Earlier this year, I came across a headline: ‘Put on a happy face! Being optimistic lowers dementia risk by 15%’. The article, reporting on a newly published study linking higher optimism with slower cognitive decline in more than 9000 people, seemed to equate a sunny attitude with a longer life.
For a good while afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. While the sentiment of the article, and the study behind it, was undeniably positive, I couldn’t help but feel there was something off about the headline’s delivery. Looking on the bright side, finding the silver linings and keeping your cup half full are all nice in theory, but do they risk dismissing difficult, yet important, emotions? Do these worldviews require a certain amount of privilege? And does relentless optimism leave any room for admitting when something is actually just really hard?
As it turns out, I was wrong on all three counts. As psychologist and optimism expert Dr Deepika Chopra and health and social psychologist Professor Fuschia Sirios explained to me, optimism isn’t about denying life’s hardships. It’s far more about whether we see positive and negative experiences as temporary and external, or as permanent reflections of who we are.
And that means we all have the capacity to shift the way we think about the world, regardless of the circumstances we’re facing. It doesn’t mean ignoring challenges, but it can offer a different, and potentially more manageable, way of moving through them.
Ahead, I followed Dr Chopra’s seven tips for building real optimism to see how much they could actually shift my worldview. A month later, I’ve been impressed by the results.
If your mind is searching for a bit of TLC right now, I’d also recommend checking out these daily habits a neuroscientist uses to boost brain function, as well as these 10 simple ways to tailor your nutrition. We also have expert advice on training your brain to enjoy exercise and the mental reframe that soothed one writer’s overthinking brain.
What I Learnt Trying An Optimist Expert's Attitude Adjustment Tips For A Month
What is optimism?
Optimism is a funny thing. Though we all recognise it when we see it, actually being able to define and separate it from other positive mindsets such as hope and gratitude is surprisingly difficult.
“We tend to equate optimism with positive thinking,” says health psychologist and optimism doctor Dr Deepika Chopra, “but that’s not what optimism means. Real optimism is the belief that even when things are difficult or uncertain, possibilities still exist. It’s the belief that our actions can influence what happens next and that whatever we are met with, we are capable of responding to it.”
Professor Fuschia Sirois, a social and health psychologist at Durham University, agrees with Dr Chopra. “Optimists don’t just sit there waiting for it all to work out,” she says. “They put a lot of energy and effort into achieving the outcome they want. They’re persistent precisely because they believe they can achieve a positive result.”
What are the benefits of being optimistic?
Most of us can probably guess that optimism is linked with feeling better psychologically. But what you may not realise is that research has actually linked it with a far wider range of positive health outcomes, from better cardiovascular health, stronger social relationships and even improved longevity.
“One of the most useful ways to understand why optimism matters is through behaviour,” says Dr Chopra. “If I believe my actions might make a difference, I’m more likely to act. I’m more likely to problem-solve, seek support, persist after a setback, make the doctor’s appointment, move my body, have the difficult conversation or try again.”
It’s this resilience that makes an optimistic outlook so beneficial. “Optimism doesn’t magically create a good outcome, but it does change how we act in the space between uncertainty and outcome,” says Dr Chopra. “Over a lifetime, that makes a difference.”
But just like optimism doesn’t guarantee we’ll achieve our goals, pessimism doesn’t automatically mean we’ll fail at them. The difference is how we experience the process of working towards them. “Pessimists may still achieve their goals,” confirms Professor Sirois. “But they have a far less positive journey towards them than an optimist.”
Can we learn to be more optimistic?
Ok, so things seem fairly simple so far. But if optimism is so beneficial to our health and wellbeing, why does it seem to come less naturally to some than others? And if we feel we’re lacking in the optimism department, is there anything we can do to change it?
To make sense of this, we need to first understand where optimism comes from. “Research suggests that up to 50% of personality traits are biological,” says Professor Sirois. That might sound like a lot, but as she points out, “that also means that 50% is determined by our environment.”
It’s why she says surrounding yourself with optimistic people is so important. “Optimism is infectious that way,” she says. “Surrounding yourself with people who think in a certain way makes it easier for you to do the same.”
