This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Resilient Optimism: How to Stay Hopeful When Life Is Hard with Michelle Gielan | 437

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Starting point is 00:00:41 Luxury sales claim based on SMP Global Mobility, Canadian New Vehicle, Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. If you love the show, the best way to keep it going is simple. Share it, rate it, and support the sponsors who support us. I am Nicole Khalil, your host of the This Is Woman's Work podcast, and I may need this episode at least as much, if not more than all of you listening. Because, friend, I consider myself a realist, which is pretty much what every pessimist calls themselves, right? But ultimately, I'm a recovering overthinker. In professional settings, we might say I'm great at anticipating

Starting point is 00:01:25 problems or skilled at analyzing potential pitfalls, which sounds much better than give me the opportunity and I can come up with 137 ways something could go wrong all while lying in bed at 3 a.m. Listen, I have had to work at seeing the bright side because I'm very good at spotting the dark cloud. And through lots and lots of practice, here's what I've come to believe. I will be okay. Maybe not immediately, maybe not today, but I will be okay, even when things are not okay. I believe that so much of life makes more sense with the benefit of hindsight. That wonderful, meaningful, even life-changing things can come from really hard times, and that light and love and joy are more powerful than their opposites. Those beliefs, though, didn't come naturally to me.

Starting point is 00:02:16 I chose them. I practiced them. I built them. Which is why I'm fascinated by the idea at the center of today's conversation. That optimism isn't a feeling. It's a behavior. Because just stay positive is useless advice when life is hard and you're struggling. So what I'm really excited about today is this idea that resilient optimism isn't about pretending that everything is fine. It's about believing that we still have agency, that we have power over what we do next, even when we have no idea how our story will end. Because isn't the real test of optimism when things are hard? I mean, think about it for a second. It's easy to be optimistic when everything is good. But whether we can access it when life gives us every reason not to, that's what we're talking about today.

Starting point is 00:03:08 Our guest, Michelle Gieland, is a positive psychology researcher, best-selling author of Broadcasting Happiness and former CBS Morning News Anchor. She's an executive producer of PBS's The Happiness Advantage, a featured professor in Oprah's Happiness course, and holds a master's degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her new book, Resilient Optimism, The Science of Sustaining a Positive Mindset in Tough Times, explores the five trainable behaviors

Starting point is 00:03:38 that help us sustain optimism through stress, uncertainty, setbacks, and change. Michelle, welcome to the show, and I'd love to start by asking you to define resilient optimism. And even more specifically, how is it different from, and I put in air quotes, staying positive or being happy all the time? Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. I've been doing a lot of podcasts lately. I don't like

Starting point is 00:04:01 comparative praise normally, but that intro was awesome. So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I feel like it really captured the essence of what I'm trying to talk about here. So I've been studying optimism now for 15 years. And we have looked at how optimism we know for decades has been really good for our mindset, our performance, 31% higher levels of productivity, 37% higher sales, 40% greater chance of promotion. I literally could go on and on. Optimism doesn't just impact mood. It impacts performance. The question becomes, how do we sustain it when the challenges strike or the setbacks keep on coming or we're exhausted? And so that's what I've been focusing my research on, especially over the past decade, as we have all collectively been through a lot, a lot of changes.

Starting point is 00:04:48 And I would argue that it's the pace of those changes has increased today, you know, I mean, with all the disruption and with AI and all the things going on across the world, I mean, there's so much information. It feels like the volume of problems is louder than the volume of progress. So resilient optimism is the kind of optimism that stays strong when it's tested. It's not that fleeting feeling of, I've got this, I can do this, we're going to be okay. Instead, it is the kind of optimism that is built upon behaviors that help you stay grounded, hopeful and optimistic. What I love most about the research that I'm seeing and also the synthesis of it into resilient optimism is that there's lots of tough times when you don't feel optimistic.

Starting point is 00:05:37 Meanwhile, what we see now is that even when we don't feel optimistic, we can make those positive choices towards behaviors that help cultivate optimism and ultimately get us through that messy middle and moving forward. I'm curious to your thoughts. One of the things when I'm going through tough times that I tell myself is one foot in front of the other. Yeah. Toward what matters most. Now, I'm also saying all sorts of horrible things in my brain. This sucks.

