Optimism is one of the most powerful and life-changing traits you can build.
It massively enhances your quality of life, helps you overcome tough times, boosts your brain health, improves your heart health, and lowers your risk of heart disease. (In fact, optimistic people live 11-15% longer lives!)
Having a positive outlook on the future also boosts your odds of success because it makes you more likely to invest, act, and work toward your goals. And whether it’s the “law of attraction” or just manifesting what you want, believing is always the first step toward achieving anything in life.
Yet for most of my life, I had optimism completely backward—and until I realized it, I struggled to succeed and create more happiness in my life.
Why I Had Optimism Backward
For most of my life, I thought being optimistic came only after good things happen: Some things go your way, you start feeling more positive, and—voilà!—you become an optimistic person.
Yet with that mentality, if I was going through a rough patch, it was pretty damn hard to be optimistic. After all, my ongoing problems were proving that life was “tough,” and I waited until I caught a few breaks before being optimistic again.
But I was mixing cause and effect.
Optimism is not the “effect” that comes from good things; it’s the “cause” of those good things.
Optimism, I discovered, is a practice and a habit. It’s not something you wait for or you magically attain; it’s something you have to consciously and continually practice to withstand whatever life throws your way. And by constantly practicing optimism, you can actually bring more luck your way.
For example, being optimistic—even during tough times—increases the odds of good things happening in the first place. When you’re positive and upbeat about the future, you’re living life on offense, not defense. You’re more willing to take risks and seize opportunities. You have a spark and passion from your inner belief that people will notice and gravitate toward.
Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.
— Noam Chomsky
Being optimistic will motivate you, encourage you, and allow you to perform your best, which will improve your chances of success. Being pessimistic, however, hurts your energy, effort, abilities, and enthusiasm.
That’s why it’s so critical to be optimistic before good things happen; because by having that attitude, you’re stacking the odds of success in your favor.
Some people, however, think if they’re optimistic yet still fail, they’ll be crushed—as if they set themselves up to be hurt if things don’t go their way.
I disagree.
First, optimists are far better at coping than pessimists (while pessimism actually hurts your quality of life). Second, if something doesn’t go your way, you’d feel upset whether optimistic or not. If you were pessimistic, you would’ve spent the whole time being negative and hurting your mental, emotional, and physical health; but if you were optimistic, you’d avoid all of that misery, move on, and be hopeful for something else.
As Daniel Gilbert, Ph.D. explains in Stumbling on Happiness, we overestimate how bad we’ll feel during negative future events; yet once they happen, we quickly adapt, even after catastrophes.
Third, if bad things do happen, being optimistic helps you see the lessons from those moments so you can learn, grow, and improve:
An optimist understands that life can be a bumpy road, but at least it is leading somewhere. They learn from mistakes and failures, and are not afraid to fail again.
—Harvey Mackay
Fortunately, I’ve found a way to become far more optimistic while balancing the realism of life (so that I don’t end up like Pollyanna and think everything is amazing if it really isn’t).
How to Become More Optimistic
Just keep your conscious mind busy with the expectation of the best, and make sure the thoughts you habitually think are based on things that are lovely, true, just, and harmonious. Begin now to take care of your conscious mind, knowing in your heart and soul that your subconscious mind is always expressing, reproducing, and manifesting according to your habitual thinking.
— Joseph Murphy Ph.D.
Since optimism is a cause, not an effect, the key is to start being optimistic right now, regardless of however crappy you think your life is.
Once I realized optimism is like a practice, I started every morning by believing that good things would happen throughout the day. And that led to me creating a simple phrase that helped transform my life over the years:
I expect everything in my life to go extremely well.
Keep in mind: I’m not saying that everything will always go my way. (That would be unrealistic and naïve.) Instead, I’m just saying that I’ll maintain the expectation that things will go well.
Because of that, I never feel like I’m lying to myself and saying, “Golly gee whiz, everything will always be perfect!” I never feel like pretending that everything is “great” when it isn’t. (By the way, that’s not optimism; that’s “toxic positivity,” which suppresses and delegitimizes your emotions and leads to more problems.)
Instead, my affirmation simply reminds me that, as I work hard and do my best every day, I will maintain the expectation that things will go very well. And that even if mishaps happen, I’ll still assume they’ll work out for me in the long run (which is why I say “extremely well,” not “perfectly”).
That simple affirmation helped me tremendously. For example, if I was running late and getting agitated, I would repeat my mantra and it improved my attitude. I wouldn’t feel as stressed or like everything was “conspiring against me.” Instead, I felt calmer and more positive, which actually improved my chances of getting somewhere on time.
It also improved how I interacted with people. (You usually treat people a lot better when you assume they’re going to say “yes” instead of “no.”) For example, if I call customer service assuming that I’ll get great service instead of bad service, I’ll speak in a nicer tone and be more considerate, which boosts the odds of getting great service in the first place.
It’s just that simple.
Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
— John Wooden
Try for yourself and see. By the way, don’t get caught up in the semantics of the affirmation; if you’re not a fan of the wording, pick something that works for you but still conveys that same optimistic mentality.
My last piece of advice is to stay consistent. Don’t try to be optimistic for a few days and then use every negative event as proof it doesn’t work; it takes time to build your “optimism muscles,” especially if you’ve been pessimistic for a long time (which I most certainly was).
But the benefits are definitely worth it in the long run.
And I’m optimistic you’ll discover them too.
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