Optimism

For most of my life, I have been a pessimist. I’ve felt very comfortable in being one.

“If you’re already assuming the worst case scenario will happen, you can’t be disappointed”, I always said.

Which of course, is sort of true. But it also changes you. Makes you miserable. My therapist once told me that the optimist and the pessimist both live the same life, the latter is just making it harder for themselves.

There is no point. I know that being disappointed by life hurts, but there’s so many good things on this earth, and it would be a shame if you couldn’t fully appreciate them because your pessimism is already thinking about how the situation could go wrong.

I won’t claim to be an optimist now, I’m not nearly there. But I’ve realised it’s something to strive for. Pessimism actively contributed to my mental health worsening, and I don’t want to do that anymore.

Even if it means being hurt from time to time because things didn’t go as planned.
Because I believe that if you have more optimistic views, you can deal with change, with pain, with anything bad at all so much better.

Why not have hope then?

That everything will be okay?

There’s no proof for the opposite case either, so it’s all about what we believe.

Peace out,
Emilia