Optimistic

I had a frankly, quite boring Webinar at work the other day, talking about emotional intelligence. The presenter did have quite a bit of discussion on the definition and history of emotional intelligence in a monotone voice, which put most of us to a interesting stage of dozing off with our eyes open – we were at work after all.

One interesting statement the speaker made, however, got stuck on me. I was quite touched with it:

Optimistic is not hoping for the best in the future, it is making the best of the situation right now. Isn’t that right on the spot?

We all hope things will get better somehow in the future, if we are aware of it or not. We start our sentences with “I wish”. But all of that is day dreaming of something we probably don’t have any control over, not right now, and we forget right now, right this moment, something we can control, we can choose, to be happy, to look at the bright side of a bad situation. Things may not be clear, may be beyond of our comprehension, why me, why like this? We tend to think we are the victim. But, what can we do about it, if we don’t like it?

We need to learn to make the best out of “now”, regardless how terrible the situation seems like. That means dance in the pouring rain, enjoy a “dressed up” bag of ramen when money is tight, take time to notice the birds and flowers walking to the post office, make lemonade when life gives you lemon.

I have my own personal taste of this when the speaker said that. It immediately hit me. I still remember how sad I was and devastated I felt when I lost my job last year, but now looking back, that truly was a blessing. It took me quite some time to make peace with it, and accept it was not that bad, but just a few months afterwards, I realized why it was not that bad, not bad at all as a matter of fact. I could accomplish so much for my parents, my kids, even myself, when family needed me. I would never be able to make it happen otherwise, not risking losing my job anyways. As a matter of fact, if I knew what I know now, I would not trade those few months to keep my job. Perfect example of we handle things based on what we know at the time we handled things. I didn’t know any better. Self improvement can never stop. Only with wiser mind, we could be better human being, handle things better, and have better out come of our own action. If I was a bit more aware how I could focus less on the negatives back then, and focus more on “making the best out of now” part back then, the difficult time for me would be shorter.