It’s the last weekend in August. Which means September begins shortly. And we all know what that brings. Our energy changes, our focus gets very clear, and with four months left in the year, some of us, after taking stock of our progress this year, declare our efforts as simply not enough. Yikes!

Optimism does not get easier with age. Mine didn’t, anyway.

I built my muscle young. Every setback I encountered, I always filed as temporary, something to push through, not around. That worked for decades. I built a solid life on it and developed the reputation as the chick who could fall down into any pile of poo and come up smelling like a rose. Every. Damn. Time. Truthfully, it took me years to get comfortable with that label.

Here’s the part I want you to know. That muscle isn’t stronger now that I’m older. Some days it feels like it straight up left the building. So, if you’re waiting for the moment optimism and positivity become automatic, permanent, and unshakeable, you’re waiting for something that isn’t coming. Not for me. Probably not for you either.

So what do we actually do on the days the muscle’s gone?

I put the happy mask on. That sounds like I’m telling you to fake it till you make it, and years ago I would have agreed with that criticism. But something landed in my inbox this week that reframed it for me, and I think it’s true.

Our brain is wired to scan for threat first. That’s its entire job. Keeping us alive.

Which means on a perfectly fine day, our default setting is still asking what’s wrong, what’s missing, what’s about to fall apart next. None of us is broken. We’re running the operating system we were issued at birth.

And what interrupts that scan?

Gratitude, deliberately practiced, is one of the only things that interrupts that scan. Not gratitude as a Pinterest quote, an Instagram meme or a cross-stitched pillow. Gratitude as training.

When we do it enough, our brain starts looking for evidence that things are fine instead of evidence that they’re not. That’s not denial. That’s not toxic positivity. That’s rewiring what we notice, on purpose, because the alternative is letting our nervous system run the show by default.

So the mask isn’t fake. It’s the first move in retraining the filter.

The second thing I do is look sideways. I remind myself, honestly, that someone near me has it worse today. Not to shame my own feelings into silence, but because it’s true, and truth is the only thing that actually settles me. Then I look at what I still have. Not what I lost. What’s still standing.

And then, because none of the above matters if it stays in my head, I get off my ass. I move. Slowly if that’s all there is. Progress that feels glacial is still progress, and the muscle doesn’t care how fast we’re going, only that we ARE going.

None of this is a personality trait I was born with.

It’s a practice I rebuild most mornings, and some mornings I fail at it before 9 a.m. And then try again by noon.

We are all running the same software. Some of us have just spent longer learning how to override it.

I’ll bet there is something gnawing at you about the next four months. What little thing can you put in place to calm the part of the part of your brain still bracing for bad news?