Infectious Optimism: The Why and the How

Watch this inspiring and thought-provoking session with Victor Perton, Founder and Chief Optimism Officer of the Centre for Optimism, as he explores the power of optimism and its impact on leadership, wellbeing, and the culture of our communities.

As a passionate advocate for positive leadership, he invites people everywhere to reflect on one simple question: “What makes you optimistic?” His mission is to foster “realistic and infectiously optimistic leaders.”

With a background as a barrister, mediator and arbitrator, Victor’s career includes 18 years as a parliamentarian, service as Commissioner to the Americas, and a senior advisory role during Australia’s G20 presidency. Regarded as a thought leader in social media, innovation, economic development, e-government and regulatory reform, he has an outstanding track record of driving organisational and personal transformation, as well as technology and trade & investment initiatives. He is also the author of Optimism: The How and Why and The Case for Optimism: The Optimist’s Voices.

A dynamic speaker, moderator and board director, Victor draws on experience in law, economics, innovation, governance and corporate leadership. He is committed to inspiring optimism in boardrooms, schools, institutions and organisations worldwide.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover practical ways to foster optimism in your work and life.

• Learn how optimism can transform leadership and relationships.

• Explore how to create a culture of hope and positivity in your team and community.

This uplifting session will remind you that optimism isn’t naive—it’s powerful, practical, and contagious.

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Kylie:

So, look, thank you so much, everybody. If you're joining us, it's Kylie Davis here from the RISE Initiative. It's great to see so many of you jumping onto the call. We are very honored today to have Victor Perton talk to us about optimism. Victor was a presenter at the Rise Leadership Conference. He is the head of the Optimism Institute, well named and discusses this important issue of optimism extensively around the world and in some very high caliber circles. So we're truly honoured to have you here today, Victor.

I am coming to you all today from Naan country down in Melbourne, and I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we're meeting today, and across Australia and I would like to pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.

We know very much at Rise how important a place is, and having a secure place is. I'm personally living the… all of the fun times that go with changing. Uh, buying and selling a new place, so I know how triggered that can be, and I sit in this space all the time.

So, we acknowledge everyone who's on the call today, thank you. So, Victor, I am going to hand it over to… oh, I'd also really like to thank MRI Software, who are our sponsors of the wellness webinars, and who've made it possible for us to host these incredible events.   Every month. So thank you everybody for joining us. Thank you, Victor. I'm going to hand over, jump off camera, and let you take control and look forward to an injection of optimism. Thank you.

Victor:

Oh, thanks, Kylie, and hello, everyone!   welcome, and what we really encourage is lots of questions and curiosity. I do have a 105-page slide pack for anyone who wants it and… but we're not going to kill you with PowerPoint today. It's all about our conversation and your questions. And actually, when we finish the formal part.

You're welcome to stay online and have a bit of a chat. So, what am I going to do today? What I'm going to start with is, what is optimism?   and then a few of its benefits. Its benefits in terms of health. And Kylie and I were talking off-air before we started on relationships and the benefit optimism has for relationships. For all of you, you know, we all struggle with leadership these days, and strategy, and we're all required to be innovative and resilient, and as Kylie just said, and thrive in change and uncertainty and then what I want to share with you is just a few tips and tricks, just to make yourself more infectiously optimistic and I'll drop some stuff into the chat as we go along, you know, little things like your optimism superpower, which has been. very popular at real estate conferences, and imagine your best possible self. And if you've got questions.

Along the way. So, Cherie, I've put my email in the top, and Kadi can drop it back in if you want the slide pack, I can certainly send that to you. So, what is optimism, and why is it important? Anyone want to throw into the chat what you think optimism is?

For me, I was lucky enough in July to go to England, and I've made many, many of these speeches and I often quote a woman who lived in the 14th century, nearly 650 years ago, Julian of Norwich, and she lived. through the Black Plague and she got sick and, you know, in the Catholic Church, they do a ceremony called extreme action. However she survived, and her parents built her some accommodation next to a little church in Norwich.

Now, she ended up writing the oldest surviving book in English by a woman and in it, there's a single sentence. Oxford University published a new choral piece to her last year. If you go to my website, just look for All Shelby Well. But her famous sentence is, all shall be well.

All shall be well, all manner of things shall be well. And people get that, so you can be in deep trouble now, you can be in all sorts of strife and the like but in the end, things are going to work out and if Julian had lived. 650 years. I reckon she could have written my second favourite definition of optimism which comes from Harvard University.

And its optimism is a belief that good things will happen, and that things will work out in the end. And if anyone's old enough here to remember John Lennon from the Beatles, or whether you like John Lennon's music anyway, John Lennon famously added to it and if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end. So optimism is forward-looking. You know, we're looking at a state of mind, not a state of the world.

So you can get yourself into a funk, into anxiety, watching the news too much, reading the papers too much. Yesterday I was at a wonderful fundraising event for the Smith family, and…People were telling wonderful stories about the kids, you know, who'd been rescued from poverty, and the university courses they were doing now. And there were mainly a group of older ladies, and they were just telling the most incredible jokes and laughing.

Now, why is optimism so good for us, and for our well-being? 5… 7 years ago, Harvard University, Boston University and the American military started a huge study to try and work out people who live a long time, healthy in body, healthy in mind, so healthy longevity.

What is it that makes someone able to live a long time healthy in body and mind? And when they started the study. They thought it was going to be wealth or income, that richer people live longer. Wasn't true. They thought it might be genetics or geography. You know, some of you have probably heard about the blue zones and the like. But no, it wasn't genetics and geography.

