Optimism

Have you ever had a moment when you've said "Wow, I'm really unlucky... think of the odds of THAT happening."? I used to have a lot of those moments. After a lot of thinking, I realized that there are so many things that go right in your favor that you only notice the bad things. Think: You turned on a computer to read this, and the computer worked fine, your internet is up, you logged in okay, there was electricity to power the computer, you aren't blind, you are well enough to get up and get online. But if any of these events weren't in your favor, a lot of people would have said "What are the odds?". Of all of the thousands of things that happened in your favor, the odds are pretty low most of the time.

There are so many things that we just don't notice that when we say "What are the odds?" we don't really mean it, but we bring ourselves down when we say it. Whenever you say that, you realize that your life is really unlucky. The odds of whatever event happened bad, are pretty low. But that's all people notice usually. If you're a optimist, then you'll avoid this and not bring yourself down.

Going off of this, if you've ever called someone an optimist and they said "I'm just being a realist", chances are they're just noticing the bad things, and not paying attention to the good things that happen. One could argue that optimists would only notice the good things. But that's impossible. We are hard-wired to notice bad events. All optimists notice these bad events, but then realize about all of the good things in their favor. So the optimist is actually being the realist and the pessimist is just making it worse for himself/herself and usually everyone around them.

Pessimism can also hide in questions that you ask yourself. When people get angry, they ask themselves "Why can't I do this?" The answers to that questions are all negative and none will help, they're all just excuses. You tell yourself "I can't do this because I'm sick", when you're not really sick, and then you can't focus on the things you can do to get better. Then you don't get better because you don't know to work on. You don't know what to work on because you don't get better and ask yourself these questions. Then you read my blog. Then you ask yourself positive questions like "What can I work on to get better?" and "What would be a better way of doing this?". You get better. You ask more positive questions, and the cycle repeats in a good way.

I could go on listing all of the strategies for avoiding being pessimistic and being optimistic, but its easy to know what optimism feels like once we do things that are optimistic, and you don't need to have me type until my fingers fall off or start bleeding (I've always wondered if you can type until your fingers bleed).

Have a great day! And don't type too much : P