The Sanity of Being a Negative Optimist

By Les Mottosky

We live in a wild time that promises to get even wilder. We're confusing what's on a screen for what's outside our window. It's called cognitive distortion, and it's happening at scale. (Or close to it.)

The result? Constant exposure to the same ideas makes us uneasy when we encounter opposing ones. So beliefs can become more important than facts.

Wild right?

One adaptive response is to become a negative optimist. That sounds like a contradiction, but the deeper understanding indicates the pursuit of a firmer grip on reality.

In one of his books or talks – I don't recall which – renowned wisdom teacher Eckhart Tolle made the observation that everything is getting worse and better at the same time. There's much proof for his assertion.

Like the Texas-sized island of floating garbage in the Pacific Ocean. Lesser known is the small fleet of inventive ships that can scoop that garbage from the water at a faster rate than it accumulates.

Regardless of the issue du jour (or its proposed whiz-bang solution), this is the way life on earth has always been.

Meteors hit, create a dusty winter, and then the sun peeks through. Bee colonies die off and come back. Nuclear reactors meltdown and the surrounding ecology rebounds. Forest fires eat swaths of mountain ranges, and the trees re-grow. Chaos precedes calm. Green follows black.

Life itself is a negative optimist.

Are humans destroying the Earth with carbon? We may be temporarily impacting it's ability to fully thrive. But on a long enough timeline, She'll bounce back. Lost in the debate is an uncomfortable truth: we need the planet, but it doesn't need humans.

So what's the applicable insight in all this turmoil?

If we're exclusively optimistic, we aren't seeing the whole picture. Same goes if we're rigidly pessimistic. Both are delusional.

Like all things in life and nature, the perspective closer to reality is probably in between those two extremes. This idea goes way back. Aristotle is known for his Golden Mean. The Buddhists call this the Middle Way. The Sufis coined Balance. And the Stoics deferred to Moderation.

The negative optimist is simply modern parlance for a really old principle.

Adopt it and you're applying centuries of leadership wisdom to your worldview.

TAGS: #Audacious Strategies #Wisdom In Leadership #Adaptation As Innovation #Nature At Work #Irreverent Wisdom #Creative Option Solving

Les Mottosky

Adaptation Strategist // I help organizations turn creativity into their competitive advantage by aligning leadership, culture, and strategy to unlock adaptive innovations.

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lesmottosky@mac.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/les-mottosky-9b94527/