The trait that was most associated with healthy longevity is optimism.

No, they were surprised, and I saw pennies thrown into the box there. Optimism is the ability to consider all aspects of a situation, and be comfortable knowing that things will work out for the best. Absolutely brilliant. Penny absolutely nailed it there. Now, when that study was published, people were a bit bewildered, you know, why would optimism be the trait associated with healthy longevity. So a whole lot of universities and research centers started to look at this stuff, and the best study that came out of it was the American Heart Association, which put together a global scientific panel

They came back with an even more extraordinary finding. That optimism is the key protective trait against cancer, heart disease, and dementia and in respect of cancer and heart disease, the key predictor that you would recover under treatment and part of the reason, of course, is the mindset and what happens there. The other reason is that the optimist is more likely to follow the recommendations of the doctor, you know, to go for that daily walk, to take the medications, to change their diet.

And in the case of dementia, and we've had some wonderful people joining these seminars, one in particular who's an ambassador for Dementia Australia, it slows down the progress. So, positive thinking is really good for your health. I'm happy to elaborate more. I was the opening keynote speaker. I spoke for an hour at the Australian Kidney Conference six weeks ago.

So I've got lots and lots I can share with you on that but you're not here just to learn about optimism and health, you're here to learn about optimism and well-being, and how to make it more infectious. So, as I promised you, Kylie mentioned relationships, and the University of Michigan, has had a fascination with optimism and whether you've got a pessimistic or an optimistic spouse and, the findings you'll be pleased to hear is if you've got an optimistic spouse or partner, you are likely to capture those same benefits of optimism as if you're optimistic yourself. So Kylie's husband has hit the jackpot. He's lucky enough to be married to Kylie, who is a great optimist. And for those of you who are married to a bit of a pessimist, or live with a pessimist, there are two conclusions at the end of my presentation, and I hope you use the one that provokes your partner to be that little bit more optimistic. And for those of you who are married or partnered to an optimist, just think about what you're going to do this evening, maybe have a lovely dinner with them and a glass of wine, and just have a cuddle on the couch this evening. Maybe you don't even need to listen to the rest of my presentation.

Now, in the world of real estate, and I know there are people who've joined us who aren't in real estate as well, leadership is key these days, and we're all expected to show it, whether we're, you know, school kids, or we're working in an agency, or a larger organization, or working on our own and the amazing thing about what people want in the mid-2020s is they want infectious optimists with a clear vision. Gallup, the big research organization, polled 52,000 people earlier this year, in 52 countries.

And you know what the clear finding was? That people wanted optimistic leaders who had a clear vision of the future. Now, you're going to laugh when you think about all the billions of dollars that's spent in the world by corporations and governments on fostering leadership programs.

Where do people find their leaders? They find them in the family. 65% of people, of the 52,000 people who answered that, said they found their optimistic leadership in their family. And it was grandparents, uncles, aunts, mum and dad. Sometimes mum and dad, you've got to be in your late 20s or 30s before you realize that they were great leaders.

So have a bit of a think, and maybe, again, as you're listening in, you can drop in the chat, you know, who's the infectious leader in your life? The one that's made the difference, the one that you'll go to if you've got a problem, who's going to lift you?

Now, the problem is really important for us to deal with, and as I was, telling Kylie just as you were joining the conference, I was on a radio station in Melbourne this morning. The Westpac Melbourne Consumer Confidence Index has passed into optimism for the first time in four years and it's really important. The World Economic Forum, for instance, declared at the beginning of this year that the greatest danger to the world economy was declining optimism. And Ipsios, the big polling organization, showed that globally, and especially in the English-speaking world. Optimism is on the decline.

Again, those of you who are in Sydney. The Sydney Business School, the University of Sydney, has said the secret to a strong economy, the secret to a strong organization, the secret to a prosperous individual, is again, that infectious optimism. So, how do we do it? Look, the first thing I reckon, I was with a very senior official from the government at the end of last year, just before Christmas, and she had to finish the meeting, and she said, look, I'm going to my planning meeting for 2025. And I said, I'd like you to try something.

And she tried this. I said, ask the people what has brought them the greatest joy in 2024 and what makes them optimistic for 2025. And she ragged me that night to say it was the best ever meeting she had chaired. So, I'd like you all to think about that. If you're chairing a meeting at work, or at school, or wherever you are. As we're heading towards Christmas, open one of those meetings with what has brought you the greatest joy in 2025 and what are you looking forward to in 2026? What makes you optimistic? And I wouldn't catch them by surprise. If you've got an agenda for the meeting, I'd put it on the agenda. I'd let them know what you're going to do.

The other one, and again, Kylie and I were joking as you joined the conference, I was able to speak at RISE's annual conference last year, which was a very inspiring event. One of the other things that I do suggest is in Australia, changing your greeting question.

You know, when we meet an Australian, we say, g'day, how are you, or hello, how are you, or the like. It bewilders some countries. The Scandinavians all think we're a bit crazy to ask strangers, how are you? In Australia, the typical person answers with, not bad, or not too bad. And we never say, oh my god, what's wrong? We just let it go. Just think of the hundreds of conversations you've had.

Where? You've said, g'day, how are you? And they've said, not bad or not too bad, and then you've just got on. So what I'd like you to try, and we've tried this in prison, we've tried this in hospitals, people have tried it in their companies just for the next week, or the rest of this week, it's, Thursday and Friday, I'd like you to try this.

