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