Optimism

I just took Oprah's How Optimistic Are You? quiz in her lastest magazine.  Guess What?  I'm "one of the few super-optimists.  Only 10% of people score above 10 points."

Gerald Matthews, PhD, the author says, "Research has found that super-optimists tend to be prone to unrealistic expectations.  When they're driving, for example, they often believe that they're invunerable to crashing." 

While I am a super-optimist, unrealistic expectations and all, I never allow myself to believe that I'm invulnerable.  I am all too vulnerable to the whims of nature and the karmic consequences of my blind faith and bad decisions.  I do believe from extensive experience surviving a variety of life changing catastrophes and reading about other people's incredible resiliency that every thing bad gives way to good and that almost anything can not only be survived, but surmounted.  If you're really unlucky and then survive to smile again, you might even have a unique story that you could make into a book, and do public speaking gigs for years.  Just a thought about looking on the bright side.

I practice constantly to stay in a state of joy.  It takes constant maintenance.  I have a technique where I give myself a mental slap or shake whenever I feel depression drifting over my mind and heart like a creeping fog.
If that doesn't work I go for a run, or put music on and dance.  I lift myself up on the way to work by singing at the top of my lungs to my favorites on the radio.  It does happen that I get cut off in traffic by idiots from time to time.  I feel the rage surge through my heart, and fill my brain, making my eyeballs want to pop out.  Folks, rage hurts my body, my heart, my mind.  It makes me want to cry.  What I do these days is kind of crazy.  I take a deep breath, I put my open hand over my heart, I imagine pulling all the rage out of my body.  I throw it as hard as I can back to the person who cut me off, or honked because I didn't get out his way fast enough.  I shout, "This isn't mine.  You can have it!"  It doesn't always work the first time, because all those chemicals from the anger are still in my body and have to clear.  I don't let them win.  I keep pulling out the imaginary anger and throwing it to the wind. (I think I must be very entertaining to other drivers, a female Jim Carey on the road.) I find the loudest, happiest song and smile so hard it probably looks like a grimace, and I sing!  Yes, it's ridiculous, completely ridculous.  When I think about it, I laugh.  Hard. 

That's a way optimism can be cultivated.  I'm raising the cup to super-optimism.  Wanna join me?