Get rid of the question, how are you? And replace it with what's been the best thing in your day. And you will find most conversations start with an absolute positive. I did it the other day with a very senior government official in Canberra, and I said, what's been the best thing of your day? And he, you know, had a furrowed brow, and he was thinking and thinking, and he said, to be honest, Victor, it was that first coffee of mine. And of course, I said, well, what sort of coffee do you drink? And it started a whole conversation. So, I can go on and on and on about this. What I'd love you to take away is that change of greeting.

Get rid of… just remember, next time you say, ”G'day, how are you?”, and they say, “Not bad or not too bad.” Remember, Victor slapped his forehead like this and said, what a waste of a question. So, will you all try it today? Just a little love heart or a thumbs up on the chat would be lovely, so I know that some of you are promising to do that. At work, it doesn't matter whether you're in a company, or an NGO, or the like, we all have to do strategy. You know, whether we're doing a personal strategy, or the corporate strategy, and the like.

And I'd argue to you that you can't do strategy unless you're setting up positive scenarios. Unless you're thinking about a positive future. Because if you look at my hands on that left or right from your side. You want the organization to be better at the end of the strategic period than it was at the beginning and so, what you need to do when you're doing strategy, and we've interviewed 400 of the world's leading strategists, they all say that strategy needs to be an optimistic process. And I think it starts with the scenarios. I've been on the board of a water company for 10 years, and we had one of the big four consulting firms come and do scenarios for our strategy.

And the first one was climate change, and basically, our headquarters was under a meter of water. The second one was, oh, young people are more selfish today.

Well, on the second one very generation thinks that the next generation isn't as good as they were, or the like and yet every generation makes the world better, and my daughter's a rower, so I'm often down by the Yarra River, or the Barwon, or even at the Nationals. Those of you in Tasmania, I was down on Lake Barrington, and those of you in Sydney, we were at Penrith.

And when you see those hundreds of young people, you know, in fitness, and trying and being optimistic, I always think the world's gonna be okay. I was on Channel 7 recently, and Mike Amore said, oh, Victor, look, you know, some people in Melbourne will think what you're saying on optimism's a bit weird. And I said to Mark, I said, look.

In a city of 5 million people, there's a million people who know they're optimists, there's a million people who know they're pessimists, there's 3 million in the middle who've never thought about it. But all it takes is the 10,000 on this side, just 10,000 optimists to decide they're going to be more infectiously optimistic, who decide they're going to lead with optimism, whether it's at home or otherwise, that are going to make the difference. And when I think about home, I mustn't make sure I don't forget this. Many of us already ask our children, you know, what's been the best thing in your day?

I was lucky enough, 3 years ago now, to be in a broadcast with the Dalai Lama. And there were 20 of us, and because we were still in COVID, it was on Zoom, a bit like today. And he doesn't have any kids, but God, he's got wisdom. He said, the most important thing we can do for our teenagers is to foster their optimism.

But you can't tell a teenager to be optimistic, you can only model it. So if you've got teenagers or young kids, and you've got that habit of asking them what's been the best thing in your day, tonight I'd like you to try something different. I'd like you to start and say kind of had a good day today, and I did this, or I did that, or I went to this optimism event at Rise, and

What was the best thing in your day? So you're giving them the example, that example of joy, and one of the other things, Joe Nye, who headed up the Harvard School of Leadership, the Kennedy School, he said to me a few years ago, he said, never forget to smell the roses. So always give that example to your kids, too. You pass a rosebush, you hear the fragrance. Oh, you smell the fragrance. Stop and smell the roses. He died a few weeks ago, and I wrote a eulogy, and that was the lead in my eulogy. Never stop smelling the roses.

The third thing is innovation, and you're probably all sick of the word innovation. I think it's a bit misused. So what I like to do is I like to use creativity or inventions. And, I've got a group of friends who are scientists in Canada, and they've done a major study on innovation, optimism, and pessimism. And would you believe that pessimists are the worst at innovation? Because you know, if you're innovating, if you're changing, you've got to try something. First time it won't work, you've got to try something else.

Look, the pessimist gets ground down in the failure and the personal blame. The optimist gets on with it.

I can't use the word on broadcast, but you know what I mean. Something happens, and you've got to keep going. It's a really interesting question. I'll come back to Kylie's great question, in a few minutes, so just don't forget, what is your advice for optimists who live with pessimists on how to deal with the constant negativity?

Of course, unless you're married to them, you'd say, hmm, steer away, but that's not sound advice, because we've all got to stay with family and long-term friends who might be a bit pessimistic and need our help. So I'll come back to that one, Kylie.

The last one, is on resilience. And, you know, we all know that companies and governments are spending billions and billions of dollars on resilience, and there are courses at schools on being resilient.

Remember this, you cannot be resilient unless you're optimistic.

Because what's the point of persisting unless you believe things are going to get better? Remember Mother Julian, who I opened with, who lived in the Black Plague in the 1300s? War everywhere. And she said, All shall be well, all shall be well. Or Viktor Frankl, some of you may have read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. He was a German psychotherapist who survived the Holocaust, and he wrote this fabulous book called Man's Search for Meaning, and in it, there's a chapter called Tragic Optimism. And that is, it doesn't matter whether you've survived a concentration camp or you live in Australia, and, you know, all that's good that's here.

Just do your best. Just do the best with what you've got. So, remember when people say, oh, you've got to be more resilient, or we've got to have a resilience program, always say the fundamental is optimism.

Now, what can we do? Look, number one, I've already shared with you, I'd just like you to try this for the rest of the week. Instead of asking someone, how are you, at the beginning of a conversation. Start with what's been the best thing in your day? And be prepared to answer the question yourself. 

