Optimism

I consider myself an optimist. When I look at the future, I will tend to focus on positive outcomes vs the negative ones. If something negative happens to me, I will take away as many positives as I can and try to rationalize the negatives so that they do not happen again. On the other hand, my father is a pessimist. He tends to focus primarily on the negative effects of any event. When I get a new job as a contractor several years ago, his main thoughts were, "What happens if there is not enough work? What about health insurance? What if the project is cancelled?" whereas my thoughts were more along the lines of, "I can make a lot of money. I get to work on a variety of projects and get varied experience. I will have a more flexible lifestyle."

I read this page today which made me think a bit more about optimism: The Road to Well-Being - The Plains of Optimism. I did not bother to check the references but there ARE references on the bottom of the page. The article/paper reaffirms my opinion that being optimistic improves your health and helps a person overcome negative events better than a pessimist. There are definitely good characteristics of a pessimist person. A pessimist can prepare himself/herself for negative outcomes since he/she will focus on those events. However, a pessimist will almost always worry about how something can go wrong and that can cause psychological and physical strain. I prefer to assume that good things will happen and worry only when the bad things happen but also prepare for those bad events. I used to think that this was being a realist but according to this paper it seems that it is natural for an optimist to more realistically evaluate a negative event than a pessimist. This more realistic evaluation helps an optimist prepare better for the next event by more accurately dissecting a negative event.

I don't think I will change any pessimist's mind with this post but I hope some of you start thinking more positively :).