I used to be a pessimist.
Honestly, I see where I was coming from, to an extent. It feels a lot easier to cope when something goes badly when you’ve practically been expecting it. Failed an exam? Yeah, I knew it, because I didn’t really study for it. Disappointed by someone? Yep, everyone is terrible, including myself. Had a bad day? Sure, I knew it as soon as I woke up.
And, yeah– sometimes, there are bad days. Sometimes people will disappoint– we’re only human, after all. And of course I’ll fail an exam when it’s on a topic I knew nothing about and only skimmed the readings for!
Though there is truth to those statements, there’s also falsity. I let pessimism seep its way into my life and take over everything in it. Whether big things or small, I lowered my expectations and assumed every possible bad turn-out for every scenario in my life. I was miserable. I let made up possibilities control how I lived my life.
What made me change my mind was a friend, who kindly put my endless pessimism aside to ask me why I’ve never considered a positive result, rather than a negative one. I spewed off a rattle of what-about-isms and claimed that if I kept my expectations low, I couldn’t ever be disappointed, because I’ll have been expecting it. However, that simple question started turning the gears in my head, and I began to really wonder where my logic came from, and how I got to this conclusion in the first place.
It was hard to let go of old habits, even if they didn’t serve me in any way. Slowly, I began allowing myself to have a little hope. I found that it was so much easier to connect with people and excel in things I never knew I could, once I started having more confidence and positive thinking.
It sounds corny–and it kind of is. Positive thinking changed my life? Crazy.
I wouldn’t say that it changed my life. And I do still see some truth to my pessimistic thinking, but it doesn’t do any good to dwell on the bad possibilities without even considering a good one.
Thinking in terms of hope goes along with appreciating the little things in life too, and together have eased my weary shoulders and allowed me to hope for something better. We all deserve something better.