Now, in my experiences, and I do it with everyone now, 50% of people will give you an answer straight away, even though they're surprised they've been asked to think in the greeting. 30% of people will, you know, furrow their brow a bit, and, you know, look a little bit uncertain, and you might have to prompt them a second time. But generally, 4 out of 5 people will start with something really positive and then 1 out of 5 could be having a bad day. You know, that something's gone wrong, they've been in crisis, they've had an argument with someone in their family,

So, in those cases, it gives you permission to have a conversation, because as you know, a problem shared is a problem halved and as I said, I'm not… I'm not telling you to do something that I wouldn't try myself. I recently, on the corner of Collins Street and Elizabeth Street in Melbourne, I asked a young man, I said, what's been the best thing in your day? And he was so enthusiastic, he spoke to me for the next two blocks, telling me about his IT job, he was a migrant from India, and just this joyful conversation. In the end, I just sort of say, look, I've got to go, it's been lovely to talk, but try it out, try it out today, try it out tomorrow, try it out Friday, and honestly, it will make life better.

The second thing that I do and not everyone can do it, not everyone's as extroverted as I am. But I actually say hello to everyone I pass in the street, even in the city. Now, obviously, there are times when there's 100 people coming out of the railway station or the like, and you can't do it. But in general, I just, as I pass towards people.

I look at them, and I just say a cheery good morning, or good afternoon. And, if they pause, I may stop and say, what's been the best thing in your day? And it starts so many conversations. Now. Yeah, a lot of people, you know, you see on the street, you know, they've got their iPhone in front of them, or they're looking in front of you. I won't name the city I was recently in, but just everyone was looking straight ahead. What was interesting was that when I said good morning, or good afternoon, or beautiful day, 9 out of 10 people looked up.

They smiled, and they looked back at me and I had some really good advice from a lady in India who died at the age of 103, and actually worked till she was 102. But she used to say, when you smile, smile with a genuine smile. Most people can't do it. Now, those of you in real estate, of course, you're trained.

You know, to greet the people coming to the house, or people coming into the office, or the commercial things. But so often, it's a perfunctory smile, it's that force. So, if you can really work on it, I had the honor of meeting Bill Clinton and having dinner with him.

Bill Clinton is my rock star for this. He was the President of America in the 1990s, and while he's with you, you're absolutely the center of his attention. And he'll ask you a couple of curious questions, and hearing my Australian accent, we were in California, he started telling everyone else about how he loves Australia, and Port Douglas and Melbourne and, the Indian Ocean swimming in Western Australia. So that notion of smiling and saying hello to everyone, even the people on the phone, even the other day, I was on the tram, and there were a couple of young Chinese students, who had come down from Sydney to go to a K-pop conference in Melbourne. It was just a lovely conversation with me learning more about K-pop, and they were from Hong Kong, and there was just so much in that rich conversation, on the tram.

The third one…I'd like to share with you, is a thing called a gratitude journal. Does anyone here use a gratitude journal? It's a pretty simple thing, it's either keep a nice book by your bed, or you could just keep a pad, or a scrappy piece of paper and this is a good one on that advice, Kylie. Whether you're in your pyjamas or your nightie, just by your bed, just before you're gonna go to bed, just write down the 3 best things in your day. And they can be quite trivial. You know, it could be I had a beautiful cup of coffee, or a lovely toasted sandwich, or my daughter smiled at me.

I did one at a conf… at a local government, and a lady said, I drove my autistic son to school. He was calm. I mean, how much did that tell us about her life? So if you do that, if you just write down, scribble it down, and then the trick with it is the next morning, make that the first thing you read. Whether you're sitting on the toilet, or having a cup of tea, or coffee. That gratitude journal, and those who, if anyone here listened to Stephen, or watched Stephen King movies, or read his books, The Horror Writer… He actually does that every morning. He does gratitude practice, what am I grateful for? And that helps to give him the energy, to write all day, and to write this stuff that could be otherwise grueling. And the trick, Kylie, on that one is when you're writing down your two or three best things, you sort of lean over and say, oh, honey.

What was the best thing in your day? And of course, you know, by the time you've done it a few times in the week, he'll rumble you, but it's a great way of lifting the optimism in your partner. And when I did, in prison. I, was doing a similar event to what we're doing now, and third time I was there, this tall young man who was in there for murder came in, and at the end of the session, he was still a little bit sour, and I said, you know, why did you come to the class? And he said, well, the guy in the cell next to me.

Since he came to your course, he meditates once a day. He keeps a gratitude journal, and he reads me one page of your book every day. And… he said, if I came to your class, you'd give me a copy of the book. Well, you can imagine, I looked up at this young giant and quickly signed a, with love, copy of the book. But when I told my mum about this when I, that night, she said,

You made a difference in one person's life, you know, that this other prisoner meditates once a day, keeps a gratitude journal, and, you know, he shares some optimism with the guy in the cell next to him. And, I can see Jamie's a big fan of that. Look, the other thing I'd love you all to try…

And we've got a few minutes, Kylie, I think, to do this. It is an exercise called, and I'll drop it in the chat again so you can do it at home, I'll just put it in for everyone.

Imagine your best possible self. And, this exercise is fantastic. I do it online with a global community every quarter. So if you do this every 3 months, it's a really good thing. And what you do is. You take a glass of wine, or a whiskey, or whatever, and you imagine yourself in 5 years' time. So, today, the 12th of November, 2030. Are you going to be at work, or are you going to be on holiday? Who are you gonna be with? What are you gonna do for breakfast? What are you gonna do during that day?

