Are you a pessimist or optimist?

In gloomy times you may be better a pessimist than an optimist. A pessimist always wins. Because if your negative suspicion comes true then you've been pretty right. Or it does not come true - and then it's also ok. There are few people who call themselves a pessimist by the way. Pessimistic people find 'realist' a more beautiful word; They see optimists prefer to see as worldly after-imitations.

Maybe you think now: I was just a pessimist. Because you get right, or it's true, and the word realist sounds smart too.

Think again. According to research, people with a pessimistic view on the world are less likely to be deprived of depression and burnout and they are also shorter. Their gloominess often causes a negative outcome. It's a bit like Henry Ford once said, "Whether you think you can or you can not, you're always right."

The American psychologist and father of 'positive psychology', Martin Seligman, has done a lot of research into pessimism and optimism. He says that, in particular, the way you explain to your life, you can see if you are a pessimist or an optimist. Because whether it's a big setback or just a little bump, pessimists have a very different explanation of bad luck than optimists.

Imagine. You drive to work and suddenly you end up in the file. Very black and white, there are two ways to explain that bad luck. You can say, "I've got it again. I'm always in the traffic jam. My own stupid fault, I should have just watched before I left. It will be a day of mourning. Or you respond like this: 'trafic jam. Can happen.'

Apparently the optimists appear to be real realists

Pessimists show the first reaction and, according to Martin Seligman, they do three awkward things. First, they make the setback personally so that they themselves are the cause of it: it is my fault that this happens. Then, they always make the bad luck: "That always happens." Everyone who tends to use words like "always" and "never" regularly lives in this risk area. It's the language of a 5 year old who says he never gets anything and that daddy is always stupid. And finally, they generalize the bad luck, as if it says something about things that have nothing to do with it: 'It's gonna be a mess.'

Optimists do exactly the opposite. They do not personally feel bad, see it as temporary and do not involve it on the rest of the day. And with that they usually are the same. That's funny: the optimists suddenly turn out to be real realists.

source: ad.nl