Why Optimism Matters More Than You Think

[Music]

[Applause]

when i was in sixth grade

my biggest dream was to become a

published author

11 year old me thought it would be the

coolest thing ever to have a paperback

book with my name on it

even cooler than that was a thought of

me hanging around in a bookstore

as hundreds of fans lined up for me to

sign their copies

i didn’t even have a signature back then

once the school year finished

most of my classmates were off on a

plane trip to another country

or biking with their friends or playing

video games

but i was determined to finish writing a

manuscript for a novel idea i had

the novel was to be called forgotten and

it followed the journey of an 11 year

old boy named jack witter who barely

survives a plane crash

and finds himself stranded in the amazon

rainforest

if this plot sounds familiar it’s

because i mostly copied it from gary

paulsen’s famous novel hatchet

i was eager to write a book but i

certainly wasn’t creative with ideas

every morning in the summer i’d sit down

at my desk and force myself to write at

least five pages

i thought if i can write five pages per

day and i want a 200 page novel

then i could be done in 40 days 40 days

to write an entire book

when i thought of it that way it seemed

easy of course as all writers know

writing one page a day let alone

five can be an enormous challenge and i

ended up calling quits on that book

after chapter five

but i was still determined to write a

book so i picked myself back up

and began writing a new story called

until we die

the plot went something like this 16

year old ethan parker wakes up to find

his house invaded by zombies and seeks

refuge in a local precinct

where he teams up with a girl named

jennifer and her wise grandfather mr

taylor to survive as long as they can

this book i partially based off of a

trilogy i’d read by eric walters

called the rule of three again not

particularly creative on my part

like my previous attempt at writing a

novel i never ended up completing this

one

quitting 96 pages in with another failed

attempt and school starting up

i pushed my dream of writing a book to

the back burner

but the next summer after grade 7 i was

convinced again i had it in me to write

a novel

this time i called it frostbite and it

featured a group of high school students

who fly on a trip

to anchorage alaska but end up in a

plane crash left to survive in the

winter wilderness

yes two of the three novels i ever came

up with

involved plane crashes this time around

i was much more regimented in my writing

schedule

with my mom preparing earl grey tea in

the morning for an early writing session

visiting the library in the afternoon

for a change of scenery and coming home

in the evening to write some more

in addition to writing the novel i had a

cinematic trailer plan

and a few book cover designs laid out

after spending half the summer on the

manuscript and writing 131 pages

i grew bored of it and moved on

now another year passes and it’s the

summer after grade 8.