And then you write a diary for that day, for that day five years hence. It was very funny, I was at a council the other day, and I was doing a leadership retreat for them, and we did this exercise, and we got everyone to share it and, at the end, we worked out there were only going to be two people in the office. Everyone else was on adventures in Austria and Tahiti, and Bali, and driving across Australia. Only the boss and one of the others was gonna be in the office. And I said, well, you're going to have to plan ahead in 5 years' time, you're going to have to get some temps into the office. It was very, very funny. So give it a crack, it's really a pleasant thing to do.

And if anyone just wants to type into the chat now, if you pause for a minute. And just think, where am I gonna be in 5 years' time? What am I going to be doing? If you want to drop it in the chat and say, look, I'm going to be at work, or I'm going to be on holidays, and where are you going to be on holidays? It's just a really gorgeous thing to do. I did it for an entrepreneur's class at the University of Melbourne, and this nice young Indian man said, I'm going to have the corner office in Mumbai. And we all thought, yeah, there's a young man with ambition. And Sarah, Sarah's sharing with us, sipping a cocktail, in the Mediterranean. Sarah, I think I'll probably be having a… either a pisco sour.

Or, what do you think, a Tequila sunrise. I actually grow some roses that are called Tequila Sunrise, Sarah, and they're sort of orange and yellow, and they're a beautiful fragrance, so… and Sarah's going to be having an Amaretto sour. So, just have a bit of a think ahead, and you can join me on the 1st of December, if you like. You know, we have quite a lot of fun, and we do it every quarter. But just maybe do it at home, try it out and it's just writing a diary for this day. I was at a conference in Melbourne called M2050. And it was trying to get people to think about their lives in Melbourne in 2050, obviously.

And I said to them, I said, well, how can you talk about a city in 2050 and tell the government what to do unless you can think of doing it yourself? And, so I said to them, look, in 2050, I'm going to be 92. So I'm hoping it's gonna be a great city, for old men who love optimism and public policy. And they all laughed.

But you'll laugh too, because at the end of the day, 700 people voted for a vision of Melbourne that was the most optimistic. Cherie is sharing with us. I'm quite sure I will still be at work, but I will be thankful nonetheless. And will you be taking someone to a nice lunch, Cherie, or will you be having drinks after work? Or will you be asking people what's been the best thing in your day, and getting those wonderful answers? The other thing I'd love you to have a think about

We've done this at a real estate conference in Queensland, actually. Your Optimism Superpower. I've just dropped it into the chat, and there's a quiz version of it, and there's a web version. And, I just want you to pick what sort of optimist you feel you are. Are you, like me, a radical optimist, or… My gender pronouns are pollyanna optimist, or you are a glass overflowing optimist. Are you a cautious optimist? Are you a purposeful optimist? There's about 150 that I've got listed in that URL that I've just shared with you. And, what you do is you pick one of those optimisms. And you write a paragraph about what it means in your life, and how it changes your life. And, when I did it in Queensland, one of the guys said, Oh, I'm a learned optimist. He said my parents were so negative.

You'd watch TV with them, you know, if it was football, the coaches would get it wrong. If it was the politicians, the politicians were getting it wrong. Everything was miserable, he said. He said, I'm never gonna be like them. I'm gonna be a learned optimist and, another woman on the other side of the room said, look, I've got to speak straight away. I'm the same. I choose to be optimistic. So, look, I think that's enough of me talking so much. Kylie's going to help us, answer questions, and obviously, you know, when we get to the end, you know, you can all join in conversation, and the like.

So, what I'd just like you to remember is that optimism isn't a silver lining in every dark cloud. An optimist is entitled to be angry. Right, you're entitled to be frustrated. But what's interesting is you don't carry it. So the Vienna Medical School, for instance, showed that optimists sleep better. Why do optimists sleep better? Because we've actually got the same anxieties, we're in the same traffic jams, we've got the same customer ringing up who's angry, or upset with us, or the like.

The optimists the Vienna Medical School found tends to put it in place. Nothing I can do about it today, I'll do it in the morning. And they actually showed that optimists sleep better. But also, more sleep helps you to be more optimistic. And Jen, has shared there that she's a realistic optimist. And I often say to people that optimism is realism.

If you want a lovely little piece of homework, there's a beautiful book by a Swedish doctor called Hans Rosling, and it's called Factfulness, and… He shows why so many people in the world misunderstand the world by thinking that it's all going wrong. And he used to go to all these big global conferences and ask the world's leaders to give some answers on facts, and they were always wrong on the negative. And if I share a funny story with you, in June of last year, I was in Toronto with my daughter, and we were sitting with a group of 17-year-olds, and they were all very negative on climate, and very negative on the future of the world. So I wanted to buy each of them a copy of this book and I went to 5 bookshops in Toronto, and couldn't find it. And then I went to this second-hand bookstore, and I said, oh, have you got a copy? And I looked on the shelf, and the owner said, look, if I could get it, I'd get it. And as I'm walking out of the store, there were 9 copies on the corner of one of the tables and so I took them back to him and bought all 9 of them, and, I think it was just a sign, so I gave, 7 of them to these, 17-year-old girls to cheer them up, and gave away the other two. But if you can get a copy of Hans Rosling's Factfulness, I think it's on Kindle, or the like, it's a very uplifting book. Well, what do you reckon, Kylie?

Victor:

Shall we see if there's some more questions from the team, or do you want to throw some tough questions at me?

