Is optimism a skill?

what if baseline drive in humans was magically double the current? how much more would we get done? how much faster would we try things and learn and improve?

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by default (as in when i’m not actively trying to look) i’m separated from raw sensations through a layer of automatic thoughts. that is:

• default: a throbbing in my fingers -> automatic thought “my hand hurts; this is bad” -> awareness captures the thought’s valence and winces

  but if i turn awareness onto the thought itself, it disappears

• upon introspection: a throbbing in my fingers -> awareness of sensation “my hand is throbbing”

sometimes when i work i’ll enter a state where things are quick/iterative/generative and i excitedly try new things and get feedback fast. other times i’ll still be working on the problem but feel like i’m flailing my body at a brick wall for hours and not make any progress. when i apply that introspection to these moments of flow vs sluggish ones, i notice the difference all comes down to thoughts on axes of optimism/conviction. in the latter state my mind will find every reason why it will fail, or why even if it works the whole problem doesn’t matter, or some other pessimistic thought. but this time although awareness dissipates the thought, something still lingers.

• default: low brain chemicals (during a certain state of my work) -> thought with visualization of the work’s failure or a reason for it -> awareness of the visualization “this will never work”

• upon introspection: i notice the visualization: low brain chemicals (during a certain state of my work) -> awareness of the pessimism. now what?

it’s hard to immediately flip to the productive state of mind. why?

i think maybe because conviction is harder to muster. it’s not just a matter of dealing with the pessimistic thoughts (which awareness can do). there’s a deeper feeling that has to shift.

is it possible to learn to move along the conviction axis at will? or somehow conjure its beneficial feeling without self-deceiving?

if somehow we could, learning to shift our optimism/conviction at will would be seismic.