Doug Shapiro sits down with Shreya Somani, Senior Designer at Arcadis in Washington, D.C., to explore the science and philosophy behind optimism. The conversation weaves through themes of resilience, patience, and curiosity, connecting optimism to the act of questioning, the delay of gratification, and the pursuit of meaning in design and life.
Referenced in the conversation:
Look at your notes.
This is just something that I'd pulled together because you asked me about optimism and I have been look doing the lectures of this one professor and I felt like it just so tied in together with optimism beautifully.
So then I layered another layer of notes about optimism and how it's related. And I know it looks a lot of messy in their equations and stuff, but it's just like. The beginning of optimism and as a concept, why did it start and where did it start? And I was already doing lectures on it, I just didn't know optimism is a word for it.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. Um, I just wish people could see these notes. There's just a lot. I mean, they're organized yet disorganized at the same time. It's like organized chaos on paper. Yes.
Organized
chaos on paper. I love, uh, translating logic to mathematical equations or graphs since I have that background in like business and economics. That becomes very easy for me and then starts looking messy for everyone who looks at my notes.
Um, but essentially this idea was that. Optimism and everything really right. Starts in philosophy, which is too abstract and then comes as a theme in psychology years later, which then becomes associated with how we think and perceive that concept and how we apply it in our lives. And I, the professor I was talking about was this, um, professor Seligman.
He started, um. He started this idea of positive psychology. Before that it was, say, Sigmund Freud and everyone else who were really knowing more about psychology from the aspect of how can we fix. Sorry to say, but fix humans that are not thinking in the same direction as everyone else.
And so it was more of how can you know if someone's schizophrenic, how can we help them? Yeah. How can we understand what they're thinking? And then Professor Seligman came in and he starts his, he has a TED talk too, and he starts his TED talk with a very interesting way of when CNN asked them, describe psychology state today.
He says. Since it's cnn, it's, it's like bite sized, right? So in one word he says, good. And then he's like, no, you, you can use more words, maybe two words. And he says, not good. And then he gets very intrigued. He's like, what do you mean good? And then not get good? And then he says, no, you gotta elaborate more.
What are you talking about? And then he said, this state of psychology is not good enough. And that made complete sense to him because he was trying to say that it's not good enough for, for everyone, you know, for like. Generic humans, how can psychology help them understand how to think better? Okay. And in the think better approach, he brought in positive psychology, and that's where optimism like got a word and became a thing.
He talked about like learned optimism, how he can learn to be optimistic. That was how started. So that is, I
mean, uh, when did this happen?
It happened in the 1970s.
Wow. Not so optimism's. Not even really a, I mean, that's a new term by all standards.
Very new, and that's why. We struggle with being optimistic so many times, right?
Yeah. 'cause that's not our human nature. We're in a, we're very logical. Either you, you're risking everything and there's flight or fight, right? You have to decide what to do. And that's not optimistic. It's not ingrained in our nature. And so that's what he talks about. That optimism is a learned skill. How life for a human can be so much better in the world we live in today.
Not in the savannas out trying to save ourselves from the lions. Oh,
wow.
Yeah. Right. It's like that's intriguing.
Survival and cautiousness kind of fly in the face of optimism in a way. Yeah. Right. Yeah, because, uh, it's, you know, I, I would say it, and my wife would agree that my own optimism. Sometimes makes me a vulnerable target as well, you know?
Yeah. For those reasons.
Yeah. If you were optimistic when you were trying to survive, then you wouldn't think of every single plant that you're eating and think, oh, it might not be good. And so you only eat a little bit of it or serve it to the, you know, animal first or something. So opt. If you were optimistic, then you would not survive.
We wouldn't survive as a species. Right? 'cause there were too many things that could kill us.
Huh? It's almost like I, wow. This is actually fascinating that as a species we may not be wired to be optimistic yet at the same time. I mean, there are some times you want to turn that on and sometimes you wanna turn that off.
Like if you look at the height of the pandemic mm-hmm. Maybe that's not a great time to like flex your optimism.
Yeah.
Right. Yeah. But at the same time, um, you do hear. How optimism it can be genetic, right? Like people can be born with a predisposition, right? Yeah. To be optimistic.
Yeah. But it has changed now, right?