Kylie:

I've got a couple of questions, Victor. So, looking at the optimism superpowers. I would never have thought that there could be so many different ways to be optimistic. So, I mean, that's awesome for a start. But what are some of the key like, what's the framework for this? What are some… some of them seem a little bit more realistic, or kind of grounded, others are a little bit more, sort of, you know, higher, I guess, things… like, just sort of imagining things just being better. But what is the framework for the different types of optimism?

Victor:

Yeah, look, it's really… Kylie, when I started, if people have a look at the quiz version of it, they'll see, oh, there were only about 20 to start with, and I had about 20. And then, as I keep reading, Kylie, every morning I wake up about 4.30 or 5, and I read Optimism for an hour, and I keep coming across new expressions that I've never seen before.

Look, you know, typically, there are people who are cautiously optimistic. You know, they're a bit embarrassed to say they're optimists, and you often see it in the newspapers when economists or the like are speaking.

They talk about cautious optimism. And then those of us like me, or some of the people in the IT industry in Silicon Valley, you know, people working on robotics or AI, they tend to be more radically optimistic. So, you know, I look at everything. So this morning when I was on 3AW, you know, the guys, Russ and Ross said, God, you know a lot of good things are happening in the country. Yeah, and I was talking about, you know, the number of whales going up the coast, Kylie, 50,000 of them now. You know, koalas, the population is increasing. You know, we read about Trump and his tariffs, and yet Australian beef sales to America have never been higher. So I think the trick, Kylie, is, you know, to expose yourself to the good news and, you know, obviously, I'm a glass overflowing, but I think it's sufficient to be a glass half full, or as those two, you know, CEOs of real estate companies said.

They were learned optimists, and one of my friends, she's Irish, you know, and the Irish tend to have a dark humor, and she said, “Look.I never knew I was an optimist till I met you, Vic”

And she's become an absolute expert in learning optimism, by just trying these little experiments of sharing more happy stories, telling more jokes, laughing more. One of the things I do, Kylie, is I do laughing yoga. It's a bit too hard. To do it on a webinar, but yesterday, I had 100 ladies from the View community, you know, they fundraise for the Smith family, and we ended up with a minute of laughter yoga and, it happened to me the other… 

Last year, there's a conference called the Intelligent Water Networks, and it was about 100 engineers, Kylie. And, the chairman had had me come to his company, so he said, oh, Vic, do you think you could do that laughter yoga thing again? Well, 179 of the engineers were laughing their heads off, Kylie. One of them looked bewildered, but yeah. Laughter and the like. If we can do more of that, you know, life is a lot better.

Kylie:

Yeah, and I think this ties in a lot, too, to what you… what we know around the neuroscience of it, too, right? Around what you focus on is what you see.

Victor:

Oh, honey, that is so brilliant.

Kylie:

Yeah.

Victor:

Kylie, you've nailed it. I teach public policy to federal public servants and one of the things I think… I was in a roundtable on artificial intelligence, Kylie, and one of the people in the room said, oh my god, is this going to be the end of critical thinking? And I often think, Kylie, in Australia, critical thinking has become criticising thinking.

So I love appreciative inquiry, Kylie. So instead of, you know, the man or woman leaning over the board table, waiting to say, but… You always use AND. You do strength-based, and the guy who came up with it, a guy called David Cooper Ryder, Kylie, you could be his doppelganger, because he says exactly what you say. If you want to change a human society or human organization for the better.

You ask them the questions that head them in that direction. And the positive questions that you ask, Kylie. Everyone on this can learn. One thing… one trick, I had a CEO ask me how to do this, Kylie, and I said to her, the first thing you can do is put a butt jar on the board table.

Kylie:

Better than a swearjot.

Victor:

So you put a dollar in, every time someone says butt, and you buy the cinnamon donuts on Friday, based on how many butts there have been.

Kylie:

Do you get… do you get donuts for us putting lots of butts in, or for not having butts?

Victor:

I go to… I won't name the particular government department that might do health, Kylie, and they've got the best cafe downstairs with cinnamon donuts. So, whenever I'm doing a meeting there, I buy 25 cinnamon donuts. They then put up a sign to say, cinnamon donuts sold out. They've got to make a new batch. God, it cheers up the meetings, no end, Kylie.

Kylie:

Nothing like a bit of sugar. Absolutely nothing like a bit of sugar. Does anyone have any questions or comments or observations that you'd like to share with Victor? I do so love hearing you speak, Victor. It does genuinely cheer a girl up, there's absolutely no doubt about that.

Victor:

Well, Sri Kanth.

Kylie:

Yeah.

Victor:

I've been practicing replacing BUT with AND. It's been a great mind shift. So you don't have to believe me and Kylie, guys. Listen to Sri Kanth. Just for the rest of this year.

You know, when you're looking at an email you're sending, make sure there's no BUT, and when you're speaking, make sure there's no BUT. There's lots of other words you can use, but the best one is AND. Sri Kanth, that is just so marvellous and so wise.

Kylie:

So, Victor, what, It's inter… I'm always curious about pessimists, though, because I think, what we know from the work that we've done at RISE, and what we learn and read about at RISE, and… and for those who haven't seen the… or read the article that we did with Milo Wilkinson, she is a fabulous, you know, a neuroscientist, a psychologist, and criminologist, so she has so much knowledge in this space. But what we… what we know is that, like, sometimes… Well, negativity or pessimism is actually our brains trying to keep us safe.

And so, how does optimism keep us safe?