On the flipside, we can’t ignore that certain environments and circumstances make optimism somewhat harder to build. “Context matters enormously,” says Dr Chopra. “Your history, your current circumstances, any chronic stress and the amount of control you actually have over your environment all matter. It’s why someone experiencing grief, financial insecurity, discrimination, illness or repeated adversity shouldn’t be told they simply need a better mindset.”
Instead, she prefers to focus on something she calls real optimism. “This is about acknowledging reality before we try to reframe it,” she says. “It recognises that two people won’t begin from the same starting point.”
Once we have taken stock of our starting point, Dr Chopra recommends asking yourself these three questions.
- What remains possible?
- What do I have influence over?
- What is my next move?
The answers to these questions help you to start assessing how you can reasonably move towards achieving your goals. One thing Dr Chopra is very clear on is this. “You may have a natural optimism set point, but you are not sentenced to it. An optimistic explanatory style is trainable.”
I lived by these 7 optimism tips for a month - my mind felt infinitely better for it
When I first discovered Dr Chopra’s optimism checklist via Kourtney Kardashian’s wellness platform, Poosh, I was struck by how manageable her tips seemed. Where I expected to find vague, sweeping statements about thinking positively, instead I was met with small, practical activities which Dr Chopra said would, over time and with consistency, start to shift my way of thinking. There were no promises of things magically falling into place; just that the process of existing day to day might begin to feel that bit more enjoyable.
So, without further ado, the seven daily attitude adjustments which, after a month, have genuinely changed how I show up in the world.
The tips
- Savour something you have to look forward to
- Check in with your body before reacting
- Imagine the ‘other-case scenarios’
- Swap resistance for curiosity
- Attach optimism to existing habits
- Question your thoughts
- Build tolerance for discomfort
Tips one to three
Dr Chopra’s optimism checklist begins from the moment you wake up. Before you check your phone in the morning, she encourages us to think about something we’re looking forward to that day. It could be your morning coffee, your lunchtime walk, a phone call with a friend, or the twenty minutes you’ll spend reading a book that night.
When I ask her why it matters that I do this before I check my phone, she’s quick to explain. “We want to give your brain a future of your own to anticipate before someone else’s priorities get your attention,” she says. “Before the news, emails and social media get to tell your brain what matters, ask yourself what you are looking forward to.”
It sounds simple, but this tiny moment completely changes the trajectory of my day. I’m naturally quite anxious, so I tend to wake up with the weight of the world on my shoulders, flooded with a mental to-do list built of things people need from me. Taking a short pause to think about something small and positive that’s just for me - often something tasty I’ll make for dinner, a friend I’m seeing, or my daily swim - noticeably dislodges the dread that’s building inside me, and I find that it makes it easier to get up without so much procrastination.
Her second tip comes into play once that first stressful moment of the day hits. Whether it’s a blunt email, a difficult conversation or a missed meeting, Dr Chopra asks us to check in with how tension shows up in our body.
I’ll be honest; this is something I’ve already been practising in my own therapy, so I have a head start. But for those new to somatics, it stems from the idea that experiences don’t just get processed in our minds; they’re processed by our bodies, too. When we’re stressed, scared, angry or anxious, we might clench our fists, tighten our jaw, and our hearts might race. These reactions are all designed to protect us, but they can cloud our judgement and attention. Simply noticing what’s happening in our bodies can create that pause between situation and response, giving us the opportunity to choose what happens next.
It’s not easy, and I still don’t do it consistently. Sometimes the moment gets the best of me, the panic sets in, and my mind spirals towards disaster. But when I am able to notice what’s happening in my body, I do notice how much emotional distance I’m able to put between me and the situation.
Which brings me nicely to tip three. Instead of imagining the worst-case scenario every time, Dr Chopra encourages us to also consider various neutral-case and best-case scenarios that could come from a particular situation.
