Seeing things from the brigther side can help you with handling sorrow and solving complex problems, but…
Being an optimist might help you live longer, stay healthier, and get out of the hospital faster. Being overly optimistic might also shorten your life, be hard on your health, and keep you in the hospital for longer.
(Understand how your blind Enneagram Type can hide your optimism)
Being optimistic is often more active than passive and is connected with a positive outcome of your ideas or actions. When being passive-optimistic, you are waiting for something better to come or that trouble will pass by itself.
Optimism can also be learned to cope with difficult situations or as therapy in regard to depression and anxiety. Optimism is a great stress reducer if you can create a balance between just enjoying your optimism and engaging in all your optimistic ideas.
On the positive side, “Optimism” can be a healthy component in your life, but it also inspires others to be more courageous, playful, and adventurous. You learn more and faster from your mistakes, and you encourage others to also see setbacks as a possibility for learning. The discovery of penicillin, the pacemaker, Teflon, x-rays, safety glass, smallpox vaccine, velcro, nitroglycerin for heart attacks, insulin, and the digital camera.
The negative side of “Optimism” might be the domain of stories, where people are just not thinking it all through and end up hurting themselves or others. It is about underestimating risk, so instead of being courageous, people are simply stupid. It is also about minimizing trust among people, as we tend to distrust people who are hurting themselves or others due to a lack of naivety. On the negative side is also avoiding visits to the doctor when it is the obvious thing to do. Overly optimistic views went into the catastrophes of Titanic, Chornobyl, Hindenburg, and Thalidomide, and it is still to be uncovered which approach to the COVID-19 pandemic was the most realistic one.
Your weekly question
This week’s question is about how you balance your optimism.
- How do you balance optimism, and how do you judge if you are optimistic, pessimistic, or realistic?
- Do you have a sense of if your optimism and pessimism are two different categories of your personality or if it is part of the same scale?
- How do you react when someone else’s overly optimistic attitude impacts their own and other’s life?
Your weekly quote
Nothing can be done without skills, hope and, confidence… and a great portion of optimism.
Your weekly recommended reading