Victor:

Yeah, there's a really, in fact, the science is so fresh on this. There was a study that came out of Japan two months ago, Kylie. They put 80 people under an MRI scanner. And they fed them visions of the future, both good and bad. And they, before they put them under, they, you know, did a test on whether they're optimistic or pessimistic. You know, there's some well-known psychological tests on that.

John, the really interesting thing, Kylie, is the optimists, the front of their brains lit up under the MRI. So, you know, where your intelligence, where your creativity, you know, where your good sense is. The optimists all lit up at the front of the brain, and that's where you want to light up when you're looking for solutions. Pessimists, on the other hand, Kylie, the light came from all different parts of the brain, different bits of anxiety.

Kylie:

Hmm.

Victor:

And so it is, you know, the brain science is saying it is quite… Now, you can have optimism and pessimism. I mean, as I said earlier, Kylie, you know, you can be angry, you can have grief, you can be sad, you can be scared if you're an optimist.

But my friend, I don't know if you've ever heard of John Hegel, who ran the Deloitte Center for the Edge in Silicon Valley for, I think, 30 or 40 years. He wrote a wonderful book after COVID, called The Journey Beyond Fear, Kylie and have a guess what the two most important things are to solve the problem of fear.

Curiosity, which, you know, you are just the exemplar of and optimism. So the two run together, so, and in fact, I had a wonderful podcast two weeks ago, Kylie, with a professor called Angus Fletcher from Ohio State. And, he's the professor of storytelling and Leadership and his science, like the lady you've just referred to, is neuroscience, and he works with the American Special Forces. You know, the people who are trained to run towards an explosion, not away and he said what they do is they do storytelling, Kylie, where these people have surprised themselves with success. So that optimism becomes can-do not could do. So these guys are in the most fearful positions. You know, there's machine guns going off, or there's been a big explosion and you'll love this as a woman, they're called the intuitives. And women are more, you know, intuitive than men in general.

But these guys are trained to be intuitive, so that by the time they reach the site of the explosion or the disaster, they've already started to figure out what could be going wrong. So I think for instance, yeah, so anyone who wants to look that up, Angus Fletcher, who's got a new book called The Primal Intelligence, he would say you are safer as an optimist being curious than you would be as a pessimist and a scaredy cat.

Kylie:

Yeah, awesome. And look, Victor, I'm not sure if you were teasing, is there a 120 slide deck going around that people need to…

Victor:

Well, because we have.

Kylie:

I've had some requests.

Victor:

Do you want me to email… People can email me directly, or I'll send it to you. Yeah, yeah, there is a 120-page slide deck, and that's why I don't use it. Death by PowerPoint, but people are very welcome to it. And the website's got literally a thousand pages. You'll laugh at this. The most popular page on our website is that Mother Julie and I referred to earlier. All shall be well, all shall be well. We get nearly 600 visitors a week. The second one is the opposite. It's a Marxist called Gramsky who famously talked about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.

So we've got a bit of everything for everyone. If you're religious, or you're agnostic or atheist, then go to the website at the Centre for Optimism, and there's a thousand pages, and as you said, Kylie, we've got nearly 200 expressions of optimism, which people can pick up there.

Kylie:

Awesome, and I've shared your email, Victor, and I… and I can… and look, I think…

Victor:

You know, there are days when just sitting down and reading 20 or 30 of those slides, or having them available to have a quick flick through, even if the only place you can do that is on the loo, would be… Well, and the quotes, what I do, and never think about you know, when I share quotes from people, you know, and they're not even necessarily famous people, I mean, I, you know, I've interviewed famous people on what makes them optimistic, you know, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, and you need to be an optimist to be the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, it's a tough job. But almost everyone that I've shared, you know, if someone thinks about what makes me optimistic, and shares it with other people, people are uplifted.

You know, I just… I had the head of News Limited, Victoria, and Tasmania, Agostino, on my podcast last week, and I just popped up a quote from him on what makes him optimistic, which is people. You know, he believes in people, and… the hundreds and hundreds of messages that have come through of people just saying, I love it. So, if everyone could have a think about that at work.

You know, maybe, as I said, put it on the agenda, don't catch people by surprise, but before the end of the year, the next meeting at work. Ask people what's brought you the greatest joy in 2025, and what makes you optimistic for 2026. I guarantee it will be the best meeting you ever have, and you'll be surprised. You know, some people will talk about family. Some people will talk about pets. Some people will talk about their work, and it's fascinating. When you ask people what makes you optimistic, we've got 40,000 answers, Kylie, and except for the ones where people have put in one word, you know, like family, or hope, or the like, I reckon we've got 27,000 different answers.

Kylie:

It would be great to do a quick straw poll and see if people on the call are willing to pop in what they are optimistic about at the moment, if you're up for that.

Victor:

Brilliant question. Brilliant question, Kylie.

Kylie:

Anyone wants to.

Victor:

And it can be a life experience. You know, there was a lovely lady in Shepparton who died recently at the age of 107, and she was interviewed by a current affair at the age of 106, and she said, I'm an optimist. She says, you know, I can't do anything to change what I did yesterday. Whatever I do today, the sun will still rise tomorrow. And today, I just take joy in everything I do, and great advice from someone who's 106, isn't it?

Kylie:

Mmm, fantastic. Has anyone got any things to pop into the… into the chat to share? I have shared the link, Victor, of Mother Julian.

Victor:

Oh, yeah, read it.

Kylie:

Cut up.