Like if we're talking about the whole evolution of human, and now of course our genetic disposition in makeup is so different than what it was say a couple of thousands of years ago. Yeah. And things change because, right, like genetics, and even if you think about like. Something as small as your gut microbiome, it gets affected by your surrounding and so does your genetic, and so does your makeup and how your brain is evolving by, what are you exposed to as an experience every day?
Uhhuh. And so you evolve and you change. So the genetic makeup that was before where optimism was not. In the genetic disposition. And I'm not a scientist by any means. This is just, this is just me. You're an explorer, right? Uh, yeah. This is me exploring. That's, I love doing that. Yeah. And so it, we've evolved and so our ability to be optimistic has evolved in comparison to what it was before.
And yeah, now we have, you know, it as a part of not philosophy, something as an abstract concept that was like in the. 1750s to like coming to nine seven, sorry, 1970s where it's in psychology and it's like, well guys, we can be optimistic. We can choose to be optimistic. And I have a model for it and it, and so many other people are researching it and it's some, it's a better way of living.
That is wild.
Yeah.
Okay. I kind of want to explore what's on the paper. Um, you said you have a model for this?
Yes. Well, not my model, but Sure. People's models. And, um, this led me, again, I'm a big like eastern philosophy and Eastern psychology and Western, right. So this also kind of related to, there's this question, um, of what's the difference between.
Arjun and they're two different uh, people. They're going to war together. One says that he knows what's right, he just doesn't want to do it. So he doesn't need anyone to tell him. And the other is asking, how can I do? Right? And in these two characters, you would say Arjun is optimistic. Versus the Rio than is not, because Arjun is asking a question in search of a better way.
So he's also hoping, which is the definition of optimism, that you have hopefulness that things are gonna get better than worse. And that same model is in the way that Professor Seligman also talks about a little bit, that when you're in the search of like happiness and optimism. You have to be willing to ask questions.
That's, that's the baseline. Hmm. But then what are you asking questions for? What are you trying to achieve? What are the things that bring you happiness? And that's where he has this, what he calls the PERMA model of wellbeing. And so P stands for positive emotions, which is that optimism. E stands for engagement, R for relationships and for meaning, and A for accomplishments.
And he says that you need. A little bit of all of these to be able to be, have that positive outlook and optimism and just the way that you live.
I, I like how you've, um, captured optimism and connected it to question asking. I. Being an explorer, because I almost like, as you're speaking about this, I'm kind of thinking about optimism as like, some people might consider optimism to be an outcome or the end game.
Mm-hmm. But it's like optimism is actually a process, or it's like a, it's a way of thinking and acting. It's like more like a behavior than what you're trying to get to.
Yeah. It and it. It's cyclical, right? You start with optimism. You end up with optimism, with more optimism, and then that, yeah, and then you become that personality.
Then optimism is your personality. It's, it, it becomes you in a very existential way. I get that. It's sounding, but it, it's a, it's a process, right? You go again and again at it, and that's what makes you be, then you. Reach higher goals than optimism. That, that's one of the questions that I have in my deep questions that I wrote too.
It's like, is happiness the only goal that we're striving towards? Or is there something more than that? And that more than that cannot come till you don't go through the cycle of optimism, I
feel. So this exploration that you've gone on in Red Ink and beautiful lines, um, how does it connect to you?
Personally,
that's a good question. I think
like what's your own history, I guess, with optimism?
My own history with optimism is that. I come from a very different background to, uh, the people that I'm surrounded by today from, uh, a different country, different, you know, I would say. Ways of living lifestyle and the people around me are very routine and what they know is right.
Hmm. And that's how things should be done. And that's how things are done in my family, uh, in a lot of things. And that was the same thing when it came to my education and everything. And that's why my background is in a little bit of business and economics because that's the right thing to study and that's the right thing to do.
And so I started on that journey only to realize that I can be on that journey and be successful, quote unquote, of what they call success. But then I. I went to Europe and I loved architecture. Just looking at it, just loved architecture. And I was like, I would wanna know how people create spaces. Like who are these people who are creating these spaces and making me feel this way?
'cause I can't do that through accounts. I can't make anyone feel anything. I can save them money, but how do I do that? And when I ask that as a question, can I. Do that. Am I allowed to do that? It was a no, no. You have to study what you are studying right now. And it took one and a half years of just asking that again and again to, to finally coming to a point of, yes, you're allowed to explore.
And I think I kept waiting for that answer. Like I didn't stop till I didn't get that answer. And that's my, I think, journey or that's my starting point to even knowing optimism or being an individual or what that's. That's like, and so I still continue asking these questions. I think that that's, that's the reason why I am doing this too.