Starting point is 00:06:05 I suck. Everything sucks, right? Like, my brain tends to default to the negative. And then I just am like one foot in front of the other toward what matters most. And I don't even know what that means sometimes. But that's my version of staying grounded, hopeful, and optimistic. I'm curious your thoughts on that, and is there just a better way to approach it? Well, I actually think that that can be really beneficial.

Starting point is 00:06:30 I came to see the power of this research on a very personal level back in 2018. So it was Super Bowl Sunday night. I'm watching the first half of the game with my husband and our then four-year-old son, Leo. And then my water breaks, except not in some dramatic fashion like you see in the movies, right? So I kind of had no idea really how serious this was. My husband did what any loving husband would do during the first half of a big game. And when his wife's water breaks, he just called me an Uber. And so I go to the hospital and they're like, this actually is serious.

Starting point is 00:07:06 We'd like to keep you pregnant for as long as possible every single day matters. Six days later, I end up with an emergency C-section. Our daughter Zoe was born and she was just three pounds, seven ounces. If you can imagine, she was so small that her entire. hand wrapped around just that last section of my finger. So as I'm sitting there by her bedside thrust into this 50-day journey through the NICU and I'm listening to the monitors and the beeping and seeing all the data and trying to, as a scientist, I'm trying to synthesize all of this to predict what's going to happen. Would she be okay? Will her lungs develop okay? I realized, I mean,

Starting point is 00:07:45 it took me a little bit of time, but I realized I can't predict. I don't know. And if someone were to to me, just stay positive, it's going to be okay. That was not only poor advice in that moment, but it was also, it's not what my brain needed then. What I did see eventually was that the best thing I could do, and so to your point, what you were talking about is I could hold two truths at the same time. Yes, this is scary. And I can ask the doctor a next question. Yes, I'm exhausted and I believe that I can support my husband or be there to be by my daughter's bedside. I can do all these behaviors that help me keep moving forward. And so I now go to yes and as a go-to thing for business professionals. Yes, the numbers are disappointing and here's what we

Starting point is 00:08:35 learned. Here's how we can pivot. But just acknowledging that there's an ability to have an at-the-same moment, a yes-and truth, I think can be very freeing because because then we can, even when we're feeling optimistic, we can make those positive choices, and that helps us focus on the ways in which our behavior matters. And so I learned that you don't have to know how the story turns out to believe that what you do next still makes a difference. Okay, I want to hone in on this because it's so powerful this idea that we can and do hold two truths at the same time, because what always felt hard for me from the just be positive crowd is it did. didn't acknowledge the other truth. It kind of swept it under the rug and I felt bad for feeling

Starting point is 00:09:22 it. Like there's something wrong with me that I can't just be positive. And then the flip side is like there is that alternate truth where if you're like me and you tend to default to the negative, that there is another available, more productive, more empowered, whatever you want to see, another available option at the same time. Yes. And I think toxic positivity and it gets a rap rightly so because even though sometimes people are so well meaning when they're like it's going to be okay you know they're they just maybe don't understand exactly in that moment how to help or what to say but toxic positivity edits out the problem and it just skips to hope the hopeful solution and so that that's not a realistic way of looking at at challenges in our lives I think you know

Starting point is 00:10:11 one thing when I start talking about optimism sometimes and I've come across this in my work you know people get the wrong idea that they think, oh, rose-colored glasses, polyana ignoring reality. So I mentioned my husband, Sean. So Sean's, if you've come across his work, if you like the science of happiness or anything, you might have come across him. His last name's Acor. Anyway, the point, the reason I mention this is he's very, very funny. His TED talk, you just laugh for the entire 12 minutes straight. So he comes home from a talk one time. He says, you won't believe what happened. I said, what is it? He said, so I give this talk on the power of optimism at this company. The CEO was into the research and wanted to talk to me about how to use it at his organization.

