Viktor Perton is an eternal optimist. It's easy to lose your negative train of thought while listening to him. It's an infectious kind of happiness.
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"The battle is no longer between left and right," Mr Perton said, quoting a British trade minister.
"The battle is between the optimists and pessimists. People who believe in the future, and people who don't trust the future."
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Mr Perton, Chief Optimist at the Centre of Optimism located in Victoria, was in Armidale on Thursday addressing a room filled with people in the NOVA building on Faulkner Street.
His visit was part of the two-day Spring into Optimism Festival, designed to get people thinking more optimistically, especially about StartUps, following a tough few years of drought, floods and COVID.
During the event on September 1-2, a Thursday night panel discussion included Armidale Regional Council Mayor Sam Coupland and New England MP Adam Marshall.
The festival's organiser Dr Lou Conway is the Director of University of New England's SMART Region Incubator which supports StartUps across the New England region.
Dr Conway said she is hoping the festival will foster more curiosity from locals to either invest or become more interested in emerging businesses with their new ideas.
"The StartUp community are naturally positive because they're growing," she said.
"It's really about building the broader community because if we can't operate in a supportive community, it's actually harder."
Enticing customers to trial new technology, getting wealthy individuals to invest their capital, and sourcing local talent are all part of the barriers StartUps face, she said.
Andrew Murray was also at the event. He is a chairman on the board of the well-established bronze-block production factory in Uralla.
Mr Murray is surrounded by so many optimists at his work that he says he needs to train people to think more negatively.
"Sometimes you have too many optimists in the room that they actually forget to have a look at the risks involved in a project," he said.
"So you've got to go through a process of saying, 'I know you're very enthusiastic about this, but maybe we need to just consider the negatives'."
Attendee Jess Spence said people have the option of thinking negatively or positively when faced with a tough situation.
"Optimism is born out of adverse situations," Ms Spence said.
"So when you're put in a crappy situation, you have a choice about how you react to that.
"You can choose either to react positively, which is what optimism is, or you choose to react negatively and wallow in the situation.
"And so reacting positively is what breeds optimism so you have an optimistic outlook on things and you then end up on top of the situation," she said.
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