Philosophers of mind often seek to describe what it is like to undergo a particular experience, yet our phenomenological vocabulary frequently appears impoverished and insufficient for the task. Amy Kind recently argued that this so-called ‘impoverishment problem’ is something that can be overcome, at least in principle. She suggests that (1) we can refine or “enrich” our phenomenological vocabulary and (2) doing so “has the potential to enable us to make progress on a wide number of other philosophical problems connected to the mind” (Kind 2024, 119). I propose to call this view phenomenological optimism. Early phenomenologists, such as Brentano (1874) and Husserl (1911), were also strong advocates of phenomenological optimism. This paper examines the reasons they had for endorsing (1) and (2).