In my last blog post, I talked about the benefits of being a positive person and the personality trait called: positive affect. Optimism is a close cousin to positive affect.
Optimism is the expectation that good things will happen in the future and bad things will not. If you agree with statements such as, “I tend to expect the best of others,” or “I generally think of several ways to get out of a difficult situation,” you’re probably an optimist.
The opposite is true if you tend to be a pessimist.
Being an optimist myself, it has sucked the life out of me when surrounded by pessimistic people. Oftentimes, people use humor to reduce stress and ease the tension of others.
As you might expect, optimists are generally much better at stress management. Rather than seeing bad times as a constant threat and assuming personal responsibility for them, they generally assume that bad times are temporary and external to themselves.
Optimists also tend to have better overall physical and psychological health, and typically have longer and overall happier lives.
This is the outlook I had during my SEAL training called BUD/S. Looking for a silver lining through challenging circumstances is a must if we want to be happy and thrive in life.
