The Spirit of Optimism

Many years ago, while sitting in a health science class at Woods Cross High School, another student leaned over to me before class and casually asked, "So are you an optimist, perfectionist, or pessimist?". A couple days earlier, we'd been studying these three personality types during that class, talking about what characterizes them. My answer to this student was easy and straightforward: "I am a pessimist". While I wished I could say otherwise, it was nevertheless a fact that I was someone who always focused on what was not going well and the negatives surrounding me. And I was rarely in a state of happiness. With epilepsy influencing every aspect of life, having a scarcity of friends, and needing to deal with all of the homework that continually got piled on me, it seemed to me that my pessimism was completely justified and inescapable.

A few years later, I found myself serving as a full-time missionary in Middletown, New York. My full-time teaching companion at this time was Elder Nathan Hall, someone who came to have a great influence on me in ways that I initially did not see. As is quite common for anyone who serves a mission, many of our plans for sharing the restored gospel were not exactly going as well as we had hoped. It seemed as if, no matter how much effort we put forth, people would reject us, investigators would call and tell us they were no longer interested, and teaching appointments would fall through nearly every day. We worked as hard as we could, planned as efficiently as possible, and used the techniques described in Preach My Gospel to the maximum. But it just didn't seem to work. And since my personality had changed very little from my teenage years, I found pessimism in almost every thought. Joy was rarely found in my missionary efforts at this time.

But to my great surprise, Elder Hall seemed to still be happy all day every day. Every negative thing I experienced was also something that he experienced. And yet, he saw with eyes of optimism. Had I not been through a rather difficult experience only months earlier in the Missionary Training Center, during which the Lord made it obvious to me that I needed to completely reform my life, I would have concluded that Elder Hall's brain was biologically wired to be optimistic and that mine wasn't. But my mindset of reforming my life for the better compelled me to think further. How could happiness be found in the midst of negative circumstances?

And within a short time, I found the answer through a quote by President Gordon B. Hinckley, the
Lord's prophet who I grew up with for many prior years. While I don't recall whether I heard the quote in a sacrament meeting talk in the Middletown Ward, read it in a New Era magazine in my apartment, or some other way, it nevertheless penetrated my mind.

"We have every reason to be optimistic in this world. Tragedy is around us, yes. Problems everywhere, yes... You can't, you don't, build out of pessimism or cynicism... Cultivate an attitude of happiness. Cultivate a spirit of optimism... Let us not partake of the negative spirit so rife in our times... I am asking that we stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight... What I am suggesting is that each of us turn from the negativism that so permeates our society and look for the remarkable good among those with whom we associate, that we speak of one another's virtues more than we speak of one another's faults, that optimism replace pessimism, that our faith exceed our fears."    ~ Gordon B. Hinckley, New Era, July, 2001

Almost immediately after being introduced to this prophetic teaching, the thought came to me that optimism and happiness were a choice! Contrary to everything I had previously thought, I felt through strong spiritual confirmation that happiness and joy are self-chosen attitudes rather than mere reflections of external circumstances imposed on us as human beings. No wonder Elder Hall was so happy; he was consciously choosing such a mindset. He chose to be an optimist.

While it was certainly not easy in any way, I gradually came to change my mindset of viewing the world pessimistically. I tried to focus on the positives, and if necessary to simply force a smile onto my face. And to this day, I no longer think the same way I did as a teenager. My joy of life is not hindered by tragic stories in the news, outside weather conditions, responsibilities or trials of life, nor frustrations with other people. A lesson I wish everyone could learn, as I did from President Hinckley, is that happiness and optimism are a choice.