ISSUE 85
20 MAY 2026 | READ ONLINE
Hi Reader,
I caught myself doing it again. Hot chocolate with chia seeds in hand, not even properly sat down yet, and I was scrolling. Headline after headline. Each one a bit more depressing than the last.
By the time I looked up, ten minutes had gone by. And I felt worse than when I started. Not better informed. Just meh.
It is a strange way to begin a day. I suspect I am not the only one doing it.
Here is what I have been noticing lately, in myself and in the people I coach.
There is a quiet belief that being realistic means being a little pessimistic. That if you are smart and genuinely paying attention, the honest response to the world right now is worry.
Optimism has started to feel naive. Almost irresponsible. Something you can only afford if you are not really looking.
I understand why. The challenges are real. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
But I have been sitting with a question this week.
What if that belief has it backward?
I read a piece from McKinsey called "The case for optimism in uncertain times." It put words to something I had been thinking about for a while.
The argument runs like this. Long-term optimism is not denial. It does not pretend we know what we do not know. It starts by honestly admitting the uncertainty. And then it makes a deliberate choice about where to look.
Pessimistic forecasts, it turns out, have a poor track record. They keep underestimating the same thing. Human ingenuity. Our capacity to solve problems we have not solved yet. In the 1920s, only about 20 percent of the world had access to electricity. Today, over 90 percent do. Almost nobody saw that coming.
I liked one idea from the article the most. And it was that long-term optimism is generative. In other words, it helps create the future by keeping people searching for solutions rather than bracing for impact.
And here is the part that I think matters most for leaders. The optimism worth having is action-oriented. It assumes better outcomes depend on what we actually do next, rather than on a bystander quietly hoping it all works out.
That distinction is the whole thing.
Pessimism feels productive because it feels like vigilance. But mostly it just rehearses the problem. It keeps you studying the left-hand column of the ledger, the one full of everything that could go wrong, and never makes you fill in the right.
Optimism, the real kind, is harder work. It asks you to hold the uncertainty honestly and still move. To believe that your effort is worth spending because the outcome is not yet decided.
This is the argument underneath my book, Clarity in Chaos. Clarity is a choice you make in the midst of disruption, while the ground is still moving. You do not get to wait for things to calm down first.
In the book, I give the mechanism a name: cognitive reframing, or the deliberate practice of replacing a limiting belief with a growth-oriented one. It is a discipline, closer to a trained habit than a sunny outlook. When the instinct is to ask why is this happening, reframing trains a different question instead: what can we control, and what resources do we still have? I write about a leader I coached whose team was hit with sudden layoffs. She felt uncertain. But instead of being paralyzed by the situation, she narrowed her team's attention to what was still within their power. They found new efficiencies, pivoted the strategy, and came out of it stronger. The facts never changed. What changed was where she made the team look.
Optimism works the same way. You choose it, on purpose, especially on the mornings when the headlines make it feel unreasonable. It was never a personality trait handed out at birth.
So this week, I am not asking you to feel more positive. I am asking you to notice where you have quietly decided something is fixed, and to test whether that is actually true.
A Small Experiment for This Week
Two options, depending on the kind of week you are having.
Option A: The honest audit
Pick one situation you have been quietly bracing for. A career decision, a team, your industry, something at home.
Draw a line down the middle of a page. On the left, write what could genuinely go wrong. On the right, write what could genuinely go right, including solutions that do not exist yet but could.
Most of us only ever fill in the left column. Fill in the right one with the same honesty you gave the first. Notice how much harder that is, and notice what shows up when you make yourself do it.
Option B: One generative move
Optimism that stays in your head is just a mood. It only does its work when it moves you to act.
Choose one problem you have been treating as permanent. Take one small action this week that assumes it is not. Send the message. Ask the question. Open the door you have been walking past.
You do not need to believe it will work. You only need to act as though it could.
Because the future is genuinely not written yet. And the people who shape it are rarely the ones who saw it most darkly. They are the ones who kept looking for the next solution and then went and built it.
See you next week,
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