Title: Background: I&#x27;m a sole founder of a startup with about 10 people.<p>I find it difficult to maintain an optimistic state-of-mind. I often slip into pessimism.<p>I have times where I feel very optimistic, I know I’m in the right mindset and ready to be productive, charismatic, effective etc.. Sometimes that can be in a social work situation, it could be while giving a talk, it could be while meeting someone new, or it could be feeling good about some new piece of work, and focussed to make progress with it. The feeling is optimistic, focussed, driven, confident and clear minded. Like I can dive into any tricky problem and solve it, or roll up my sleeves and get a certain piece of work done in a phenomenal way. That’s the best version of me, I’m happy in those moments, and I’d like to be like that at all times, from the moment I wake up.<p>However, I frequently am not in that state. I feel distracted, un-motivated, pessimistic. I ruminate, I feel stressed and frustrated with situations. Sometimes, I have a meeting coming up which I know it’s important to be optimistic and effective, to be in that state of mind. But sitting there, feeling pessimistic, it feels like it’d be impossible to switch to feeling optimistic. The meeting can go, and I end feeling unsatisfied with how I was - not warm, not projecting energy or focus, but actually un-focussed and potentially de-railing the conversation.<p>In other words, I spend most of my time in a pessimistic state of mind, and I can’t easily change that. Googling all of this, the most typical result is &quot;burn out&quot;, which may be the case. I haven&#x27;t taken a _really long_ break, but I have taken breaks, holidays, disconnected etc.. for up to 2 weeks. I feel refreshed, but quite quickly I&#x27;m back to the same place.<p>Advice for dealing with this?
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