{"id":644,"date":"2005-02-02T15:02:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-02T23:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/blogs\/?p=644"},"modified":"2005-02-02T15:02:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-02T23:02:00","slug":"musing-on-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/musing-on-optimism\/","title":{"rendered":"Musing on optimism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hmmm.<\/p>\n

I was once half-jokingly called “optimistic to the point of uselessness” which is a badge I wear with some pride as my fool’s marker.<\/p>\n

Optimism has been on my mind today. I’ve just been turning over these words: optimism, hope, faith, responsibility, trust. No reason, no particular cause to examine these ideas, just a little synchronicity in blog land that got me musing a little.<\/p>\n

Partly it comes from a bunch of work I am doing in which people in various walks of life are dicovering their emerging futures, and it’s partly about some of the blogs I am reading. For example, today I read this article<\/a> on overcoming fear, uncertainty and doubt:<\/p>\n

Reaching a personal goal brings about a sense of accomplishment and personal satisfaction. To achieve your goal, learn how to identify the gremlins of goal derailment, which primarily consists of FUD. You can defeat FUD imagining yourself achieving your goals, tuning out negative remarks by others, personal negative self-talk and finally, surrounding yourself around others who have similar interests. Once you have learned to defeat FUD, you will have gone along way in achieving your dreams \u00ef\u00bf\u00bd it happened for Dylan and it can happen for you.<\/div>\n

And then I see at Caterina’s blog<\/a>, she writes about John Stockdale, the one-time US Vice Presidential candidate and survivor of 8 years as a PoW in Vietnam:<\/p>\n

How did Stockdale survive when he didn’t know if he were going to live or die or see his family again?<\/p>\n

“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said, when I asked him. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdI never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”<\/p>\n

I didn\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdWho didn\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt make it out?\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd<\/p>\n

“Oh, that\u00ef\u00bf\u00bds easy,” he said. “The optimists.”<\/p>\n

“The optimists? I don\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt understand,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd I said, now completely confused, given what he\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdd said a hundred meters earlier.<\/p>\n

“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdre going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdd say,’We\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdre going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”<\/p>\n

Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdwhich you can never afford to lose\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdwith the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”<\/p><\/div>\n

That’s from Jim Collins’ “Good to Great.”<\/p>\n

So my musing is going to questions about strategies for holding open hope without blinding onself to challenge. What do you think?<\/p>\n

By the way,
\nhere’s a guy<\/a> who is in the middle of it all at the moment. Get well soon, Lorne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hmmm. I was once half-jokingly called “optimistic to the point of uselessness” which is a badge I wear with some pride as my fool’s marker. Optimism has been on my mind today. I’ve just been turning over these words: optimism, hope, faith, responsibility, trust. No reason, no particular cause to examine these ideas, just a little synchronicity in blog land that got me musing a little. Partly it comes from a bunch of work I am doing in which people in various walks of life are dicovering their emerging futures, and it’s partly about some of the blogs I am …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-ao","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}