Most people start life optimistic. You grow up around parents, teachers, and adults who want you to succeed. Their help is mostly selfless. Then you enter the real world, where incentives shift and the ambient level of opportunism rises. If you’re not deliberate, your worldview slides from positive‑sum to zero‑sum. Optimism hardens into vigilance.
Doing business accelerates this shift. When you’re young and building something new, you meet many people who appear eager to help—until you realize they’re looking for leverage. I still remember a meeting where someone offered us “help”, only to reveal at the last minute that what they really wanted was a slice of the company. After enough repetitions, you start to expect the shark behind the smile. Noticing this pattern is healthy; letting it define your worldview is not.
But to do anything great, you have to persevere. Creating something new requires optimism that borders on irrational. The path is mostly adversity: deals that fall apart late, advisors who become extractive, customers who want concessions instead of partnership. The entrepreneurs I admire weren’t just resilient—they stayed positive in environments built to produce cynicism. They updated their model of the world without letting it shrink them.
One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t always control outcomes or other people’s perceptions of you. What you can control is how you choose to react. Winners don’t avoid emotions—they just return to baseline faster. Most people stay on the emotional rollercoaster for weeks. The highs make them complacent; the lows make them spiral. Win big? Back to work tomorrow. Lose everything? Back to work tomorrow. Feel it, process it, and return to neutral. Maturity is testing reality without letting it turn you pessimistic. Not everyone has good intentions. Some incentives reward extraction over creation. But you can still assume good intent—carefully, not blindly. Updating your model of the world is necessary; downgrading your spirit is optional.
Positivity isn’t naïveté. It’s the belief that even in a flawed, sometimes transactional world, creation beats extraction and the future can be better than the present. It’s a stance toward life: that progress is possible, that people can surprise you, that your effort matters.
This past year exposed me to parts of the world I wasn’t prepared for, and I saw how quickly cynicism can creep in. But conversations with my team reminded me why I want to stay positive. Positivity is what makes hard things possible. It holds teams together. It creates space for new ideas. It’s the force multiplier behind everything worth building.
And it’s something I intend to protect—in myself, in the people I work with, and in the family I’ll build one day.