Wow. Um, that's a, that's an interesting connection of optimism to your personal history there. I I, I bet that's probably a journey that a lot of designers have to go through. Yeah. It's just, 'cause you know, the career is maybe just not as known or, or, um. Supported.
Yeah. Not as supportive, not as, um, advertised.
Yeah. You know, it, it's so close to saying you're an artist and everyone thinks artists don't make money. Yeah. Until they get very famous. And so there's always this society's, always people who love you, always want you to do well and be sufficient and. Design sometimes doesn't come on the top of their list when they think of that to be a profession that suffices your needs.
Um, okay. So let's dial back into these notes. Yeah. What's the biggest epiphany as you dove into optimism to try to kind of decode it?
Mm-hmm.
What's the biggest epiphany that you had as it relates to optimism as a mindset?
um, I've always thought that being present minded. Is optimistic, um, that if you live in the present and you're thinking about where you're now, what you have now and are doing the best with that opportunity, that's optimism. I always thought that.
Yeah.
Um, but then once I dove deeper into this. They're two things, right?
Either you can be present oriented or you can be future oriented. And again, another professor did this, it's a very famous like study. It's the marshmallow temptation study. Oh
yeah, right? Yeah. Where they
put kids in the room and they tell if you want one mar, if you do, you want. A marshmallow and everyone, if you're a kid, you're gonna say yes.
Yeah. There
was one who didn't say yes. He said, no, I don't like marshmallow, I like candy. So he got it with candy. But, um, he was, they were told that, do you want one or two? And then everyone said they want two. So the professor, the teacher said, if you wait, I'll go get the other one. If you wait for 10 minutes, you'll get two.
If you cannot wait and you eat the marshmallow, then you'll just get one. Two divisions, right? Some people waited, some kids waited and some didn't, and then he went back 14 years later to look at how they did in life. And of course he was. Going towards like which ones were more successful versus not. Um, which is where the people who were present oriented and are thinking about the now, what I have in front of myself now is one marshmallow.
I can see one marshmallow, I'll eat it. They're not thinking about that second one 'cause it's not, you know, right there. So they don't wanna delay their gratification. And so they're thinking now and I thought that's optimistic 'cause you're making the best of what you have right now. But the more that I dug into.
Optimism, I realized it's that hope for getting the second marshmallow that makes you wait and delay your gratification. That's, that's truly optimistic.
Wow.
That was my epiphany. 'cause I always, I've always been the person live in the now, do the now, and I'm slowly realizing being future oriented doesn't mean that you have to.
Not be an opportunist now, it just means that you also need to look at the big picture, you know, cut out all the, all the noise and see what you're hoping for, to be in the better in the future. And, and that's optimistic. That's more optimistic, that only thinking of what can I do now?
I think that's a brilliant observation and this delay of gratification.
I've, I've heard of this study. Okay.
Yeah.
And, um. I think it's made quite a few waves actually. It's, and I've seen the videos, the video clips of the kids. It is actually really cute if you Google. Very cute. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, but I've never thought about connecting that to optimism and I, I totally see it.
And in fact, I, I kind of think it's, it's, um. What's the responsibility living on this planet? Mm-hmm. To, to have that sort of mindset.
Yeah. Because if it were not for optimism, and optimism is that feeling right that you, that hope that you have in sight what you are having the hope for, whether that's a world war or climate change and curing global warming that's on you as a human and your morality and your purpose.
But I think that innate. Hope for something. That's what is the purpose of doing anything, right? Like then why else would, how else would one progress or we progress? If it wasn't for that hope, then why would you do anything? Why would you get up in the morning? Hmm. And I think it comes down to every single activity you do if you really break it down and go to your inner self and start asking, why do I do something?
Wow. Yeah. It's this hope to be the best version of yourself. Yeah. Or to have the, you know, best life you can have or make the biggest impact and Yeah. It doesn't happen today. It never happens Today. Never
happens. I won neuro architecture and it, it's been evolving, right. And I see that there's so much scope and I know it now.
Right today, and I want it applicable today. I want my clients to understand that today and, you know, collaborate with neuroscientists today, but it's not gonna happen today. So that doesn't mean I stop designing or I am like, well these are cookie cutter spaces. I can't do anything about it. It's, I'm just one designer in the, so many, and there's so many others thinking now too.
