Hello and welcome to the Mindful Kind podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Cable, author of the

Mindfulkind book, Mindfulness Teacher and blogger at Rachelcable.com. Each week this podcast will bring

meaningful tips, tools and strategies so you can manage stress and live more mindfully in the modern world.

Hello and welcome to episode 296 of the Mindful Kind podcast. Okay, so on this episode I thought

I'd talk about difficult situations and how to try and be more optimistic about them.

I'll be sharing some practical strategies that you can try,

but first I thought I'd explain why this can be a really important thing to try to do sometimes.

So a few weeks ago, I was asked to speak at an online event about motivation and optimism,

and during my research, I actually revisited episode 114 of the Mindful Kind podcast called

Outlooks on Life, Optimism. In that episode, I mentioned that optimism has several pros and cons,

and it was actually really fun going back to it, because at the time of recording that episode,

I was still living in the city and dreaming

about earning enough of an income from my business to quit my part-time job, and I really

hope to get a second dog. And now all of those things have happened, which made me stop and

think about the journey I've been on over the last few years and reminded me to practice

gratitude for it all. So I do recommend

that you go back to that episode number 114 to learn a little bit more about optimism. But what I want

to talk about on this episode is how optimism can be cultivated because I think it is something that

you can learn about and practice. Now, I think it can be more difficult to put into practice during tough times,

which is why I recommend experimenting with the strategies I'll be sharing on a regular basis,

not just when you're having a really challenging day.

Think of practicing optimism like playing chess.

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