Embracing optimism and joy for a successful 2023

As we prepare ourselves to hit the ground running for 2023, Victor Perton, founder of The Centre for Optimism, reflects on the year that was and reminds us that the true foundations of success in business (and life!) are a sense of optimism and joy …

December marks my birthday and it’s a birthday which brings some trepidation. The Beatles song When I’m Sixty-Four asks:

“When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?”

Well, my birthday dawned with a zephyr blowing in from the sea, mingling the salt air with the intoxicating aroma of my roses and the glorious start of a sunny day.

And it got even better. That day, ABC Radio ran an hour-long edition of its wonderful Conversations program entitled Victor Perton and the secret to optimism through the sparkling medium, Lisa Leong.

Strangers, acquaintances, friends and family alike called to say they were intrigued and understood my passion for asking people, “What makes you optimistic?” and “What’s been the best thing in your day?”

Lisa Leong asked me, “What makes you optimistic right now, Victor?”

In gratitude and joy, I said, “It’s being here with you. It’s sharing the message of optimism with your global audience and hoping, trusting, that several hundred of them will adopt one of the habits of optimism that we’ve suggested. Whether it’s smiling and saying hello to everyone today, whether it’s laughing more or getting rid of that question, “How are you?”, and replacing it with ‘What’s been the best thing in your day?’”

Those of you who have read my 2022 columns hosted here by the uplifting Flying Solo and Kochie’s Business Builders will recognise the habits I advocate to be more infectiously optimistic, such as:

• Smile and say ‘hello’ to everyone
• Laugh more and have more fun at work. Maybe even laughing yoga?
• Change your greeting to get more stories of hope and optimism
• Share stories of hope and optimism
• Keep a gratitude journal (and say ‘thanks’ much more often)
• Listen to less of the ‘bad news’

The festival of joy and optimism

My 2023 will open a week-long festival of joy and optimism – a collaboration between The Centre for Optimism and The Art and Science of Joy’s Year of Joy.

We will hold some in-person and online events which you’re welcome to join in, or why not host a morning tea or a town hall at work to mark the start of the new year? It could be as simple as going around the room and asking each team member, “What makes you optimistic?” and “What has brought you joy this year?”

The ‘joy’ word is popping up as I listen to speeches, broadcasts and conversation. At my son Ted’s high school valedictory dinner, the deputy headmaster expressed his “joy and optimism” in a year well spent. So, too, joy popped up in the readings time and time again in Ted’s final school carol service as senior chorister and cantor.

What is joy to you?

For me, joy is captured in a moment and time with a feeling of great pleasure and intense happiness. It’s often something good that’s a surprise. I generally find it in bringing happiness to other people and hearing it in their stories of hope and optimism. I find it in soaring music – everything from a Gregorian chant, to a soaring carol by a good choir, to pop songs with optimism and joy as the theme.

Watching my son and his choir reach soaring heights in Christmas hymns this week brought me great joy as the choir sang, “Joyful all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies”, with joy and joyfulness appearing 15 times in the order of service.

My daughter Sophia’s exuberance and feelings after dancing classes was joyful. I even found joy watching her lose a final in a horse-event, yet come back smiling and singing the praises of the horse. That’s success, and winning will come with an attitude like that.

I find joy in a bright orange and purple sunrise; or in a zephyr playing on my skin on a sunny day in these early days of the Australian summer. Every day, in asking people what makes them optimistic, I see the joyful reactions of people to being asked that question, and then again when I share them with our global Centre for Optimism community.

Listen to Dr Amantha Imber on the importance of joy in the workplace on the Flying Solo podcast:

Joy and optimism go hand in hand

Joy appeared early in my study of optimism. I found:

• An optimistic spirit experiences more joy. A joyful soul tends to be more optimistic.
• An optimistic spirit can bring significant benefits, including happiness, joy, active longevity, better health (including lower risks of cardiovascular disease), better sleep, greater resilience, stronger relationships and increased self-mastery.
• Generally, optimists attract other optimists. Positive and optimistic people and their conversations will boost your own optimism, joy and happiness. It can become a virtuous circle, but you first need to seek it out or set it up.

I recently interviewed Jacinta Ermacora, then Chair of Wannon Water, asking her what makes her optimistic. Jacinta told me, “What makes me optimistic is seeing joy in other people; that brings me joy and a real sense of positivity. Also, I have the personality trait of being optimistic; I often see the glass half-full rather than empty. Collaboration is a joy for me. There’s a really powerful feeling – whether it’s a working partnership or a voluntary partnership of people working together – that gives a real sense of ‘we can do anything’; that optimistic feeling.”

A few weeks later, Jacinta was elected to parliament. We need political leaders with a sense of joy and optimism.

The new leader of the Opposition in the Victorian parliament, John Pesutto, told me, “There is a joy, a real joy, in achieving something, particularly as a political leader, on behalf of the people you represent. And it might be something little or something unexpected, or it might be something even grander.”

When I asked amber jewellery designer, Jura Reilly, what makes her optimistic, joy was again at the core: “Optimism comes from deep within your soul and the joy it brings when you create a poem, novel, painting, a piece of jewellery or a new recipe for your family,” Jura told me.

Best-selling 1950s author, Norman Vincent Peale, wrote in The Tough-Minded Optimist: “a physician, in reviewing his practice of some forty years, said that many patients would not have been ill and forced to consult him if they had simply practiced optimism, faith and joy.” He said, “Quite apart from medication, if I can get them to lift themselves mentally for ten minutes every day into an area of pure joy – meaning undiluted optimism – I can get them well and keep them well. So, it seems that medically, also, optimism is important.”

Similarly, Amanda Noz, president of the Professional Women’s Network in France, told me, “Optimism and joy are like best friends entwined together who understand and fuel each other. An optimistic attitude enables people to notice the little things in life that bring joy, and that joy underpins an optimistic outlook towards life. Optimism is a gift to help find joy across time: in the memories from the past, the reality of the present, and the hope for the future. It is my inexorable belief that life will always have moments of joy, even in the hardest of times, and the optimism to think those times will be temporary.”

The much-admired Judy Rodgers, president of Images & Voices of Hope, told me, “It is the nature of the human spirit to express love, peace and joy. We do drift from our true nature in some moments, but time and truth ultimately call us back to who we really are, which is the deepest rationale for optimism.”

And our partner in the Year of Optimism, Andrew Cannon, wisely told me, “Our reality is very much our perception of our reality. Optimism can help many on their path to more joy!”

My new year and 2023 will be blessed by the Year of Joy and the close connection between joy and optimism. I hope you will join us!

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