Stop being so pessimistic!
Whenever someone told me this, I would quietly think to myself, its just now I guess I can not believe that way. My cynical nature plagued me but also gifted me with an intuition that assisted me to navigate it. Was the world stable or unstable? Did terrible thing happen because I am a failure or the world is just a scary place to live in?
Whenever a stressing situation occurred, I would become overwhelmed and burdened irrational beliefs of why the event happened. For example, if I failed an exam in school I would say I am not smart or assume the teacher just hates me. You can guess how these beliefs can hinder our progress. Why study if you are not smart? Why go to class if the teacher hates you?
Unlike the pessimist who tends to give up because he internalizes that he is not smart and believes he will fail the next one because one lousy event spills to other areas. Optimistic people in nature do the exact opposite in situations like that. Reseach shows that people who test for optimism ( They use an attributional style questionnaires, I took one a couple of years ago and proved for pessimism as expected) explain the exact opposite way. "I just did not study enough, or the test was just too hard," Would you quit if you believed this?
Those with an optimistic explanatory style are persistent and give up less than those with pessimistic explanatory styles. For example, when an optimistic student fails an exam he tends to say, “the exam was hard I will just study harder for the next exam”, unlike the pessimist who tends to give up because he internalizes that he is not smart and believes he will fail the next one because one bad event spills to other areas.
I felt helpless in changing anything, controlled by these structure of beliefs explaining every bad and good situation that occured to me. So you're probably curiously wondering if I was able to find a way to change and I found something that would change my life for the better and is actually very easy and takes no more then 5 minitues of your day.
It is possible to change your beliefs to endure life in the face of tradgey? If you wondering where's the scam (you're probably a pessisimist then) , I am not selling to you. It is possible without one hint of doubt.
Follow me to keep posted on how I used the best of both worlds of optimist and pestismist in helping me in stressful times. Thank you for reading and I hoped it helped in anyway.