A small poke in the ribs from a loved one may help set the tone for the day once your eyes are open. But if we are to aim higher than “I’m alive,” a jolt with more serious voltage may then be required.

Whatever is going on when I wake up in the morning, I engage in an all-over body assessment. Like a pilot checking the dials in the cockpit before takeoff, I check in with my muscles, my ligaments, my mood. Some mornings, I’m feeling spirited and ready to address the day, but others, I would prefer to tug the blankets up over my head and hide from every one of my thoughts and obligations. When I am feeling flat and blah, I realize this is going to be one of those days when I will have to pull out a stop and kick it up a gear.

Optimism is a choice, and it’s yours to make. You want a victory-lap kind of outcome to your day, you gotta work for it. Extreme measures may be called for.

Going for a dive into the deep end of the day right off the bat, one cup of coffee down and another close at hand, I get to my stereo and, as quickly as possible, cut to the chase. On the days when you need all the help you can get, nothing promotes the victory rush like certain pieces of music. Think fast tempi, lots of volume and upward chromatic progressions. I put on circus marches, my all-time favorite go-to piece of music when I feel shitty and that is just too bad. John Philip Sousa, college fight songs, national anthems. Fight. Fight. Fight. And always in a major key. No room for minor-key downers here. Failure is not an option.

Music blasting, I direct myself to my home studio and get moving. I might start out sluggish—even begin at the other end of my energy spectrum with a slow stretch or two, feeling a bit like a woolly mammoth unfreezing from its block of ice—but after a few bars of letting the bold rhythms course through my veins, I am feeling more ready to face the day. As hokey as it sounds, there simply cannot be sustained forward movement in your life without the energy that optimism brings. Who wants to work toward failure?

JUMP FOR JOY

Jumping is one of the greatest movements the body has for building and expressing optimism. We all know this—jacks jump, ropes jump, frogs, horses, kangaroos, everybody jumps—so let’s take off now. But it requires energy, and you are going to have to practice building it like anything else.

Here are three different jumps to get you started. If you are a novice, try them in three stages: practice them first with your fingers, and then use feet still seated. Next get up. No music yet.

Now let’s really kick it up a gear and mix in the music.

Here are three samples of irresistible can-do music.

Go for stomps and joys—stomps and joys are literal dance forms, like the minuet or gigue—high-energy New Orleans marches full of energy. Try “Boogaboo,” a joy by Jelly Roll Morton, and jump. Or “Stompin’ at the Savoy” by Louis Armstrong. Do what it says.

Try on a jump blues such as Lionel Hampton’s “Flying Home.” I defy you to stand still. Jumps are jitterbug, and it is that high velocity and power that got us through World War II.

Then there is always the Ur powerhouse march, the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “Ode to Joy.” The chorus in the last movement, combined with Beethoven’s messianic power, confirms the human potential within us all. This piece is guaranteed to stir you to a recognition of the power that music has to inspire us and get us going.

You can, of course, choose whatever music you like. Look for the maximum-octane music your body already has loaded in its muscle memory from past listenings, then get jumping. It’s visceral; the body takes over and the brain takes a rest. Your reward will be the runner’s endorphins. Literally get high: jump.

What do I mean by “kick into high gear”? So far I have boxed “Take Up Space,” “Mark Your Day,” “Let It Go.” Now, with “Jump For Joy,” you get the picture: the boxes are your verb area. Action in considered motion means dance, so yes, I am indeed reminding you that you, too, my dearest reader are a dancer. And while you’re at it, why not maximize the power input and do it with a community of others?

I have a civilian friend—as we refer to nondancers in my world—who, at age seventy, just signed up for square dancing. Another pal went for Israeli folk dance. Modern dance? Ballet for beginners? Why not? It may not be a pretty picture, but so what? Give it a try. Flushed from pumping, you will be heated, sweating and miles away from any bleakness you might have come in with. If you don’t think dancing is your thing, go for doubles tennis or pickup basketball. Find a group activity with momentum, the key factor to keeping old age away. Don’t just hit a couple of positions—stir things up. Unleash some joy with a community of like-minded souls.

I look for optimism when I select my dancers. All successful dancers I know realize they will not “win” the battle against age, but this does not stop them from working hell for leather now, full commitment. Using optimism as fuel, they choose to dance, fully aware that the time will come when they cannot continue professionally. But up until that time, they are the immortals who, like gods and young children, can be asked to do anything and will find a way. They will put on a show for the folks, and the folks will come along, and in this, there is joy and purpose. You will never find a negative dancer who is working well. Doesn’t exist. Can’t exist. What they do is way too difficult to also sustain a negative mind-set. In working with groups, I have always found that a committed dancer with a positive attitude is more to our advantage than a difficult one with massive talents.