So that means it is going to happen at some point, just not today,
you know? Yeah, I think I'm making sense of something 'cause I've heard this and um, you know, like if someone achieves something absolutely amazing and, uh, it, I've always heard, you know, it just never feels as good as they hoped it would.
You know, because maybe you're saying I want to be the number one tennis player in the world.
Mm-hmm.
Or I wanna win Wimbledon.
Yeah.
You spend your whole life being optimistic about this wild future.
Yeah.
And then you do it and it's over
and it's gone.
Yeah. Yeah. The opt actually out the door kind of goes.
The optimism. Yeah. Because what do you hope for next? Like what's almost like the hoping for is the. It's the juice. Yeah. Is,
is, it's about the journey. And when someone says it and you're on the journey, you feel like, I just wanna get there. You know, screw the journey. I just, yeah, get me there now. But once you're there, then what?
Yeah.
What next becomes the question and so then you kind of forget to enjoy that hope for, you know, that makes you wake up already having one doesn't make you wake up.
Totally. Totally. Um, oh, this is like, this is like a therapy session. I know.
This was, this whole, it's a, it's a combination of a couple of lectures and Ted talks from different people and it was very therapeutic.
I bet. I am. I'm a patient person, but I realize in the last couple of years I've become very impatient. Um, not in a good, like, not like impatient. I want everything done now, but impatient that I want change to happen now, and I expect big change to happen soon because we're all so educated and aware and I'm like, what's taking so long?
That's a fair question.
Can we get there already? And then I realized that that's, that's impatience. And impatience can kind of make you lose optimism. So optimism is also a time game, right? Like you have to wait it, you have to keep the patience. Patience is the trick for being optimistic.
I like that.
Patience is the trick for being a mistake. That's interesting. Yeah. Patience and. I guess resilience,
it builds resilience, right? Again, every positive psychology, um, professor, I don't know so much. I don't read as much about what therapists post or say, but professors I do who are researching this stuff would say that resilience is a byproduct of optimism.
Always, and it even says, you know, the beauty of learned optimism is that it teaches you to challenge our immediate beliefs and question their validity.
Hmm.
And that questioning and that knowing and jumping back out, that's resilience. It, it gave an example too, that an optimistic salesman sells more than a pessimistic salesman, not because the optimistic salesman.
Knows sales better. They just know better how to bounce back up again. I think I went to, if you've, if you know John, um, Edelman, he used to be the CEO of design within Reach. Okay. And now he owns Heller and he's doing a great job at it. And we did a mentorship session with him during ICFF and then we went up to meet him.
And I think the favorite thing that he said, that's gonna stay with me forever. He, he, he brought out a product, right? We were sitting, Sean and I, my husband, and he was like, do you. I'm trying to sell this to you. Do you like this? And we go, um, no. And so he said, most of the people or salesmen were like, oh, well, but this has this, this, this, this features and it's really good and you should just give it a try and whatever.
And he's like, but that's not the right way to do it. You take that product out and you're giving you one in front of them. Do you like this? You get to know them. You bounce back. You don't make it about, why don't you like this? You make it about, what else do you like? What else can I bring you? And that's also building resilience.
Right? That's being optimistic that you will, you are able to give them something. Hmm. I
I wonder if we're taught that, like in design to go back to being a student and go back to crits and defending your work.
Yeah.
Are you, are we teaching that?
Not enough. Not enough sometimes. 'cause critique, um, is also a form of defending, right? Like it's called you need to defend your, your thesis to the jury. And that's such a. Hostile word. It's such a hostile word, you know? It's like you're presenting your case. And even the words that we use to describe it, it's so a case.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, so it's, and words have big effects, you know, what you say. Um, yeah. So, and, and we're not teaching that enough too. The kids either, right? The young brains, the new generation. How's that going to affect them? The system is the system that they're growing up in. Even if they're exposed to tech very soon.
It's not resilient. It doesn't teach you to explore. It doesn't teach you to bounce back. If you're doing something, if you're on an iPad and you wanna go somewhere, right? Even if you're watching as a kid, if you're watching a video and the only options you have is play next, or play something that. You can see is on there, but it's not, it's not explorative in nature.
It's very prescribed. Mm. And so either you do it right or wrong, and if you do it wrong, then you cry. 'cause you, you're not being able to see what you want. And so again, it's, it's not teaching you to be resilient, nothing's teaching you to be resilient anymore.
