Optimism

Have you ever heard someone say… "The glass is half full not half empty?"

Optimism

When I first heard this, I had to give it some thought and then it started to make sense. It was about looking at something in a positive way rather than a negative. This is what optimism is about. It’s about being able to see the good in what may be bad and not giving up when times get tough or too hard. Being optimistic means you believe in yourself, expect to do well and believe that things can and will get better. Having an optimistic attitude is a good way to cope with stresses and problems of any size or nature now and in the future.

Pessimism

Pessimism is the opposite of optimism and, as opposites go, it is pretty much described in an opposite way to optimism. Pessimism is about expecting the worst things to happen all the time and seeing nothing but black at the end of the tunnel.

Pessimism is taking problems and viewing them in a negative light, and it often makes us think there’s no use even trying because things wouldn’t work out anyway. Unfortunately, pessimism can often make us doubting, restricted, feel hopeless, sad and unwilling to try. If you think about it, optimism and pessimism are major things that affect the mental health of young people today, as well as literally everyone on the planet.

How do you become optimistic?

No one can make you or tell you to become optimistic, only you can do that. You have to believe in yourself so you can see your own potential and make yourself separate the negatives in search of the positives in every situation.

Treat yourself well

Try not to blame yourself for everything bad that happens to you. Try to think about the good outcomes that you want and don’t be afraid of giving things a go and making mistakes. Remember to treat yourself well and try to unwind when you’re finding things hard to cope with.

Believe in yourself

If you are finding it difficult to believe in yourself and expect the worse, you could talk to someone you love or someone who you think might’ve been in the same situation for reassurance, then you could try to reassure yourself.

Something you could try is to make a scale of one to ten (one being the worst thing you could ever, ever, ever think to happen to you and ten being the best) and then rate what’s happening on the scale. Compare the situation to the worse ones and other things that have happened, think how you’ve got over those things, how you’ve kept going.

Writing things down or talking out loud can help you realise what you are saying to yourself, then you could try to change what you are feeling and thinking to make more positive and helpful sense of your situation. Try to avoid thinking that things never change, that you can’t do something or that bad things will always happen to you.

Hanging out with people who can see the bright or funny side of life can encourage you to have a more optimistic outlook and also make you laugh.

Expecting good and bad times

When being optimistic, remember that life isn’t always a bag of jelly babies. You can’t always force yourself to smile or think positive or feel happy about every single situation – that’s just not realistic. Life is a bit like a game of snakes and ladders – sometimes you go up and up and up only to slide back down again on your next turn, which totally sucks, but just happens sometimes. What you can do is believe that you can get straight up the top again by simply rolling the dice, and if you keep on trying you can succeed.

A Bright Torch to guide us

The good thing about optimism is that it keeps us going and gives us hope. It’s like having a light at the end of the tunnel and a bright torch to guide us through. Without optimism you manage to see the bad in things to come and never the good, you can feel undeserving, you blame only yourself, you over-analyse things, you resist feelings of hope and it’s a lot easier to get depressed.

Staying optimistic helps you feel okay about what’s happening and accept that when it boils down to it, everything changes eventually and nothing is forever. It helps us see that bad things do happen but so do good things, and that is exactly why we should keep going.

Andrea Paul says a really positive message in her book ‘Girlosophy’ that I think is just fantastic - "It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, you can always change where you’re going."

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