Starting point is 00:10:49 So he offered me a ride to the airport. So Sean gets in, this guy's car, and he clicks on his seatbell, and then the CEO gets in and doesn't put on his seatbelt. So after a while, the seatbelt bell is going off. And again, Sean, very funny. He thinks he's making a joke. He's just, oh, you don't wear seatbelts. And the guy's like, no, man, I saw your talk. I'm an optimist. Oh, no. I'd be like, no, you're an idiot. Yeah, and so optimism doesn't stop cars from hitting us or reality from negatively affecting us. What we study here in the research is rational optimism.

Starting point is 00:11:24 It's taking a realistic assessment of the present moment while maintaining the belief that our behavior matters, especially in the face of challenges. So optimists and pessimists, if they're rational, they both see the problem for what it is. But optimists believe that they can put one foot in front of the other, they can band together with the people around them, they can choose that next. constructive step and move the ball forward. Whereas pessimists, well, they're really good at spotting the problems, but they just don't think they can do anything about it. And so, I mean, I'm feeling more bold in this statement lately, but like if I were staffing my company, I'm not sure I would hire any pessimists. We want people who are critical thinkers who are spotting problems, who are understanding the landscape and the negative things that could happen, but we don't want the brain

Starting point is 00:12:11 to get stuck there. Yeah. My husband often says he loves to work with firefighters, not fire point or outers. And I couldn't agree more. So you've said the word behavior several times. And I really want to hone in on this because I think the distinction matters. I think a lot of people think optimism is a feeling and you're saying it's a behavior. And if it's a behavior, that means we have choice and agency, right? We can choose. So, Can you give us an example of what optimism in practice or in behavior might look like? You did obviously give a couple examples already, but is there another one that might continue to drive this point home? Yeah, absolutely. So that is what my book is full of is people who have made those positive choices towards those behaviors.

Starting point is 00:13:02 And so I listed so many of them. Probably my favorite one more recently, and this is back in the hospital, but from a different perspective, So I worked with this woman Grace. She was a veteran nurse in the ICU. And, you know, the ICU is not the easiest place to work. A lot of stress. When she's having hard days, she has an in-case-of-emergency folder. And she keeps nice notes from patients, from their families, pictures of patients later on after they've recovered thanking her for her work. What I think is so powerful about this is that when she's having a hard day, she goes and focuses on it. And it's not like this, this folder is sending her out into the ICU telling her everything's going to be just fine. Instead, what it does is it's recalibrating her perspective. We are so good at seeing the negative, but sometimes we lose touch in the middle of stress and anxiety or sadness with the positive. And so she's consciously reorienting her attention to that positive. And so it sends her back to work steadier than she was before. But, you know, I just was at Yale yesterday.

Starting point is 00:14:11 yesterday, sharing some of this research with the team there. And this woman came up to me and said, oh, you know, Grace is in case of emergency. I have a keeper's folder. And she said that she got a note. There was a woman on her team and she was like, I didn't know if we were really getting along. I didn't have any signals that we were. And then this woman writes me the nicest note of gratitude, just thanking me and being so sweet. And she's like, it went right in the keepers folder.

Starting point is 00:14:34 I'm keeping it. And then I said, did you tell her that you put it in the keepers folder? She said, yeah, I did. And I think that was the moment that it completely transformed our relationship because now we have evidence that things are working. We work well together and quite frankly, we like each other. And so it just, it quiets all the other noise. Yeah. So my version of this is my feel good folder.

Starting point is 00:14:58 I can literally turn around and pull it from the drawer behind me. I have a physical version. I also have a desktop version. And any time I get a note. And what I would attest to is it doesn't put. on rose-colored glasses. It doesn't make it sound like everything's going to be okay or that the outcome is in my control. What it reminds me is that I matter, the work I do matter. Yes. And I think that that sometimes is the message I need to hear because when I go dark,

Starting point is 00:15:28 my version of dark is I don't matter. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. It hopeless sort of feeling. So I can attest to this. So in your book, you identify five behaviors of resilient optimists. Can talk to us a little bit about each of the five? Yes. So the first one's recalibrating your perspective, acknowledging that when we're stressed or anxious, we can lose touch with all the positive pieces of our reality as we focus on the negative. And so it's doing practices that help you recalibrate to, you know, to widen your perspective there and rebalance it. One of them is about recharging smarter. A lot of times we think when we're busy, we need to just put our head down and work double hard. And what we find clearly in the research is that