i had just graduated middle school and

felt ready to take on the world

with no ideas of what to write about i

simply chose to write about writing

after a week of day in day out work i

finished the manuscript

after five months of pitching agents and

publishers i got a publishing contract

and after 10 months of working with

editors and designers i got my book

published

it was one of the happiest moments of my

life looking back though i really

shouldn’t have done what i did

i spent a good chunk of my childhood

forcing myself to type words on a

computer

while other kids played outside but what

surprises me most about those years of

my life

is how i managed to never give up even

though i bounced from one story idea to

the next

i never lost sight of my overarching

vision to write a book

maybe novel a sucked but that didn’t

mean i abandoned my dream of becoming an

author

i just move on to novel b and if novel b

sucked i’d move on to novel c

and maybe by the time i got to novel n

i’d have a book worth publishing

however if you came up to me today and

said peter i want you to write a book

over the summer

i’d be pretty uncomfortable about my

prospects

why because today i’m less optimistic

than my middle school self

and that’s a problem you see when i was

a kid dreaming about publishing a book

i never paid much attention to the

obstacles i would encounter later

from the hair pulling monotony of

pitching different publishers to the

snail-like speed of the publishing

industry

many people don’t know this but it can

take years for a book to go into print

from the date you signed the publishing

contract

back then the only thoughts i had were

writing a book would be awesome and i

need to put in the effort to do it

i never thought what if i don’t get a

publishing deal what if my book

sucks what if i don’t get reviews what

if my marketing efforts fail

why would anyone agree to publish a kid

who hasn’t even entered high school yet

these are perfectly reasonable questions

and yet if i’d asked myself them at the

very start and parse through them

question by question

there’s no way i would have ended up

publishing a book i would have felt

crushed by the seemingly impossible odds

and given up far too soon if i had taken

the so-called realistic advice of my

friends and family and said you know

what

becoming an author at my age is

ridiculous why am i even trying

then i most certainly would not have

become an author it was only by taking

the seemingly unrealistic approach

what many would consider the optimistic

approach that i was able to succeed

and that got me thinking if being

optimistic resulted in a better future

than being realistic

is it really so optimistic after all

as i thought more about it i came to the

conclusion that often what we deem to be

optimistic

is in fact quite realistic and often

what we deem to be realistic is in fact

quite pessimistic

i learned that optimism isn’t always

naive or childish

or impractical rather it can be

reasonable and deliberate

it is something that should be practiced

intentionally not because it makes us

feel good or because other people are

doing it

but because we recognize that being

optimistic is the intelligent thing to

do

now i’d like to focus on that last part

the intelligent thing to do

well i claim being optimistic is

reasonable you might still be skeptical

so far i’ve provided a personal story of

how optimism has helped me and some

reflections on my experience

but if i’m going to prove that optimism

is reasonable then my primary instrument

of proof should be reason

so i want you to consider this when you

think of an intelligent person do you

think of an optimist

or pessimist i personally think of a

pessimist

someone who identifies problems who

casts doubt who criticizes untested

ideas

and this isn’t just rooted in intuition

or empty speculation

a national survey published by the

physicians foundation in 2018

found that out of eight thousand 8 74

american doctors

62 were pessimistic about the future of

medicine

62 now with the global pandemic

it’s hard to see these numbers going

down on the other hand i want you to

think of a successful

person someone who’s made it mind you

this isn’t limited to the lead oligarchy

of entrepreneurs

ceos and political dignitaries it could

be someone you really look up to like a

classmate

or colleague is this person more of an

optimist or pessimist

i dare to say optimist so if intelligent

people are pessimists

and successful people are optimists then

it would imply that intelligence and

success are fundamentally incompatible

the more intelligent you are the less

successful you are the less intelligent

you are the more successful you are

but no this is clearly wrong we know it

in our hearts to be wrong

but why i found the answer in a book i

read over the summer

called elon musk tesla spacex in the

quest for a fantastic future

needless to say it was a biography of

elon musk

as i read through i kept asking myself

how could someone as intelligent as elon

be so optimistic isn’t optimism

inherently naive and dare i say foolish

what i ultimately learned from the

biography was that elon’s optimism

wasn’t a coincidence it was a crucial

ingredient of his success

a few weeks later i picked up a

biography of steve jobs and i realized

that he too was a pronounced

optimist from that point on my

perspective on optimism completely

changed

from believing it was something

impractical to believing the exact

opposite

it was no accident these great

innovators of our time shared this trade

optimism was a distinctive part of their

personalities and their success

if there’s one idea i want you to take

away from this talk it’s that being

optimistic

is reasonable daring to do great things

is reasonable if everyone in the world

said you know what

starting a business is risky so i’m not

going to do it then they would be right

and our world would also be a

significantly worse place

sure you’re far more likely to fail a

business to succeed

but ultimately we need businesses and we

can only have businesses when we choose

to be optimistic

as the realistic approach is to never

start one in the first place

by being realistic we can by definition

only maintain the reality we have

if we wish to improve reality then we

must be optimistic

and if you wish to destroy it then

pessimism is your friend

imagine if every cancer researcher said

you know what

if the leading health institutions in

the world can’t find a cure for cancer

then why should i believe i can make any

difference imagine if every entrepreneur

said well i thought i had a great idea

but since other people aren’t already

doing it it must be a bad idea

imagine if every mathematician said

nobody’s been able to solve

this 100 year old math problem so

clearly i can’t either

do you see how these are all perfectly

sensible statements

and yet if the cancer researcher decided

to abandon her research

and the entrepreneur decide to scrap his

idea and the mathematician decided to

ignore the 100 year old problem

then society would be definitively worse

off we would be further away from a cure

to cancer

we would have fewer groundbreaking

companies we would have more unsolved

math problems

this is why it is not pessimism nor

realism but

optimism that is the key to human

progress what motivates institutions

from

all over the world to develop new and

better vaccines

what ignites our businesses what leads

to advancements in the fields of

mathematics and science

and since optimism is the key to human

progress it must be reasonable

now you might be thinking i’m not a

cancer researcher

i’m not an entrepreneur i’m not a

mathematician so these examples

don’t apply then let me ask you are you

the citizen of a democratic country with

the ability to vote in elections

a common argument against voting is hey

how much can a single vote mean

my vote doesn’t matter so i won’t

participate

this is yet another example of

pessimistic thinking disguised as

realistic thinking

which ultimately damages the society in

which we live

it is only by taking the optimistic

approach of affirming that your vote

matters

and my vote matters that we are able to

preserve the heritage of democracy

what if you don’t live in a democratic

country well i can guarantee

you live on earth a place that has been

ravaged by the effects of climate change

while climate change is signaled by

governments and schools as a pressing

issue

how many of us actually take steps every

day to combat it

like the voting example a common

pushback is that

i’m one person how much can my

individual actions really affect the

planet’s health

and while that may seem like a sensible

stance it is ultimately a damaging one

inspired by realistic thinking

it is only by taking the optimistic

approach of fighting against climate

change in our daily lives that we are

able to best

safeguard our planet circling back to a

question i proposed earlier

if being optimistic results in a better

future than being realistic

is it really so optimistic after all

when john f kennedy gave his famous moon

speech on september 12

1962 he admitted that he didn’t know

what the benefits were of going to the

moon

so why do it he said we choose to go to

the moon in this decade and do the other

things

not because they are easy but because

they are hard

of course the moon landing went on to

become a cornerstone of american history

in a giant leap for all of mankind

and it wouldn’t have been possible

without the optimism of the president

and the optimism of his country now this

doesn’t mean to do things simply because

they’re ambitious

or daring this is not a motivational

speech

and optimism is not to be confused with

toxic positivity

as peter thiel discusses in his book

zero to one we must be definite

optimists

optimistic enough to envision a brighter

future but willing enough to take the

steps

day by day to make it a reality i firmly

believe that if we see optimism as

something reasonable

rather than a matter of wishful thinking

then we will be more willing to practice

optimism

and if we are more willing to practice

optimism then we will be more empowered

to build a better future for ourselves

for our communities and for all of

society

thank you

[Music]

you