516: Robin Roberts on the Skill of Optimism

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It is so easy to be pessimistic and, in fact, we are evolutionarily wired towards it with a built in negativity bias. This bias can be super useful, because it keeps us on guard for threats. But like all biases, it can warp the way we see the world. This is why optimism can be incredibly helpful. We’re not talking about blind optimism here but more about grounded, realistic and reasonable optimism.

Our guest today, Robin Roberts, has come by this skill the hard way. Not only is she one of the boldest of the boldface names in the news business, where she is forced to confront crime, war, and natural disasters on the regular, but she’s also come through two very serious bouts of cancer.

Roberts is the longtime co-anchor of Good Morning America. She has a new book called, Brighter by the Day: Waking Up to New Hopes and Dreams in which she talks about how she has honed her optimism chops, and how you can, too.

In this episode we talk about:

How to strengthen your optimism muscle
Making “one day, day one”
Operationalizing your goals
Robin’s meditation practice
Napping during meditation
How she gets enough sleep given her crazy schedule
Envisioning the victory
Flipping the script so that instead of thinking “what could go wrong?” we think, “what could go right?”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% happier podcast.
0:06.4	I'm Dan Harris.
0:11.2	Hey gang, it is very, very easy to be pessimistic, especially right now.
0:17.5	But really I should say it's always been the case.
0:19.9	We humans have, as many of you know, an evolutionarily wired negativity bias, which can be super
0:26.1	useful because it keeps us on guard for threats.
0:29.5	But like all biases, it can also warp the way we see the world, which is why optimism
0:36.1	can be incredibly helpful.
0:37.8	And I'm not talking about blind optimism here.
0:40.6	I'm talking about grounded, realistic, reasonable optimism.
0:45.5	My guest today has come by this skill the hard way.
0:50.4	Not only is she one of the boldest of the boldface names in the news business where she
0:55.3	is forced to confront crime, war and natural disasters on the regular, but she's also come
1:00.5	through two very serious and very public bouts of cancer.
1:05.5	Robin Roberts is the longtime co-anchor of Good Morning America.
1:09.4	She's got a new book called Writer by the Day in which she talks about how she has honed
1:14.6	her optimism, chops, and how you can too.
1:17.9	She requested that we do this interview in person, which is a rarity for this show these
1:22.4	days.
1:24.0	But as you'll hear, it makes a significant difference.
1:26.4	Robin has been my friend and colleague and role model for 22 years by my count.
1:31.0	I've sat on the set of GMA with her countless times.
	...

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