As you move, allow only positive images—adoring crowds yelling, hard-won fights where failure is not an option—to help you turn up the heat and drive harder. High gear is not only faster, it has more power. It is where we have to be in order to accomplish really tough jobs. Believe in yourself and your purpose and keep it going. And talk to the body with kind words—at least as encouraging as you would use to support your best friend. Learn to become your own cheerleader.

We all had ideas of what our life would look like when we were younger, and sometimes it is a tremendous drain on our motivation to look at where we’ve landed and find ourselves short of our intended destination. Maybe you thought you’d be the head of your department by now. Or that you’d have found time to play an instrument. Or that you’d have a partner who loves to travel as much as you do. Yes, it sucks when life doesn’t turn out how we’d have liked, but tough luck.

Too often, aging can promote a condition identified by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania as learned helplessness. This shows up when we are conditioned to expect pain or discomfort and we make a peremptory retreat to avoid those nasty outcomes. We see no way to escape, thus become defeated, acting as though we are completely helpless. In one experiment, young elephants were tied to posts with thick ropes to train them not to escape. Later in life, these elephants, much stronger, required only a small line to hold them fast. They will not even try to break free. Believing we cannot change our outcome leads to lethargy. Negativity and stagnation go hand in hand. We learn to stay put.

The way to boost your mood for real, in a sustained way, is to line up your actions and your values. Practice optimism. Torpor creeps in when we approach our daily lives with dread, and dread emerges when we do not support our pledge. Could we have forgotten our pledge? Go back and look at it now. Where are you coming up short? What in your life is not contributing to fulfilling it? What can you plug into to regain your focus? Short on energy? Go for the marches.

Is optimism more difficult with age? A bit. Philip Roth liked to stare down his face in the mirror early in the morning when he was working and say, “Attack, attack.” Richard Avedon insisted, “Each shoot must be thrilling.” Over long careers, this pair never quit demanding more from their life and work. As time went by, they found refuge and perhaps, even on occasion, a bit of revenge by cranking up the optimism. Their discipline was fierce. The tougher it gets, the more positive you need to be.

Still, even for the faithful, there will be whining days. There will be kvetching. That’s your cue to get funny. Go to laughter; the implosion releases huge energy.

Michael Wex, in Born to Kvetch, tells an anecdote about a man on a train complaining loudly and repeatedly, “Oy, I am thirsty.” Over and over, the man complains about his thirst, until a fellow passenger can take it no longer and fetches the man a cup of water. The man drinks it, then promptly says, “Oy, was I thirsty.” Amusing yes, but illustrative also. It demonstrates two truths about our kvetching: sometimes we get so attached to our grievances that we hate to give them up, and the best person to address the complaint is the complainer.

I fancy myself a stoic, able to endure pain and difficulty. It comes with the territory in dance: we expect to be exhausted. But as I was writing this book, a friend pointed out how much complaining I was doing about my crowded schedule and feeling overloaded.

I had a meltdown day. So I invited my friend, someone from the old school who I knew had been having a hard time herself, to join me for dinner. I figured we’d be misery buddies. When I got to the restaurant, they didn’t want to seat me without her, so I was already in a snit by the time she arrived. Once she sat down and asked how it was going, I laid in. “How’s it going?” I said. “It’s going for shit.” Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.

She looked across the table at me and said, “You’ve become timid. I don’t like to see you being meek.” That was all it took—a sudden flip to see what I looked like from the other side of the table. Had I succumbed to a bout of learned helplessness? Where was my pledge? Jeez Louise. She was right. I’d been on a negativity bender.

When I catch myself kvetching, I try to zoom out, to place myself in the audience of my life so I can get a little perspective—is this a woe worth addressing?—and to determine if I can fix it. That’s where a good kvetch can be useful—it can hit a truth on the head using humor as a hammer. When I find myself kvetching, I ask, Is this something I can change? If not, then I try to shut up and move on and in so doing, set to work on improving my lot.

In 1981, when I was working with legendary actor, song-and-dance man Donald O’Connor, in London during the shoot for the film of Ragtime, he was featured in a number with twenty young ladies. It was always O’Connor at the age of fifty-six (and following health issues, in a corset to help support his weight), who was on his feet first. Unlike the girls, he never marked a moment in a single rehearsal. He was full-out every time—wholehearted every time. He simply did not let down. Fortitude in spades. Growing up in vaudeville, he had a real trooper’s attitude: nothing would stop him. He was from the Buster Keaton school of hard knocks and his attitude was that you don’t get out of a show unless you die. The man was bursting with optimism. Like they say, dying is easy, comedy is hard.

O’Connor understood that to produce positive feelings, you gotta work. He was the guy who, after filming one of Hollywood’s most demanding solos in half a day—“Make ’Em Laugh,” for Singin’ in the Rain—spent the next three days in bed recovering. When he returned to work, he was told that the film had fogged and he would have to reshoot. Right. The show goes on. A given. He didn’t kvetch. He went back to work.

