How Full Is Your Glass?
When you tell yourself you can do it over and over again, you truly start to believe you can. And it just becomes all the more devastating each time you fail.
Pessimism keeps things real instead of coating things with deceptions. Some things are simply impossible and there’s absolutely no point in trying to hide the fact.
I completely gave up on trying to be optimistic. Somewhere in the far, far past I think I might have once been. And frankly, it didn’t really do anything. The same exact events happened whether I was looking forward to it or not. No matter how you interpret it, a glass of water is literally a glass of water. It’s both half full and half empty.
It doesn't matter how much you try to trick your brain, the terrible course of life will still happen the exact same way. They try to tell me that by looking at the bright side of things, my “mindset” will grow to be positive, and I’ll be living a fuller life.
I always hate when they teach us about growth mindsets. How you think about struggles does impact the final result, but there are some things that simply can’t be done. When you tell yourself you can do it over and over again, you truly start to believe you can. And it just becomes all the more devastating each time you fail. At some point, I accepted the fact and gave up. I didn’t anymore care each time someone else accomplished what I spent years trying to do. I didn't feel that pressure to have to catch up. Pessimism keeps things real instead of coating things with deceptions. Some things are simply impossible and there’s absolutely no point in trying to hide the fact.
For example, if someone really wants to fly like a bird and spends their whole life trying, truly believing they someday can, then it’s just a whole life wasted. In the end, they’ll regret not pursuing something actually achievable.
I also believe who you’re surrounded by influences your attitude. Most people would say that optimistic people influence others to be optimistic too but I think it’s exactly the opposite. A group should have equal amounts of optimism and pessimism. Being with an optimistic person makes me more pessimistic because of how optimistic they are. It’s hard to explain but I feel even more dreary seeing how hopeful others are. The comparison just makes me sad. Life is such a drag. I can’t even blame my genes for that cause both my parents are so cheery.
A study shows that people who are more optimistic had a lower death rate over the age of thirty. But I don’t really want to live all that long anyway. In my opinion, there’s no point in going through an unnecessary amount of life just to become a grandma and sit all day.
Some students respond by saying optimism is a form of courage or confidence. But confidence of what? Confidence that you can achieve whatever? I know that I can do something while being pessimistic because I don’t want to do it. I know what I’m capable of and it doesn’t relate or cause whether I actually want to do it. A task could be boring and tedious but still accomplishable. When people say, “I can’t do this,“ they sometimes just don’t want to. They don't have that mental strength to do it but it's still within their capabilities. Half the time when I say that, I still have confidence that I could. But when some people say “I can do this“ or “you got this“, when they know it’s not possible, it’s fake. They’re trying to make themselves believe it too. They only seem like they have that confidence, when they’re in reality trying to trick themselves. Pessimistic people think they can’t do what they know they can and optimistic people think they can do what they know they can’t. So who really has the confidence here?
Well, that’s all I can think about currently. Ask me in a couple years and I might be completely happy-go-lucky.
