2 Things Atomic Habits Taught Me About Resilient Optimism
Read this, and you will have 2 resilient optimism tools you can apply right away.
Most self-help books try to sell you a fantasy version of grand transformation—the kind with dramatic reinventions. I won’t lie. I love those kinds of books. I’m a bit of a change junkie. But James Clear’s Atomic Habits is not like that at all, which is why it broke open my brain and how I think about the change process itself.
What I appreciate most about Clear isn’t that he tells people to build better habits. It’s that he refuses to sell the fantasy that transformation happens in giant leaps. His work speaks to something I’ve seen over and over again in implementation science, in criminal justice, and in my own life, but didn’t always have the words for: meaningful change is usually small, repetitive, and not very sexy.
Clear has reminded me that resilient optimism isn’t an innate personality trait or a fleeting mood. Resilient optimism is an identity built through small, daily habits. Every time you choose to see a setback as a stepping stone, you aren’t just trying to “think positive.” You are casting a micro-vote for the identity of a resilient optimist.
Here are two atomic, as in very small, behavioral changes you can make to help build that identity.
1. Interrupt the Doom Loop with a Habit of Curiosity
One of the first small changes a resilient optimist can tackle is to choose curiosity over certainty, over and over again, even when it is really hard.
Your brain is wired to seek certainty, and that serves you well most of the time. But when you want to create change or continue on a specific path without becoming EFFD, you need to question your brain’s tendency to assume it knows all the facts.
To do this, look at curiosity through Clear’s framework of the Habit Loop: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward.
The Cue: A setback happens (e.g., a project fails, a conversation goes sideways, etc.).
The Craving: Your brain experiences discomfort and craves a sense of control, safety, and immediate relief.
The Response: By default, your brain tries to satisfy that craving by jumping to the toxic certainty of blame, catastrophic thinking, or assumptions. To build resilient optimism, you have to consciously rewrite this step by acknowledging the assumption and choosing to always ask one more question. This is your new response.
The Reward: Instead of the fleeting relief of being angry or defensive, the reward of curiosity gives you new insights, a sense of agency, and a path forward that is likely better.
Here’s What You Can Try
Every day for three weeks, when you are engaging with another person, practice asking one more question. Do this every day for a time, and soon your new automatic response will be to ask questions instead of letting assumptions run unchecked. Curiosity becomes the atomic tool that disrupts the negative feedback loop before it takes over.
Like Clear said in his 3-2-1 newsletter in January 2021: “There are nearly endless opportunities to improve each day and finding them largely boils down to being curious.”
2. Engineer ‘Glimmers’ to Make Resilient Optimism Satisfying
Just as your brain wants certainty, it also wants safety. To keep you safe, your brain is constantly scanning for danger. It wants to catalog everything that’s wrong, broken, and absolutely not your fault. Your job as a resilient optimist is to disrupt that negative scanning pattern.
This is where you can weaponize Clear’s 4th Law of Behavior Change: Make it Satisfying.
Clear explains that your brain experiences a massive spike in dopamine during the anticipation of a reward, not just when you achieve it. If you only let yourself feel good when you reach a life goal, your brain starves for motivation during the daily grind.
Resilient optimists don’t wait for the big win. They look for small wins along the journey. As a dear colleague once told me, “If you want more joy in your life, you have to look for the glimmers of it.”
How to Stack Your Glimmers
Use Clear’s formula for Habit Stacking: pairing a difficult, necessary action with an immediate, joyful reward. By anticipating the glimmer, your brain finds the energy to push through the challenge.
Try stacking your day like this:
Immediately after you finish a tedious project, I will take a quick walk with the dog.
Immediately after I make that hard phone call, I will pour a second cup of coffee.
While I clean the toilet, I will blast my favorite 90s jam.
When you intentionally anchor these little bits of joy to your daily routines, you disrupt your brain’s default cynicism. You learn to find satisfaction in the mundane, which ultimately protects you from the frustration of the setbacks that inevitably arise when you are trying to achieve something big.
Wrapping Up
Neither of these two atomic changes—asking more questions and looking for glimmers of joy—probably feels that remarkable. On their own, they aren’t dramatic, save-the-world kind of changes that give you a high on life that is hard to match. Nope. They are simple and small. But over time, they will help to shape your future self. They will shape what could be.
****
Be the first to read my forthcoming book on resilient optimism. Sign up to be notified at www.dralexandrawalker.com.