Can AI make you happy?
How to be optimistic at the time of global turbulence?
Meandering the path towards a better future
As we enter the New Year, I want to share a dose of optimism with you since optimism breeds success while pessimism generally increases the chance of failure. But pessimism is more common than optimism since it triggers either the fighting or escape mode in any living creature, including of course humans, increasing the chances of survival. Therefore, depending slightly on culture, good news is not that often on the agenda, while pessimism is well embedded. However, a pessimistic attitude at the time of serious, near existential threats, which we now face as a civilisation, is destructive and demotivating to take an urgent remedying action.
One way in which we can become more optimistic is to learn how to spot the budding seeds of a new positive long-term trend leading to achieving the desired result. You need to imagine an invisible thread leading from a positive trend towards the intended result, which may take several years or even more to materialize. That positive trend may start at the time, where your actual personal situation is pretty dire, and like a cloud covers the optimistic horizon, as in the above metaphorical image, which I have generated using DALL-E.
