Optimism

I write this on one of the last days of 2021, and optimism has been on my mind. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard my father say “I’m a realist!” when his pessimistic thinking style becomes almost outrageous. I mean, I truly believe that his life has been on the line – more than once – because if he should go to the doctor, “it’s all a scam to put more money into the insurance company pockets.”

I have also had a few – no need to quantify here – “conversations” (that’s putting it lightly) with my husband about our differences when it comes to his practice of thinking through all of the probable worst case scenarios. He honestly believes that this practice prepares him to be ready to deal with anything that comes his way. I, on the other hand, get completely drained, because listening to these scenarios makes my body feel like ALL of them happened! And I have science to back me up on this one! It’s called catastrophizing, and your brain does not know the difference between thinking it through and experiencing it. Trauma either way in my opinion!

So I’ll take realistic optimistic thinking and hope. Every. Single. Time.

I mean I may have some hidden skills and talents, but when I am learning something new, it can often be described as “not pretty!” Take knitting for example. I am a huge fan of anything COZY (which you may already know). I literally named my dog Cozy, along with this blog. I have read every book on Hygge that I have found. First because I like how it connects me with my Nordic heritage, and second, because when you live in northern Michigan, the idea of spending winter enjoying the company of friends, burning candles, enjoying savory scents, eating charcuterie, casually walking through the woods for fresh air, having baked treats and a glass of wine at the ready, and snuggling up to the fire with a good book, and possibly even knitting – it just soothes my soul to think about it.

But back to knitting.

Knitting seems like an essential cozy or hygge activity, right? So a couple of years ago, I asked my daughter to show me how to knit. I spent the night at her apartment because that seemed more fun, and she showed me how to cast on, and do the knit stich. We used whatever needle size she had available and leftover “junk” yarn. This was just practice. Very appropriately, she paused on teaching me ANYTHING else – just how to cast on and do the knit stitch. She got me started by suggesting that I make 20 stiches, and then continue to repeat those 20 stitches into rows until I felt more comfortable. And here’s what happened that night. I knit about 20 rows. And by row 20, my number of stitches had grown to about 28 (ok, maybe more like 36). Don’t even bother asking me how that happened because I had no idea!

But here’s where optimistic thinking comes in. It didn’t matter how that happened. That was not something I chose to spend energy worrying about! I knew that I was in a learning phase. As long as I continued to practice and put in the effort, these early mistakes would only be temporary. I knew that I would tap into some of my character strengths like creativity, hope, and persistence to push past this phase and enjoy the experience of making. At the end of the night, I pulled it all out (it helped to go into it with this plan so I didn’t feel any loss) and the next day I started again – working harder at looking at what I was doing and concentrating! It was just practice anyway! The second time around, my number of stitches didn’t increase quite so dramatically. The third time around, I was consistent and successfully knit 20 rows of exactly 20 stitches each. I even added the purl stitch so I could see the “look of knitting.”

I felt like I might even be ready to try a square washcloth! I learned that the type of yarn I used made a difference in what I was doing, which also helped. I also learned that it was time to invest in reader glasses! This led to my need to experiment making melt & pour goat milk soap (yes with coffee oil and grounds added) because you can’t gift knit washcloths without fancy soap if you want to call yourself cool!

To me, this is a very simple demonstration of realistic optimism. I put in the effort, with a hope that I would get better each time I tried. I didn’t set high expectations for my first few trial runs but I did expect to grow, learn, and get better.

From there, I made more than a few washcloths, but was very focused on trying unique stitches and cable knit techniques so that they looked more modern. Goals, right? After the washcloths, I started in on hats.

I might need to say that again. I started knitting hats! It was like learning from scratch! The number of stiches you need to start with depends not only on the size of the head, but also on how thick the yarn is! Let’s just say that I made several hats of acceptable size. My sister and sister in law benefited from my early success. I also made a hat for my husband that ended up fitting the head of my 4-year old niece, and I made a slouchy hat for my adult son that was definitely big enough for 2+ of his heads and maybe a few groceries. I wrapped it up and gifted it anyway! Why? Because the hats were evidence of my persistence and of my optimism and hope that with practice, I would get better. There were/are better times coming!

I recently saw and am sharing a meme that says, “Staying positive doesn’t mean you have to be happy all the time. It means that even on hard days you know that there are better ones coming.” Optimistic thinking takes focused practice. During the struggles, you have to KNOW and BELIEVE that they are temporary and specific to that unique situation and time. Being hopeful is a character trait that you can strengthen. For me, working to become more optimistic and hopeful has helped me fight depression and make more happy plans for the future.

I’d love to know more about how optimism and hope have made your life better! If you don’t have something to share right away, I challenge you to think on it. Actually look for evidence that when you chose hope or optimism, something good happened. What is going well? There is something if you look hard enough! Then share it with me (please)!