How To Be An Optimistic Person?

Christian January 26, 2011 0

Optimism is good for you. It’s good for your health. It can nurture friendships and professional relationships and improve communication skills. Optimism can’t — and shouldn’t — be dictated by the economy or other exterior factors. It should come from an attitude within — positive reactions that are borne of a philosophical approach to bad news and unfortunate experiences — and like any skill, it takes time to develop.

What follows are some ways that will help teach you how to be an optimist.

Set Boundaries On Downers

Paul Stanley from KISS used to say that if you wanted to learn about terrible things and have your spirit crushed, turn on the news. If you wanted a good time, go to a KISS concert. And believe it or not, the man had a point.

Limit your exposure to pessimistic people and heaps upon heaps of upsetting media. The truth is that you can find both in great abundance these days, and they do nothing for your sense of optimism. Try to trim the Debbie Downers out of your life, and choose a single source for news and media and stick to it, as opposed to jumping from site to site and story to story. Doing the latter, one is bound to chronically come across awful stories that, when taken cumulatively, breed pessimism.

Smile More Often

It may sound like the tritest advice imaginable, but smiles really do foster optimism. There are even some research studies that, while admittedly remain too subjective for serious scientific consideration, suggest even a “fake it till you make it” approach can actually affect your physiology as well as the physiologies of those around you.

Believe In The Best Possible Outcome

Quite simply, start trying to cultivate a glass-half-full perspective. When reasonable, assume the best possible outcome of events, or at least focus on the most hopeful aspects of a situation. Doing so doesn’t make you someone who’s blind to reality; it just provides you with a fresh perspective.

In discussing Ronald Reagan, George Will, writing for theWashington Post, said that optimists, like Reagan, “do not deal in unrealities… [they] create realities that matter — perceptions, aspirations, allegiances.” While it’s important to face facts as they are, it’s also important to approach them in creative ways and to communicate them accordingly.

Learn To Respond Constructively

Instead of latching on to the worst aspects, seek out the positives, especially when talking with friends about their personal or professional situations. Turn off knee-jerk “no” reactions, and take active steps toward realizing your goals rather than passively letting things happen to you. Do the same with your friends: When one loses a job, you can commiserate, but you can also remind them of their positive attributes as well as remind them of previous victories in their lives, ones that were redeeming and inspirational. And you can do this without being too Norman Vincent Peale (where “everything is rosy”), through the power of positive thinking.

Look For The Silver Lining

Optimists understand that, all in all, life goes on. Clichés like “tomorrow is another day” and “the sun will rise again” actually mean something to optimists.

It’s absurd to think that the financial markets will be down forever. An optimist doesn’t dwell in the “down” aspect, but rather looks for the potential upswing, and in the meantime reevaluates his assets and his decisions, and how they can benefit him both now and in a market upswing. For instance, an optimist might take from the economic crisis that a) borrowing tons of money doesn’t lead to happiness, and b) that the crisis could prove a valuable lesson to the younger generation.

I Will Succeed At Being Optimistic

One of the great optimists of the latter half of the 20th century was a brilliant economist name Julian Simon. Just as other economists and environmentalists were moaning about the population bomb and spewing doomsday prophecies, Simon was saying the opposite. His theory was simple: Humanity will react accordingly, and life will go on. In the face of the all negativity of the 1970s and 1980s, Simon remained resolute, and time proved him correct.

You can go back centuries and centuries looking for bad news about the future, looking for doomsday language in everything you read, or you can believe that in one form or another, life will go on just fine, it will merely require a few adjustments. The choice is yours but, like Simon, the best choice was the one that expressed the most hope, and ultimately, the one that gets you through another day feeling better and better about things to come.