Starting point is 00:16:14 there's strategic ways to get your brain offline from a task positive network to a default mode network to let it relax, recharge, and come back stronger. And on that one, actually, so I did a study with U.S. Travel Association. And there we were looking at the impact of vacations on performance and in particular raises and promotions. So these were people who had pay time off as part of their vacations package or benefits package. Anyway, those that took 11 or more as compared to 10 or fewer vacation days,

Starting point is 00:16:46 they were 30% more likely to receive a raise or promotion the next year. So it's literally scientific data that says, go and take a break, but it doesn't have to be a big break. It can literally be just pulling your hands off the keyboard and watching a breath go in and out and restoring your mindset.

Starting point is 00:17:03 Another one talks about your relationship with stress. There was a phenomenal study that was done at Yale University with UBS bankers and these managers were highly stressed. They split them into two groups, got one to go through a stress management training that tells you how to deal with it. The other, how to see, own, and use the stress to your advantage because there's actually scientific evidence that shows that it's advantageous. And four months later, that experimental group, they were reporting a 23% drop.

Starting point is 00:17:33 and stress-related symptoms like headaches, backaches and fatigue. And then another one that I absolutely love is connecting the dots, which is sometimes the evidence is there, but sometimes it's not. And you need to manufacture it, not in some fake or false way, but you need to get people moving forward to start creating those positive dots. A great example was in Flint, Michigan, we have worked with a superintendent there. If anyone knows anything about Flint, you know that it's a very challenging place to live and to definitely to educate students there with the water crisis and poverty. So in the

Starting point is 00:18:08 midst of all that, she worked with the school district to do 1,800 acts of kindness in 18 hours. So the intention there was not only to spread positivity through the community, but it was also to show the brains of those students, your behavior matters. You can have a positive ripple effect. And so I think the crux of the book really is about that feedback loop. It's every time you make the positive choice and you feel just a little bit better or a little more focused or that your behavior matters or you're relevant to other people. You are training your brain to look for that information and then hopefully that in turn makes you want to do more of it and keep an upward spiral of success. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025.

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Starting point is 00:20:03 SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow, AI Cloud ERP for any size business. So what I'm hearing is our brains collect evidence. we want to direct our brains to collect the evidence that supports us or that helps us more than what it might default to or go to naturally, which I think for most of us, and correct me if I'm wrong, Michelle, but I think most of us do tend to default to what's the worst that can happen or the fear or the doubt. And so kind of retraining our brains. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

Starting point is 00:20:50 I think what you're speaking to, it's just the natural inclination of most. human beings. So we have a genetic predispositions towards optimism or pessimism just from your birth, you are more one or the other, and that's very natural. But we're also hardwired to scan for threats. That's very good many years ago when a, you know, saber two tiger could come out of the bushes and eat you. It's not so helpful these days when we're at our offices, and technically everything could be pretty okay. I mean, we have problems and challenges, but It's not life-threatening like it was all those years ago. But the brain has not calmed down sometimes.

Starting point is 00:21:31 So being in this state of sustained high cortisol and feeling stressed, it's unhelpful. And ultimately, that's not the best state for our brain to thrive. When our brain's in a positive and optimistic state, that's where we see the fuel for every single business health and educational outcome that we know how to track. So you talked about recalibrating our perspective. And I think, as we've said now a couple times, for most of us, that means finding the opportunities, the positive, the things to be optimistic about the choice and agency we have, those types of things. But for someone who's listening, who might lean more towards the toxic positivity side or who might have kind of felt like that was the way to do it, how might you recalibrate your perspective to add a dose of reality as opposed to sweeping that truth? under the rug. So if the approach there is to ignore the reality of what's negatively happening

Starting point is 00:22:32 in our lives, I think that the challenge is that we're not really understanding the problem. And by distancing ourselves from the problem, we don't have the information that we actually need to make good decisions and to pick a path forward. You know, I came to see the power of this research originally when I was working at CBS News. I was anchoring two national newscast there, and it was at the height of one of the most challenging times in our collective history, the Great Recession. So I'm anchoring, you know, one show after another with murder, death, destruction, natural disasters, bank failures. And then when the recession hit, we saw people losing their homes and their jobs and their retirement savings. So it was during

