I can’t speak for others, but this might be extra relevant to this forum — I experienced a shift and became more optimistic when I attempted a startup. Luck may

I can’t speak for others, but this might be extra relevant to this forum — I experienced a shift and became more optimistic when I attempted a startup. Luck may play a part, and it might be a big part, I don’t want to downplay that possibility, since being in a position to do a startup requires some luck, being able to go to college and to write software for a living requires some luck, etc. But I had lucky things happen and still less optimism before running my own business. My personal feeling is that the reason has to do with the mindset that comes from a combination of taking more responsibility for all of my failures (including the business failures, including result of things other people do) and of deciding that I have control over my situation in a broad sense. For example, I could find myself unlucky at any given moment, when I get cheated and lose money, have an accident, someone gets mad at me, or business goes down because of something in the news. All of these things used to make me feel unlucky, but I started to think instead that unlucky things are the result of a situation I put myself into from earlier past decisions. Whatever bad situation comes my way, my life decisions lead me there, so it’s somehow my fault. I started assuming responsibility for all bad luck, and that makes me always ask the question what earlier choices lead me there, and how can I make better choices, even when the answer is thinking about how to avoid unlucky situations that really were out of my control. This might be one reason why successful founders and other optimists often attribute their success to hard work, but I should add that I do believe strongly that luck plays a very big part in success, and there are downsides to forgetting that or being unable to see it. I try not to take all responsibility for the good things that happen to me, even though that makes me inconsistent. That said, one way that I think luck can feed optimism is realizing that because success is lucky, it means I should try a lot of different things rather that work harder and try to fix bad situations. If nine out of ten startups fail, then try ten startups! So… yes my optimism is learned, and luck plays a part. My feeling is that deciding to take responsibility for my failures caused a mental shift towards greater optimism. Maybe that’s rationalization on my part, I can’t tell, but I do feel like it was more than luck.