What does it mean to be an optimist? What it isn’t is someone who ignores any negative or unfavorable circumstance. It isn’t the person with their head in the sand pretending everything is fine. The optimist isn’t blind to the fact that things can go sideways. No one has an open-ended promise that life will be free from pain or sorrow, free from fear or failure.

The dictionary defines optimism as being disposed or inclined to take a favorable view of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.

Optimism doesn’t start as something you are, it starts as something you choose. You choose to train yourself to look for the favorable within the negative. Circumstances are nothing more than the backdrop for the screenplay of who we are. The old adage is appropriate ‘adversity reveals the man.’ The shaping of adversity only comes after the dust has settled when we can look back objectively and grow. In the midst of adversity who and what we are is simply revealed. The optimist is revealed as one that can stand in the storm and see the sun behind the clouds.