things,

it's not like your cemented identity.

Yes.

Yeah. No.

That's a good place to leave it.

Thank you for coming on.

This is a great conversation.

I'm glad we got to do this.

Me too.

And the book is the power of real optimism.

Deepa Kuchopra.

Thank you so much.

Go out and get it.

Go out and get it.

And then I was going to say you'll feel more optimistic, but no, you'll know how to work on yourself and become more optimistic.

Yeah, you'll truly understand what optimism is.

That's right.

And it's a work in progress.

I'll see you at T-Baltimore.

As always, if you have comments, questions or guest ideas, email us at offlineakricot.com.

And if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform.

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Offline is a cricket media production.

It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau.

It's produced by Emma Ilek Frank.

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A Drone Hill is our head of news and politics.

Jeric Centeno is our sound editor and engineer.

Audio support from Kyle Seglund.

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Thanks to DeLon, Villain-Wave and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos every week.

Our production staff is proudly unionized with the writer's guild of America East.

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