Robin Roberts on the Skill of Optimism

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

It is so easy to be pessimistic and, in fact, we are evolutionarily wired towards it with a built in negativity bias. This bias can be super useful, because it keeps us on guard for threats. But like all biases, it can warp the way we see the world. This is why optimism can be incredibly helpful. We’re not talking about blind optimism here but more about grounded, realistic and reasonable optimism.

Our guest today, Robin Roberts, has come by this skill the hard way. Not only is she one of the boldest of the boldface names in the news business, where she is forced to confront crime, war, and natural disasters on the regular, but she’s also come through two very serious bouts of cancer.

Roberts is the longtime co-anchor of Good Morning America. She has a new book called, Brighter by the Day: Waking Up to New Hopes and Dreams in which she talks about how she has honed her optimism chops, and how you can, too.

In this episode we talk about:

• How to strengthen your optimism muscle
• Making “one day, day one”
• Operationalizing your goals
• Robin’s meditation practice
• Napping during meditation
• How she gets enough sleep given her crazy schedule
• Envisioning the victory
• Flipping the script so that instead of thinking “what could go wrong?” we think, “what could go right?”

Full Shownotes: www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/robin-roberts-516

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