What I loved so much about this tip was that it didn’t demand that I imagine a perfect world every time, nor that I had to deny any negative thoughts. To me, this often seems unrealistic when things are imploding. In contrast, just imagining a slightly better, alternative scenario than the one my mind has automatically run to felt like a gentler stepping stone to a more optimistic outlook.
Tips four to seven
Tip four is all about asking yourself how a situation is asking you to adapt.
Change, even if you’re someone who enjoys it, often comes tinged with fear. I know for me at least, I often end up hanging onto the past instead of looking ahead to what’s next.
“You don’t have to like what’s happening,” Dr Chopra previously told Poosh. “It means staying open enough to grow because of it.”
Thankfully, this month, I haven’t had any major u-turns show up in my life, but even small plan changes, such as work trips being cancelled and rearranged, have given me the chance to try this little reframe. Instead of looking at them as losses, I’ve tried to think about the opportunities they’ve created, such as giving me more time to work on other projects or catch up with friends.
Then there’s habit stacking. This tip isn’t so much a practice itself, but is the idea that by attaching our new optimistic behaviours to existing daily cues, we increase the likelihood we’ll stick to them. Instead of creating whole new routines, I practised saying the thing I was looking forward to whilst drinking my morning coffee, and imagined alternative case scenarios to things that were worrying me before bed. Anchoring my optimism to these things I already do (and enjoy) undoubtedly contributed to my consistency this month.
And just as she encourages us to check in with our body before reacting, Dr Chopra also suggests that we question our thoughts before taking them as gospel. That’s because our thoughts, of which we have hundreds, if not thousands, every day, aren’t always facts. Instead, they’re often predictions designed to keep us safe.
When I was younger, I had a real tendency to catastrophise and, though I’ve got better at managing it, I can still slip into panic when I think about the future. I’ve found the process of asking myself whether something is fact or assumption to be helpful for a couple of reasons. First, it’s given me more compassion for my (sometimes borderline unhinged) thinking, and second, it’s given me the time to distance myself from acting on it.
Finally, my favourite of Dr Chopra’s reminders. “Optimism doesn’t always feel good,” she tells me.
It’s this which I’ve always got wrong, and which tends to make me feel I’m failing at optimism. I’ve assumed I’m supposed to feel unwaveringly positive; when I don’t, I think I must be a pessimist. But in fact, according to Dr Chopra, a real optimist has to tolerate discomfort. “If your version of optimism requires you to immediately transform every painful feeling into something positive, that’s not optimism - that’s avoidance,” she says. “Sometimes the healthiest response is simply: This hurts. I’m disappointed. I’m scared. I don’t know how this ends.”
To me, this is the most reassuring of all her advice. I have a tendency to run away from negative emotions, to push them down and ignore them. To tell everyone I’m fine when really, I’m not. And that makes the negative feelings linger a lot longer than they need to. What’s changed this month is that, instead of pretending things don’t hurt, I’ve allowed them to exist without making them permanent. I feel them whilst knowing they aren’t where things end. I consider them bad moments, bad days, even bad weeks, without them making me a bad person with a bad life.
None of this is easy, nor does it shift overnight. I’m practising every day, some more successfully than others. But I’ve noticed within just four weeks that I’m feeling more hopeful, more able to be honest about my emotions, and more confident to make decisions knowing that I’m capable of adapting to what happens next.
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If what you’ve read here has resonated, I’d highly recommend reading more about the theory of real optimism. Linking the science with practical techniques and a 33-day optimism challenge, it’s a toolkit for shifting your mindset wherever you're starting from.
I first completed the one line a day journal in 2024, and it completely transformed my perspective. It does what it says on the tin - instead of journaling for hours a night, you just write one line to sum up the day. Just like Dr Chopra’s idea to state one thing you’re looking forward to, it’s a tiny conscious reminder to see the good in every day.
If you’re looking to carve out some headspace in your day, I’d really suggest investing in an acupressure mat. Relieving pain and tension whilst promoting sleep and relaxation, it’s my favourite way to bookend a day. It’s the perfect time to practice optimism, too. Without the distraction of screens or to-do lists, it creates a mindful ritual that can allow you to ground yourself amidst the hectic-ness of life.
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