Optimists: People who are so pleasant you want to swat them. Smiley faces and “have a nice day” and we’re sure they don’t mean it, especially when we’re feeling the opposite, which is most of the time. We laugh at optimists. After all, isn’t the world is going to hell?

We live in a society of complainers and we enjoy it. Complaining is encouraged by a media that prefers pessimism because they find it more interesting and newsworthy. Yet, if you’ve ever met a genuinely optimistic person, you know when it’s real. They aren’t unrealistic. They just seem to feel better about things than we do. It’s all going to be okay.

Optimism as a perspective seems to have a history of sorts. Optimist’s International was first founded in 1911, though it didn’t really bloom until 1919, a time that, according to its website, seemed propitious due to the good times we felt after World War I. Of course the real test of any optimist would come later in the 1920s when the stock market crashed.

Optimist’s International adapted something they call The Optimist’s Creed. The creed was written by Christian D. Larson in 1912. Originally called “Promise Yourself”, here it is:

Promise Yourself :

  • To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
  • To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
  •  To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.
  • To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
  • To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
  • To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
  • To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
  • To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.
  • To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
  • To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
  • To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.
  • To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

The Optimist’s Creed is a tall order. It all falls to us, we’re in charge, we create our own reality. But what great stuff, if we only had a hope of achieving it. You see how I turned an upbeat thought into a pessimistic one by implying we have no hope? Why is that the preferred way of thinking?

There was no New Age movement in 1912. Larson was president of the International New Thought Alliance (check out # 7 on their Declaration of Principles), and the creed first appeared in his book Your Forces and How to Use Them. The thought expressed in the creed is very similar to those espoused by the Laws of Attraction, a present day interpretation with a history in William Walker Atkinson’s Thought Vibration or The Law of Attraction, published in 1906.

Eleanor Hodgman Porter’s book Pollyanna, the story of a girl who spreads her optimism to an entire town of cranky people, was written in 1913. Though we particularly love swatting those who come across as Pollyannas, and use the name as a pejorative, she was practicing exactly what the Laws of Attraction, Optimist’s Creed and New Thought called for. She always looked for the positive aspects in every situation (the “glad game”); she always saw the glass half full.

Did Christian D. Larson, Pollyanna and the inception of Optimists International speak to a zeitgeist of sorts? The First Balkan War started in 1912. The First and Second Balkan Wars created the backdrop that resulted in World War I in 1914. Mexico had its revolution, the Titanic sank and a large meteor exploded over Holbrook, Arizona. In 1913 the 16th Amendment, Income Tax, was ratified and that could certainly call for some optimism.

In many ways those times were like these – focused on war, catastrophe and threats to prosperity. There may have been a lot of complaining going on. Pollyanna, and the Laws of Attraction say if we are actually focusing on war, catastrophe and threats to our prosperity that is exactly what we will get. The Optimist’s Creed looks better and better all the time.

Try spending a day without complaining. It isn’t easy and just goes to show you how much we love it. Laugh it off, move on. Play the “glad game” – find something positive in everything that happens.

Do I sound like Pollyanna? Do you feel like swatting me? Hey, the girl got a bad reputation after the melodramatic corn wad silent film with Mary Pickford, who was 28 years old when the film was made.

I go with the best version, Hayley Mills as a real human being, who was also a real child at the time.

  

Hits the nail on the head!  We should all be glad to be rich!