Optimism isn’t everything, but it’s seriously useful, reckons Sumit Paul-Choudhury. He draws on history and science to make his case
In the months after his wife’s death from ovarian cancer, Sumit Paul-Choudhury found himself questioning what kind of person he was. “I was always vaguely aware I was an optimist, but it was more a fun quirk of my personality, rather than something central,” he reflects. “Then optimism helped me get through that experience, and the fact I decided to identify and act like an optimist helped me to be more optimistic and to direct my optimism.
“I thought I was a dyed-in-the-wool evidence-based rationalist, which I am. I had to reconcile that I was also a person who believed, without evidence, that things are going to improve.”
Believing there are better times and better possibilities ahead, even when there’s scant or no evidence, requires a leap of faith – sometimes informed, sometimes blind. But this kind of optimism, psychological, philosophical and practical, has been vital to human survival and progress. And, argues Paul-Choudhury – an astrophysicist-turned-journalist and former editor-in-chief of New Scientist magazine – in his new book The Bright Side, it’s essential to creating better futures for ourselves and for society.
It was optimism, he argues, that was key to Ernest Shackleton and his crew surviving two years of hardship after their ship, Endurance, got stuck in the ice on their Antarctic expedition. Shackleton said ahead of the expedition: “The quality I look for most is optimism: especially optimism in the face of reverses and apparent defeat. Optimism is true moral courage.”
“They were stuck in a situation where it looked hopeless,” reflects Paul-Choudhury, “a situation where there didn’t look to be positive possibilities in front of them, but where, if you don’t strive to improve, then you are going to die. It required them to believe, despite the evidence, that better times were ahead.”
Though The Bright Side is not a self-help book, Paul-Choudhury believes optimism isn’t only for times of adversity. For everyday life challenges, it’s still about the willingness to believe there are positive possibilities out there that you don’t expect he explains. “That feeds into greater life satisfaction, as it makes you better at coping with setbacks. Rather than hitting a wall and thinking: ‘I’m going to give up,’ even if you don’t know how to get around or over it, you keep trying. And that makes it more likely if there is a way to get around it, you’ll find that way.”
In the face of an uncertain future, harnessing optimism is preferable to succumbing to doom and disaster, Paul-Choudhury suggests
So, can optimism be nurtured? “The default position seems to be that people are optimistic when it comes to their own lives – that seems the way we’re wired,” he says. “The evidence suggests you can make a minor difference to improving how optimistic you are in the relatively short term. My personal conviction is that if you do that repeatedly over a long period of time, you will ultimately become more optimistic. When you find yourself not being optimistic, you can dispute the sense of pessimism that arises when you’re confronted with a problem.”
But optimism isn’t only a solo enterprise.It’s been at the heart of great movements and advances throughout human history, from moon landings and medicine to the suffragette and civil rights movements. When Greta Thunberg went on strike from school in 2018, sitting outside the Swedish Parliament to protest inaction on the climate crisis, she did so without expectation she would change anything concrete. She certainly couldn’t have predicted that she’d become a global figurehead and inspire millions around the world.
Paul-Choudhury describes this as “optimism without sunshine, without forced grins, without ‘positivity’. To me, her action represented the triumph of ‘unrealistic expectations over apathy and indifference.”
The willingness to believe in positive possibilities feeds into greater life satisfaction, as it makes you better at coping with setbacks
Is there such a thing as too much optimism, leading to blind spots or false hope?
When it comes to the climate crisis, for example, there’s a strain of thinking that technology and human ingenuity will somehow save the day, which is arguably stopping people from taking the drastic action required now. Experts have warned that AI could spell doom for humanity, but the technology is being driven forward anyway, with many assuming everything will turn out fine.
“Yes, it can definitely lead to complacency,” Paul-Choudhury says. “There is nothing that says you need to be optimistic about everything at all times. But my point is that if you are not optimistic, you will not find solutions.
“When I look at the world, I see two poles,” he continues. “Some people are so crushed by the challenges ahead that they fall into a pessimism trap and the self-fulfilling prophecy in which you don’t solve anything. At the other end of the spectrum is techno-optimism, a belief that technology has got us out of binds before and it will do again. Personally,I largely agree with that: we could possibly fix a lot of problems when it comes to the planet if we went gung-ho on technological development. But I don’t necessarily believe that would lead to a better life for everybody on the planet, or that it would end up being a sustainable way of improving things.”
With climate change, biodiversity loss, economic hardships and the rise of far-right politics, there’s plenty in the world today to worry about. But now is not the time for despair and inaction. “Apathy and pessimism cannot possibly lead to better outcomes,” says Paul-Choudhury. “No matter what hand you’re dealt, if your reaction is to give up and say: ‘That’s it,’ then you’re resigning yourself to your fate. I don’t see how that can possibly improve your, or our, situation.
Paul-Choudhury’s tips for nurturing hope in dark times
1) Think long-term
When the present feels full of doubt and despair, it can be useful to remember it’s just the latest episode of along story, most of which is about how we’ve overcome enormous challenges in the past to lead better, longer lives.Today’s challenges may seem insuperable, but put yourselves in the shoes of one of your predecessors and consider how their most pressing challenges must have appeared to them, given the capabilities and knowledge they had to draw on.
2) Think sideways
Optimism encourages us to take action and seek out solutions to our problems, even when we have no way of knowing what those solutions might be. But all too often we find ourselves feeling we have no control over our lives or that there are no options open to us. At those times, it can be helpful to ‘think sideways’ – to think about how things might have worked out differently if different choices had been made, or certain accidents of fate hadn’t happened. Today’s world didn’t have to be the way it is and the future doesn’t have to be any particular way either.
3) Think about the future
It’s surprisingly easy to make people feel more optimistic. Just asking what they’re looking forward to can have a shortlived impact, but the more concrete your vision of the future, the bigger the effect. The ‘best possible self’ exercise suggests spending a few minutes each day capturing your ideas about a future in which you’ve achieved everything you can imagine wanting to achieve.
The Bright Side: Why Optimists Have The Power to Change The World by Sumit Paul-Choudhury is out now, published by Canongate
To find out more about the author, visit www.alternity.com/about-sumit/
Photography by Linda Nylind / Guardian / eyevine
