A funny cartoon I saw last year:
3 glasses on a table. All filled to about mid level with a yellow liquid. The bubble over the first glass reads “I’m half full” and he has a smile. The second bubble reads “I’m half empty” and the glass has a frown. The last bubble reads “I think this is piss” and the glass has a shocked expression. The caption below all of them reads:
“Realists: the only ones who really know what is going on.”
Attitude can color every fact and action in your life. A crowd of people can read the same news story and draw entirely different conclusions. An event can alter two person’s futures in totally different ways just due to the way that their frame of mind processes the event. That crucial first impression can be read in different ways by two people meeting the same person at the same time.
I’ve been called a pessimist by people I know and by online tests. But I think the term has been used as a broad brush for anyone that doesn’t always look for the bright side of anything and everything. Thing is that optimism isn’t all that good an outlook either. You can trip and fall just as much by assuming that everything will turn out alright as by assuming that everything will fall apart. The real world is so multi faceted and complex that I don’t think you can look at everything in a totally optimistic or pessimistic way.
My outlook on life is to hope for the best but prepare for the worst and to always see things as they are and not as I hope or dread that they are. Tough advice to follow sometimes. Specially when I have to struggle with my own fears and desires that want to set their own agendas within my mind.
After I make a decision or form an opinion about an object, an event, or a person I have to think to myself is this really the way things are or am I letting some unspoken filter alter my thought process?
Did I make that sale? Is the roof going to make it one more year? Will the economy get better? Does she like me? So many things to be concerned about. So few concrete answers. All I have to go on is my gut.
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