Victor:

Yeah, no, she's really, really interesting. When you have a look at it, I think a lot of students have to write essays about her, so they come to our website and have a look there. And there's a lovely thing from Cherie there. “No questions, but honestly, I'm so thankful for this webinar and for Victor's infectious optimism.”

You know, and it came at a perfect time when expectations in the property management are very high. And that's, you know, we've got to stay relaxed, we've got to stay optimistic. And surround yourself with optimists. Kylie, I did this… a similar thing to this for the tax department in New Zealand. And the best thing I did was 10 of the people out of the 100 are still meeting two years later. Every Friday, they get together, they call themselves the ambassadors of Optimism.

Kylie:

And they just have a coffee every week, just to lift themselves for the rest of the week. That's great. I have another question about the application of it in real estate, because like we were sharing just before we jumped on the call, we are in the process of selling and buying a new home. And even though I have done a lot of research, and I know the intellectual side of it, as I'm sure most people on the call do, I have absolutely been gobsmacked at how just triggering the whole, like, you know, once the minute your home is changing.

How much goes on with that? So, how do we, as real estate agents and property managers, work with our clients to keep them optimistic around some of the fears or scary things around buying and selling?

Victor:

Yeah, look, just part of it is the greeting. You know, it's a bit like when I met Bill Clinton, you know, for that… for the first 2 minutes, I was his entire life. You can just concentrate on the person in front of you. And ask them a couple of curious questions. Yeah, number one, you know, is establishing that rapport that is so important. And then secondly, yeah, sure, it is a tense time, and, you know, we've actually done a… we do a lot of stuff on grief.

You know, how does the optimist help people with grief? And there is a little bit of grief, isn't it? When you're a real estate agent, and, you know, you thought you were going to make the sale, or you thought that you were going to get the new property as part of your responsibility, or you've got the person in front of you who's disappointed, you know, you had 10 people bidding vigorously.

You know, and only one can win.

Kylie:

Again, if I come back to Hegel's.

Victor:

curiosity… Optimism, and then the other thing is empathy. I am probably a bit late in the seminar, but I also teach something called empathy mapping.

And that is, you know, to learn more and more about the person in front of you, so you can demonstrate a real empathy. So, you know, if they are disappointed and they are sad, you know, that they didn't get the property and the like. Yeah, they have that conversation, and, you know, they might not vent, but they might express their sadness. And again, just listening to them, you know, a kind word, is often a big part of that. And then for you, as an agent, or, as a manager, or the like.

The important thing is to make sure, whenever you've got the option, to surround yourself by positive people. You know, as we talked earlier, Kylie, I mean, we can't avoid, you know, if you've got a miserable partner, or you've got a miserable grandparent, or parent, or the like, you know, your family responsibility is still to spend time with them and to share with them. But, you know the Greek philosopher Epicurus? Often misinterpreted in the West, people think Epicurean is all about good food. Epicurus said when you're doing a dinner party or having a meal, he said, it's terrible to eat on your own.

Always choose positive people.

Choose a positive place, and then the food will look after itself.

Kylie:

Awesome. Awesome. We've had a lovely comment, too, from Sarah. She's very optimistic about moving into her new home.

Victor:

Exactly. Oh, how fantastic. And Sarah, will you plant roses? I've… in the front, on my nature strip, I've planted roses called Fearless. And they are the most beautiful oranges, or the other one, which I was sharing earlier with my fellow drinker, who's going to be drinking on the 12th of November 2030. Tequila Sunrise is another beautiful one, Sarah, that will get a great aroma in your garden.

Kylie:

Fantastic. Well, look, Victor, I'm, I'm conscious of the time. It has been absolutely wonderful. If there's any last, last chance and last call for anyone who wants to, make any comments or, or share any… or have, ask any questions but otherwise, we might wrap up and let everyone get on with their day with a glader heart, I think.

Victor: 

Exactly. Well, I'm gonna go outside and smell those roses. Remember, always smell the roses. Absolutely. And just have a wonderful, wonderful day, and remember what I said.

Don't say, how are you to anyone today, it's what's been the best thing in your day.

Kylie:

Thank you so much, Victor. And look, there are some really great exercises in the RealCare app, just to give ourselves one last little plug. If you haven't downloaded it, please use the QR code on the screen. Some exercises in there to help you around gratitude, which can really support optimism.

Victor:

Kylie, before we go, I've just got to thank you for the wonderful work you do.

Kylie:

Oh, thank you!

Victor:

It is just so fantastic. And, you know, since I spoke at your conference, I've had the opportunity to speak at a number of real estate firms that have followed up and said that we want you to come and talk to our team. The love and the passion that you bring to your work – it's just wonderful. In a world that's becoming too anxious, in a world where too many people are giving way to depression, you are a shining light in the world. So, congratulations to you, to your team, and to the leadership group that helped to make it so successful.

Kylie:

Thank you so much, Victor. That means the world. Thank you. And… but it is truly an honour and a privilege, and we… and we love doing this work. So, thank you, everyone. So, thank you, everyone who is on the call, and thank you to, Victor.

I love that there is an Optimism Institute, and thank you for making that possible. We need more of those things in the world. And also, if you have an event coming up, please book Victor, because the laughing yoga is… will absolutely make your year, I swear to God. We did it at Ryan.

Victor:

We did it at your conference!

Kylie:

We did it, Ryan, it was the best way to end the conference ever. Thank you so much. So, look, we're going to sign off, but thank you, everyone. It's been great to have you. We… I think we have one more wellness webinar for December, and then we will be back in February, but we will be sending out details very shortly for our December one. Thank you so much, everyone. Speak to you soon.