Wednesday Wisdom: Psychotic Optimism

Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Motivation

Sitting in the audience at American High in Liverpool celebrating the first anniversary of the Syracuse Actors Studio, an important question was asked from the audience to the man on the screen, Mark Wheeler, a producer of films, joining the conversation from Belfast. The question to him was, “How do you keep going after facing rejection?” The simple reply is, “Psychotic Optimism.”Psychotic optimism is tenacity to finish anything you are so passionate about that you can’t stop. He said, “Admit when you don’t know everything, and learn from complex, interesting people.”  

This made perfect sense to me as a long-time woman entrepreneur with a deep passion for changing the financial impact women could make by buying from and hiring other women. I decided to check out the official description of “Psychotic Optimism” online since I thought it was a cool term. Psychology Today said, “Psychotic optimism is not a recognized term in psychology. However, optimism is a positive mindset that anticipates positive circumstances and improved outcomes. It doesn’t mean engaging in wishful or fantastic thinking, but rather a way of looking at the world that gives more agency to the optimist.”

I like it! I think I was living it this weekend, running the Syracuse Half Marathon with bronchitis, imagining I would finish, and not realizing until a day later that I ran this year’s half marathon the fastest I had ever run by 6 seconds. I think somewhere inside myself, I knew I had to be “a psychotic optimist” to even run it being sick.

Looking at your entrepreneurial life, you’ll remember many times when your drive, tenacity, and pure optimism made you succeed. So, today, I hope you retrace some high points in your career where being a psychotic optimist carried you through, got the work done, and eventually made you soar. Perhaps your example gave others reasons to rise, too.

We all glean golden nuggets of inspiration from others, especially when gathered in a crowd listening to wisdom from people in and outside of our career field. The next time you have an opportunity to go somewhere unfamiliar and listen to people not in your career lane, take them up on the offer and go there with psychotic optimism.