Hmm mm.
I don't know how I feel about that.
Yeah. Especially when you say, you know, we are connecting resilience to patients and patience to optimism, and it's like
they're all in a big triangle and they're all connected and
Yeah, like how do we introduce. More delay into our, into our life. Like how do we hope for something like, 'cause you know, now even just hoping for something like I, okay.
I found a catalog. I, I was going through some stuff
mm-hmm.
Um, a couple days ago.
Yeah.
In, um, our basement. We have these storage boxes in my, my parents, um, get rid of a lot of things. Mm-hmm. And so they got, they gave me old boxes of stuff. Yeah. They've hung onto
Yeah.
And a lot of it was my old stuff. Yeah.
And I'm going through, and one of them is a, an East Bay catalog. Okay. Which was, you know, a shoe catalog from back in the day. And there was a sports figure on the cover that I liked. Yeah. And so I, apparently I saved that and I'm showing it to my kids. I'm like, Hey, look, this is how we used to buy shoes.
Yeah. You know, we would look through the catalog. Yeah. And then on the back there's this little mailin cardboard, you know, paper slip that you'd fill out and put a stamp on. Yeah. Um, and they were just fascinated. And it was like, yeah. And we would send it in and we'd wait two weeks and the shoes would come.
Yeah. You know, and it's Asians, it's like, you know, and, and, and I remember as a kid ordering those shoes and I'm like, waiting for the mail. You know? Did it come like, oh, it didn't come today. What about tomorrow? You know, it's like waiting for tomorrow.
The anticipation is, yeah. So satisfying.
It is. Yeah. And it's, it's, it, it's satisfying.
And even, even I think about the TV series or you know, like a series comes out and you binge watch it instead of waiting a week. Yeah, Wednesday nights at 8:00 PM it was like, that was the only time you can watch it.
Yeah. And now binge, like binge watching became a thing, only because, I mean, Netflix made it a thing and it's brilliant.
It is for capitalism. I don't know how brilliant it is for humanity though.
So what would be a strategy for. Working anticipation into your life in a healthy, not annoying way.
That's such a hard question. I know.
You know, what is I, I tell you, and, and I do think, I think exercise is a good example of that because you don't see results.
Yeah.
From exercising or feel results. You know? Yeah. You don't feel different the next day. True. It takes weeks, months to feel different, but it does happen.
Yeah. I agree. Actually, that's a very good observation. Exercise is one of those things. It really, you have to keep up with it. You have a lot of distractions in exercise. But it's still one of those activities that just, you can feel it, right? Like it's not just outside of your body. It's an inner body experience and
yeah.
That's, that's great. I also think it really helps to, to push yourself to do just one thing at a time.
Hmm.
And somehow we feel like we're running out of time and so we have to do everything at once. This is you too. Okay. You know, um, but I think. Even if you're not willing to step away from the world and become a sage and not have social media and all of that, right?
Like if you wanna still be a part of today's world and be present. I think the one thing that can definitely help is trying to do one thing at a time.
Yeah. That seems so easy. And you can switch, but it's not, you
can switch between two things.
Yeah.
But one thing at a time. I think that's what I've been trying.
It's so hard because it's so hard. It's just, but yeah, I think. And exercise is one of those things too, right? Like you have, you can't be, you have to exercise and then you have to think of your body and mind connection. That's what my trainer always used to say, mind and body connection. And if you're not doing that, then just don't exercise, don't work out.
She always used to say that, don't come here if you're not slept. You cannot control what's going on inside. And then you're just picking up dumbbells for no reason.
Yeah,
and you can't multitask while working out. You have to just be working out.
Yeah. Um, this has been fascinating. I, it always is.
There is any conversation I've had with you, uh, goes, what is the right word? I, it's, it's not, um, it's never off the rails, but it's never, ever what I expect. It's always, uh, a journey with you.
I'm, I'm glad you feel that way. I hope that my, I, that's my personal goal right there. You can die tomorrow, right?
Anything can happen, but as long as I'm still exploring and learning something new, do I wanna be a teacher or a student? And I always say, I always wanna be a student. I, there's so many teachers out there already that I can learn from. I wanna be a student forever. And that's a, that's a really fun journey to be a student.
Well, today you were a teacher.
By no means you have too much to teach me.
Uh, this has been awesome. Thank you for joining and uh, I happy,
happy to do it.
Yeah. I appreciate the time you gave me.