Happiness and Outlook *

Your outlook could be positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic (a realist is what we call a pessimist these days), Yang or Yin...

Churchill observed that "if you're not a Liberal in your 20s - you have no heart and if you're not a conservative in your 40s - you have no brain". What he's describing is how our outlook is dependant on our age - how our view of the world changes with time. Fortunately, many people remain progressive for much longer in life.

Outlook is a function of physical health as optimism is difficult when one is sick, in pain or expecting to die but one's outlook is not defined just by their physical condition.

Good outlook is a Catch 22 because to have one we need to have had good things happen to us, we need to recognize that good outcomes are possible before we start believing in them.

Being grateful for good things one has in their life helps but is not where good outlook comes from. To find and maintain it, one needs to be healthy enough so there is no discomfort, fit enough so there is no daily struggle and suffering and also to understand that things may not turn out just the way we hope but believing they will is a way to have more peace and more ease in the body. And we know that "in the body, there is either ease or dis-ease".

And ease, in it self, creates more of positive outlook.