Deepika Chopra

And so I personally was not lucky enough to be someone that I think the genetics were not necessarily in my favor, even in that small way.

In my microcosm of family, I'm probably one of the more pessimistic people.

But the amazing thing is I have really grown and cultivated my, what I call real optimism.

And so I see optimism as not a personality trait, but as a trainable psychological skill.

And I see it as a muscle and something that we have the ability and power to work out and.

Optimism, whenever I'm speaking about it to people, I always am curious and love to just ask, Oh, what's the first word that comes to mind when you think of optimism?

And of course it is usually a resounding positivity or being positive or the idea of seeing the glass half full or wearing rose colored glasses.

And I think optimism on the whole as a notion has been really misunderstood.

And so from a science-based perspective.

What we see with optimism and when we talk about the idea of optimism, I'm not really, I think positivity is being positive is a cousin of optimism.

They're not interchangeable.

I more associate optimism with ideas like resiliency and curiosity.

And so optimism is cultivated really through persevering struggle.

And an optimist is someone that is really keenly and mindfully aware of the roadblocks and the less than ideal situations and the setbacks and

that none of us are immune to.

But the caveat is they see these things as temporary and something that they have the ability to overcome.

Even if they don't know how or when, they just know that they will likely overcome it based on their own personal historical resiliency.

And a great starting point also is you don't have to feel positive or good about an outcome to be optimistic.

I think you just have to be curious and you have to accept

That the situation is temporary.