Starting point is 00:23:12 that time that I started to ask deeper questions about what was happening on the news. Was it merely just a problem with too much negativity, or was there something more going on there? What I came to see and how it relates to all of our brains is that when our brain is met by problem, problem, problem, problem, and there's little to no talk of solutions, our brain can start to believe that our behavior doesn't make a difference. And so at the height of the recession, my pitch this idea called Happy Week, my producers, like, what are you talking about? But the idea was when the external world is spiraling out of control, like none of us had any control over the economy at that point individually, how can we take back control of our happiness and not wait for the external world to improve.

Starting point is 00:23:55 So we did a week of solutions-focused programming. If your home is facing foreclosure, what do you do? If you're fighting with your spouse over money, how do you have better conversations? We got the greatest viewer response of the year. And one story, this guy wrote in from Oklahoma and he said, my home is facing foreclosure. I don't have anyone to turn to because I have no family members except one brother. And we live just 20 miles away, but we haven't spoken in two.

Starting point is 00:24:20 decades because we got in a fight over money, ironically. And so anyway, he hears through the town grapevine that at the same time his home was facing foreclosure, the brother's home was as well. He does nothing. Then he's flipping through the channels. He comes across a segment on Happy Week about rethinking financial challenges. You know what he did? He reached out to his brother, patched things up, pooled their resources. They saved one of the homes and they moved in together. And what I loved about that story was this, the circumstances there didn't change as he's flipping through the channels. What changed was what he thought about the circumstances and then what behavior he chose to do as a result. So I became incredibly fascinated with this piece of our mindset that said, like, what is it about some people that have access to being able to see that path forward more clearly and other people don't?

Starting point is 00:25:15 and how can we learn that kind of mindset? And so that's basically resilient optimism. It's understanding how to see it and then how to make the choice towards it. Okay, I love that so much. And as you're talking, I'm seeing so much connection with what I know to be true about confidence. I often say confidence isn't a feeling. It's a choice. It's something we get into action toward. And one of the things I often say is that nobody can give you confidence and nobody can take it away. but there are supporters and there are detractors and what you surround yourself with and who you surround yourself with matter.

Starting point is 00:25:50 So that was a long-winded way of asking. How much does who we choose or what we choose to surround ourselves matter when it comes to our optimism, I think, of social media and the news and things like that? But also people, like you said earlier, I don't want to work with pessimists.

Starting point is 00:26:11 Yeah, I mean, I think that absolutely, matters. So there's been research that finds that young women get their explanatory style most often from their moms because they're spending more time with them usually. They're bringing home their problems from school and then their mom is telling them ways that they can think about it. The social media that we consume absolutely impacts our mindset. So I did two studies with Ariana Huffington a few years ago and we looked at negative news on the brain. The impact. of it. And what we found in the first study, we split research participants into two groups. One group we put through a, we exposed them to three minutes of negative news. The other group,

Starting point is 00:26:54 we exposed them to three minutes of neutral news, and then we tested them on a whole host of psychological and performance metrics. And what we found is you would imagine the people who were exposed to three minutes of negative news experienced a decrease in some of those metrics. But what made this study amazing is we actually tested them six to eight hours later, six to eight hours later, as they're picking up their kids from school or closing their laptop after a long day, those that had been exposed to just three minutes of negative news had a 27% increased likelihood of reporting their day as negative than those that had been in the control group. But I think what's even more remarkable is the follow-up study, which found if you don't just expose people to problems, but you go on to talk to them about solutions. So in this case, we appended solutions to an article.

