One of the key practices in the Mindfulness for a Messy Life program is Optimism. Not the happy-face-emoji version of optimism we so often see espoused as a mental health panacea, but a grounded, clear-eyed optimism. The kind that doesn’t ask us to superimpose a blanket of feel-goodness over layers of misery but rather, creates a sense of possibility based on a recognition both of what we’re capable of, and the actions needed to make the most of that capability.

This is what I call Empowered Optimism.