When you are kvetching, ask yourself, What are you complaining about? What is the change that you would like to see happen? Is it something you can fix? Then fix it. Beware making plans that require coordinated efforts with other people, a protracted time line, elaborate equipment, multiple authorities or experts. I repeat: find what you can do for yourself and then fix it.

It was you, my friend, I remind myself, who made this choice. So when you find yourself grousing, my tough-love advice: pull up your socks.

Ironically, protecting our hard-won positivity gains is sometimes best done by learning how to say no. As important as it is to boost your energy with positivity, it is equally important to cut the negative energy from your life. Whether it is an overcrowded schedule, a terrible diet, or giving in to boredom, you need to learn how to say no.

The older I get, the more I say no. I turn down jobs, invitations, interviews, you name it. We usually have a list of good reasons when we accept a new challenge. But we only need one reason—some factor that makes success impossible—to decline. I didn’t appreciate this way back when. I’d dive in to a new situation, ignoring the killer flaw that doomed the enterprise, believing I could overcome it, or that things would change for the better, or I’d get lucky. I was seduced by the glamour of difficulty—and what’s more glamorous than “impossible” or never done before? It was like climbing Mount Everest and praying for a life-threatening storm to make the ascent more meaningful or dramatic. It rarely turned out well. Afterward I’d reproach myself, Why didn’t I trust the voice that said I’m wasting time? Do this enough times and you learn to walk away instead of diving in.

It applies, too, in personal relationships. A friend becomes too demanding, or unreliable, or self-pitying. When you’re inexperienced, you think you can change that person, so you hang in there far beyond what’s healthy for you. Or, if you end the friendship, you worry you have failed. Not so.

We all have friends or relatives who raise the negativity level in the room because they’re pessimistic, contrary, belligerent, opinionated, incurious, uninformed, or otherwise unpleasant. We’re obliged to see them at holidays and social gatherings and make a mental note to steer clear. I have a label for such people: dopamine-negative. The adrenaline surge around them is competitive and unwelcome. It becomes a quest for survival. We don’t get the feel-good chemical blast in their company that being willing to connect with others delivers.

On the other hand, we all know people who put a smile on our faces. We look forward to seeing them with the same fizzy excitation that children feel on Christmas Eve. Their presence is a gift. These are dopamine-positive people. However we define good chemistry, we have it with them.

We need to practice this state of being with like-minded souls in all aspects of our lives, from our careers to our friends. They needn’t be cheerful buffoons, but neither should they be so burdened by complaint and negative energy that they drain yours. Harsh as it may sound, this is not a completely outrageous way to segregate your universe of relationships. We already do this intuitively when we gravitate to cliques of like-minded people at work or rope off a few weekends each year just to spend time with our best friend from college.

What if we formalized the process? Is there a benefit to identifying who it is we are eager to see?

Divide a page into two columns. On the right side, list all the people whose appearance you anticipate with pleasure. On the left side, list those you anticipate with dread. The only criterion here is the dopamine rule. Anticipating each person either gives you a positivity blast or doesn’t. You’re not judging people’s social grace or sweet temper or agreeability, only your level of engagement around them. My dopamine-positive side includes a few curmudgeons. Crankiness doesn’t mean they’re not stimulating.

Next, calculate how much time you spend with people in each group. This is the telling part, the only reason for this exercise. Are you surrounding yourself with people who bring the best out of you or wasting time with people who bring you down? Now that you know, how do you feel about it?

Give yourself permission to say no next time to one of the people on the left side of your paper when they ask you to spend time with them.

After a career of immense productivity as a sculptor and painter of prodigious gifts, Henri Matisse found himself essentially bedridden at the age of seventy-two. First diagnosed with abdominal cancer in 1941, he lived until 1954, creating many works in his last years. Recalling the assemblages he made during his Fauve period half a century earlier, Matisse found new possibilities for working by using his scissors. Lying on his back in bed, with a twelve-foot bamboo cane strapped to his wrist, he was able to paste huge swaths of colored paper on his walls to create works of extraordinary sophistication and joy. His purpose remained strong and when he died he left, taped to his wall, a maquette for a stained-glass window that would be executed two years later.

Fight fight fight—keep chipping at the status quo bias, keep chipping at the funk. Fight fight fight until you can make change—not stasis—the constant. Ultimately your values, faith, beliefs most dearly held are what will support your finale. Visualize. Remember your pledge.

In 1908, when he was just beginning to work as an artist, Matisse wrote, “My destination is always the same but I work out different routes to get there.” In a life filled with many difficulties—cancer, world war, painful divorce—Matisse’s work never abandoned his pledge to find joy in the world around him. “What I dream of is an art of balance, purity and serenity. Devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.” In late photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Matisse holds a living dove in his left hand and, with his right, sketches this bird as an exuberant celebration of life. Ultimately, optimism is a discipline and it was this that steeled Matisse to work through his very last days. “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”