Optimism isn’t all about perspective — it requires daily practice

The email arrived after midnight.

Mark stared at the single sentence on his screen while the house slept: If you don’t show progress in the next 45 days, we’re pulling funding. His chest tightened. He closed the laptop, then opened it again — like a lifeguard patrolling the same empty shore — hoping the words might rearrange themselves into mercy.

Outside, the street was dark and still, the kind of silence that amplifies every thought. The hum of the refrigerator sounded too loud. His phone glowed beside him, lighting a kitchen table littered with notes and cold coffee. He’d told his team they could turn it around. He’d told his wife the same. Now even he wasn’t sure he believed it.

For the first time in his career, Mark felt like he had no way forward. The harder he pushed, the less progress he made. He could feel himself spiraling into despair, and the optimism that once fueled him was slipping away.

What was happening to him happens to so many of us. When things are going well, optimism feels easy. But when challenges pile up, that confidence begins to erode. We find ourselves overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted, unsure how to get our footing back. I’ve seen that pattern repeated time and again in my work with professionals who are capable but struggling to access the optimism that normally helps them thrive.

You don’t need to run a company to know this feeling. Maybe your version is an inbox that keeps refilling, a toddler’s fever the night before a big presentation, or an aging parent who needs you right when your tank hits empty. We’re living in a moment when the volume of problems is louder than the volume of progress.

For Mark, it was a huge project going south. Mark was the COO of a manufacturing company preparing a renewable-energy launch that had looked like a legacy moment until a failed safety test blew up the timeline and the budget. Investors were furious. A competitor announced a similar product. Meetings dissolved into blame. At home, the distance with his wife widened. Mark was sleeping less, eating worse, and emotionally exhausted.

Mark had seen my keynote on resilient optimism at a conference the year before, and we spoke briefly afterward. At the time he was upbeat, animated, and brimming with optimism about what lay ahead. Back then, the launch felt like the culmination of a career — hard work turning into meaningful impact.

Then the setbacks started to stack up. First came a failed safety test, then investor pressure, then long days that bled into later nights. Mark tried to outrun the problems: more meetings, more emails, more pushing. But the harder he drove, the more depleted he felt.

When an email from him arrived in my inbox months later, the tone was entirely different: measured, tired, and searching. He wrote about snapping at his team, staring at spreadsheets that refused to move, and lying awake at night wondering when exactly his confidence had slipped away. His question was one I’ve heard from ICU nurses, overworked therapists, high school principals, and parents running full lives on low batteries: How do I hold on to my optimism when everything around me is shaking?

At that moment, I knew words alone wouldn’t help. The research is clear: When optimism falters, we don’t need an emotional corrective; we need a behavioral one. Resilient optimism is built through simple, repeatable behaviors that help keep us moving when circumstances get hard.

We did not search for a pep talk. We built routines.

Mark and I met up virtually, and I asked him to walk me through his days — not the crises, but the patterns underneath them. Where was he spending energy he couldn’t afford? Where had progress once felt easy? As he talked, the story of his week revealed its own diagnosis: constant reactivity, little recovery, and no deliberate wins. That’s where we started, not with fixing emotions, but with shifting behaviors he could control. We began with his work habits before expanding out to his team.

Mark began with two guardrails: no work email after 8:00 p.m., and writing a nightly note of three small, good things from the day. It wasn’t denial; it was ballast. Then he shifted his team’s rhythm. Each morning began with a 15-minute momentum huddle: one small win from yesterday, one clear priority for today.

Walls between departments were part of the problem, so he created weekly cross-team sessions to solve one concrete challenge at a time with a no-blame rule. In one of those meetings, a junior engineer suggested repurposing an overlooked part from an older product line. That single idea shaved weeks off the redesign.

The third change reconnected people to purpose. Mark invited a nonprofit customer to share how their technology powered clinics in underserved communities. It reminded the team that they weren’t just fixing a product; their work had real impact on the people using it.

[Resilient optimism] doesn’t mean glossing over real problems or relying on wishful thinking. It’s the conscious choice to build systems and behaviors that lift your perspective, steady your decisions, and restore momentum.

Two weeks before relaunch, just as the weight Mark was carrying started to feel lighter, a freak flood hit the plant and destroyed half the inventory.

It could easily have provoked a spiral of catastrophizing. Instead, the morning huddle became a war room for creativity. Teams inventoried what could be salvaged, rerouted supply chains, and doubled up on processes that held. They worked long hours, and it was not easy, but now there was a framework for finding success. The routines they’d practiced under smaller stressors gave them muscle memory for a bigger one.

They launched three months late, and it worked. Mark’s leadership stabilized. The culture did too. But the real win was the system they built to stay optimistic on purpose.

Most of us won’t manage a factory flood. But we will face our own kinds of rising water: a classroom where one crisis begets ten more, a clinic short-staffed again, a household schedule that looks like air traffic control.

What made the difference for Mark wasn’t simply a change in perspective. He had built routines that helped him respond better under pressure. That’s resilient optimism in action: a trainable skill built through small, repeatable routines that make you steadier under stress and more effective when it counts.

What he did on an individual level is what so many teams and organizations are trying to do on a larger scale. After all, the conditions around us aren’t exactly getting easier.

Engagement in many organizations has fallen to a 10-year low, and only about half of employees say they’re thriving. Persistent stress is sapping energy and dulling resilience. At the same time, happiness has dropped to an all-time low. If you’ve felt stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to bounce back, you’re not alone.

This is where resilient optimism matters most. It doesn’t mean glossing over real problems or relying on wishful thinking. It’s the conscious choice to build systems and behaviors that lift your perspective, steady your decisions, and restore momentum.

This article is featured on Big Think.