Starting point is 00:27:38 the people that had just thought about what they could do were 20% better on creative problem solving tasks that were unrelated to the original problem later on in the day. So as leaders, for instance, if we're facing a problem at work, we absolutely should be talking about the problem and we need to bring everyone on to a discussion about what we can do about it because you're making them smarter and better at whatever they're doing. So to your question, I mean, we need to be really conscious about what's upstream of us, what information sources are feeding us, the people in our lives, the social media, and understand that we have more agency in selecting those sources than we might often realize. There was a gentleman yesterday that I spoke with, and then he said, you know, I just, I mean,

Starting point is 00:28:23 social media is just, I can't take it anymore. It's so negative, all the politics, people screaming. I was like, you know, it's interesting. So I haven't been on social media until this book launch for like six, six, seven years. Anyway, I jump back on to Instagram, and I'm, put into the creator. I think they don't know what to do with me. So they just put me into this creator slot. And so I'm seeing all these creators and, you know, it's cool because it's like all the creativity that comes with creating content. I don't see any negative stuff. I literally don't see world news, people getting angry. Any of that stuff. My feed, my reality is completely different than his. And I said, so what about training it? Can you X out some things? Can you search for life-giving things?

Starting point is 00:29:04 Can you see? So he's going to, for the next 30 days, that's his experiment. And I'm going to check back in with him. What a great experiment for all of us, because, I mean, the algorithm, I think, will feed you whatever hint you give it. Right. And we get to choose who we follow and who we don't and what we click on and what we don't. And I haven't been active on social media. I took a three-month hiatus that is now turned into a four-year or something like that. And that's not to say that I don't go on here or there, but I just have noticed such a difference in my energy in that. You talked about not just talking about the problems, but offering solutions or brainstorming or thinking through solutions and how important that is. And that makes sense if we go back to agents. and choice feeling like we can do something or there are available options. Yeah. One of the things that I've found is I use this expression in coaching a lot. It's hard to read the label from inside the bottle. And what I mean is like when you're in it and it's happening to you, it's really hard to see

Starting point is 00:30:05 things clearly or even see available solutions or outside of a narrow scope of them. And so sometimes that outside perspective can be really helpful in thinking about ideas you wouldn't have thought of or seeing something differently than you're seeing it because you're in it. And so my question is, how important is community connection, other people's perspectives, asking for help, things like that when you're trying to build and practice resilient optimism? I think it's probably the number one thing you can do to speed along the, to basically amplify this work. So, so many things. Social connection is the greatest predictor of long-term levels of happiness that we have in the research. It's the breadth, depth,

Starting point is 00:30:54 and meaning in our relationships. So it doesn't mean you need to know everyone at the office or have a million friends, just a couple meaningful connections with people in your life. So when times are good, you have people to celebrate with. When times are challenging, like being stuck in a bottle, you have people that you can talk to to get their perspective, to open up your mind to these possibilities. I just watched a webinar with someone I dearly love Angela Duckworth. She has a new book out as well. And so she was my professor when I was at UPenn at Map. And she said, she's like, yeah, you know, originally in my life, I thought, oh, I would just go it alone. You just got to keep working harder. and achievement is all about you and what you can do.

Starting point is 00:31:39 And she says, I would not do a single thing alone anymore. And I think that there's such value to that. You are an expert in psychology, but if you want an initiative to move forward, you need an expert in technology and someone else who knows something else. When we all come to the table with our best, I think that's when ideas move forward even more quickly. So absolutely reach out for help and ask people,

Starting point is 00:32:03 what resources do you suggest here? What ideas do you have? What am I not thinking about? In journalism, one of the best things we were taught were, was that at the end of an interview, you always say, is there anything else that I didn't ask about that you'd like to mention? And then sometimes when you get your moments of gold, because people are relaxed at that point,

Starting point is 00:32:24 and they're thinking about something, and so they'll share it with you. The other thing that I think can be so important is also consciously searching for examples of how people, have overcome this challenge before. They are out there. You can use AI if you want to ask, you know, it to do some research for you. When, for instance, we're getting caught up on the news. I know a lot of people ask me, well, okay, so what do you do? You know, you used to work in the news. I'm sure you want to be caught up on it. But I actually, I bolster my positive resources

Starting point is 00:32:56 before I ever get onto online. I get it on my news online because then I can click through things and skip other stuff that looks sensational. But, But one of the main things that I try to do is not all the time, but when possible, I look at a story that has really tugged at my heartstrings or is meaningful to me. And I try to find the solutions that people are either already engaging in or that are possible or I get really educated way more than just that surface article on the topic so I can speak to it and raise awareness, whatever it is. But what I'm doing in those moments is I'm giving

Starting point is 00:33:35 my brain an opportunity to see the ways in which my behavior matters. And then the hope is, you know, I take action, I go volunteer, or I post on social about or do whatever I'm going to do, but to make this world a better place, in those moments we're reminding our brain, our behavior matters. So upstream is so important and I think, you know, being really mindful about the influence that people have around you and actually thinking through it, who's fueling me, who are the best people in my life for this? is incredible. I love that. Like, who are the best people in my life for this? I think that's a good

Starting point is 00:34:11 first question to ask ourselves because sometimes we default to whoever's closest or easiest, and that might not be the best person for what we're looking for. So that's a really powerful question. Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have or that would be highly relevant to our listener? I really believe in a starter kit. And so if I were to say, if you are feeling less than your most optimistic self. I'll give you the tool that I have loved the most from this research, and it's the easiest to do. So at the height of the busy blur of the pandemic, when I became an overnight early childhood education specialist with a five-year-old and one-year-old and keeping our business going, I wanted to make sure to keep hold of all the good stuff that was actually

Starting point is 00:34:58 simultaneously happening amidst all the worry and and busyness. So I started a best moments practice. It's very simple. I would send Sean each night a text message with three to four good things from the day. So it's a take on gratitude, but the difference here is that we're not asking, was today good? We're asking what was good today? And being able to identify those moments, even when the day is not as good as you would have hoped, it changes how your brain perceives the day in, you know, looking through the rear view mirror, but also, and this is probably the most important part,

Starting point is 00:35:38 is it changes how your brain processes the 23 hours and change when you're not engaged in this practice. You are looking for those good things, those things that are life-giving, and they were simple, small things. Zoe gave me a hug, she made me feel so happy. Oh, and by the way, she's eight years old, and she's like absolutely perfect.

Starting point is 00:35:53 So I should mention that part of the story. or Leo and I play pickleball or I tried a recipe and it worked. The reason why I do it to Sean, I send the text message to Sean is just so we have two phones with all these beautiful records. I have like 1,500 notes now from the past few years. And it's been the best thing I think I've done with this research, the most lifegiving. And what a treat for me for the rest of my life. I have these memory triggers. I love that so much. And I'm going to invite you, the listener, and me to do that and one more thing, which is to go and get the book. It's resilient optimism. It's available on Amazon or wherever you buy books. But let's keep our local bookstores in business.

Starting point is 00:36:34 And if you want to find more resources and tools and more about Michelle's work, go to Resilientoptimism.com. We're going to put all those links and ways to find and follow Michelle in show notes. Michelle, thank you for being here today for doing this work and for reminding us that we can hold two truths at the same time and that optimism is worth fighting for. I don't know if fight is the right word, but you know what I mean. Anyway, thank you.

Starting point is 00:37:01 Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely my pleasure. All right, friend, I think what I appreciate most about resilient optimism is that it doesn't ask us to deny reality, ignore what's hard, or slap a silver lining on something that just plain sucks.

Starting point is 00:37:17 It asks us to remember that even when we don't have complete control, we still have choice. And I know this firsthand. Optimism isn't something you either have or you don't. It's something you practice, something you strengthen, something you choose, especially when choosing it is hard. So go do the next right thing. Help someone. Ask for help. Say no, rest, reframe, take one action that reminds your brain that what you do still matters. Because optimism isn't believing everything will work out exactly the way we want. It's believing there's still something worth doing before we know how the story ends. And that is woman's work.

Starting point is 00:38:05 Hey there, I'm Travis Hoyum, one of the hosts of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Each weekday on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, we talk through the business news you need to know, and the story's moving stocks on Wall Street. On weekends, we game plan personal finance strategies and dive into the industries shaping tomorrow and host the experts, authors, and executives that understand them. Tune in for insights and a long-term perspective on investing and, of course, stock ideas, plenty of them. To quote a listener, it pays to listen. Check us out and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Resilient Optimism: How to Stay Hopeful When Life Is Hard with Michelle Gielan | 437

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