How can a pessimist become an optimist?

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I'd say I'm a pessimist but I'd call it a realist.

That's the kind of thinking that drove me to depression. Not the thinking itself, but the consequences of trying to do things I couldn't do.

I think that pessimism is more realistic than optimism in many cases.

I'm getting tired of all those manic optimists who are constantly fooling themselves.

Therapists tend do that as well. They love to chitterchat about glasses that are half full instead of half empty. Well, sometimes the glass is just empty and not even half empty. Get real fools!

Oh yeah, the next time a therapist starts talking about glasses that are half full I'm going to kick some ass!

Last edited by pokerface on 08 Dec 2011, 2:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.

This is how I did it. It may or may not work for others.

It started with LYING to myself. That's right, LYING.

Okay, it wasn't really lying, but making statements that FELT as if they were not true. "I can DO this," when i felt as if I couldn't, felt like lying. Oddly though, even though it didn't work all the time, I found that sometimes it DID work.

One truth I came to is that whenever I say, "I can't," I can't. Some call that a "self-fulfilling prophesy," but I've found it's a little more complex than that. Sometimes the reason I can't is because I've convinced myself I can't. Sometimes though, the reason I can't really is because I am not able. This, whenever I SAY I can't, I really can't, but the reason I can't may or may not be because I said I couldn't.

On the other side of this, if I say "I can," sometimes I can, and sometimes I can't, regardless of saying "I can."

Bottom line? I never CAN, unless I say "I can," but that doesn't mean I'll be able to just because I said I could, but if I say "I can't," I NEVER CAN.

So there IS something to be said for positive thinking. I started by ignoring the fact that it felt like lying. I changed the way I spoke to myself. Changing my speech changed the way I thought. Over time, I found myself able to do a lot of things I never used to think I could.

But, there were still certain things that posed problems. Certain things I still couldn't seem to get better at no matter how much positive speech and thinking I applied. Those were the things I eventually had to admit were real problems that would somehow need to be addressed.

This is a journey I started about ten years ago. I've been kind of stuck for the past few years, because I seem to have changed as much as I can so far, and now there are very real obstacles I need to get past that positive thinking alone has helped with, but not enough to move forward anymore.

Basically, the first step was the hardest to accept. Speaking positively and feeling as if it were all a bunch of blatant lies. Once I got past that, it really did work. It didn't solve everything, of course, but it did work. It felt like lying at first, but many more times than I expected, it actually became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Once it started WORKING, it didn't feel so much like lying anymore, because it was often true.

That's all I've got for now.

Okay, I suppose I should give some background. My father suffers from anxiety and insomnia, my mother and sister have diagnosed depression, and as a pre-teen and teenager I battled with depression myself. By the time I was 14, I used to have flat-out panic attacks on my way to school in the morning. The reason why I said people who knew me as an adult call me a "born optimist," is because they didn't know me when I was young. They fall into the all-to-easy thought process of "Well, she's happy because she was born that way... she's just lucky. I'm different I was born to be sad." What I am trying to say is that many of us are born sad, even "optimists" like me. I was trying to explain that this effort the OP is making is an admirable one. I was trying to provide encouragement in the form of personal experience, because even though no one would have expected it twelve years ago, I am now happy and satisfied with my life, and it's all thanks to changes I have made in the way I behave and think. Although it may be true for some people (though I've never met them) it offends me a little bit when people tell me that the happiness I worked so hard to accomplish is just my genetics doing things for me automatically. I make a conscious effort everyday to look for the good things in people and events, because although it's not "realistic," as pokerface would suggest, it is productive. Think about it, do things like true justice and humanity really exist in this world? Probably not, but it is by working towards these ideals that people can make the world bearable for one another, and even pass laws that protect people like you and me. If we were to simply throw our hands in the air and give up, the inhumanity that would follow would be enough to send anyone spiraling into depression. What I am saying is that although "happy" and "sad" may be equivalent and opposite emotions, the mindsets of pessimism and optimism are not analogous. Pessimism "is" and optimism "does."

(I'm pretty sure I should have cited Terry Pratchett somewhere in that paragraph)

This is coming from someone who is actually a pessimist, but who fights tooth and nail every day to be optimistic in life. Thanks to that, despite constant discouraging remarks throughout my life about it, I am a published comicbook artist, a professional musician, will soon be working towards my PhD and have even met the love of my life. Screw trite glasses and their irrelevant fluids. You can't argue results.


lol! Agreed!

Mr. Xxx has some good advise. I like the way you put that.

There's a lot of random variation in genetics so "your parents" definitely doesn't mean *you'll* turn out a certain way: Some people are born lucky while others are just as unlucky. 'Unlucky' parents just *tend* to have more unlucky children than 'lucky' parents. Also, some of the abilities underlying the "happiness genes" in modern society is executive functioning, ToM ability (i.e., Social awareness and cognition) and longterm and short-term verbal memory. Most people who can successfully complete PHD programs have an abundance of executive functioning and verbal memory, so it looks like you're one of the lucky ones.

But, I know, it sure feels good thinking that your willpower alone is what resulted in your accomplishments, and willpower is certainly an important ingredient. But, it's definitely not the only important ingredient.

I have been seeing a therapist about this and she just makes me angry and more negative.
I was optimistic when I was a small child but I was treated horribly by the other kids.
I experienced how cruel the world could be and found that optimism was pointless.
Sometimes I find being optimistic easier but I have been depressed lately and feel that I am worthless.

Maybe you'll be better at being optimistic tomorrow.

If your current philosophy of life doesn't work you could try inventing a jacked up philosophy that makes you happy even if your life sucks and humanity is doomed and we are all going to die and the sun will absorb the earth....I don't think I'm helping.

I guess you just need to look for the good things about life and you, and enjoy them.

One 'jacked up philosophy' is... "I'm at the lowest point I can possibly be and the only way from here is up.". Strive and ignore the voices of defeat, from yourself and from those who wish to see you defeated!

I know this will seem random, but do you like art as your username would suggest? Sometimes when I get very frustrated I take a brush to canvas (or paper, as the case may be). It helps me if I feel that I produced something using the energy that gets bottled up from frustration. Listlessness is harder to deal with though... the only thing that ever pulls me out of that is having to take my dog for a walk. She forces me to get up and go outside. Even though I sometimes don't want to do it, I always feel a little better when I get back home.


It was a giant wall of text I wrote, but I did mention in the beginning that I suffered from depression myself earlier in my life. I am not completely void of dark moments these days, but I have learned to manage them. So yeah, I myself personally am not your genetic optimist, sorry.


I consider myself quite lucky, yes. And compared to most people on the spectrum I guess I do have decent executive functioning. However, compared to most NT people I am often somewhat lacking... at least... that's what I was told by psychiatrists my parents took me to as a kid.


Please understand, I'm not saying that willpower is all that does it. I'm just saying that we don't have control over our genetics. So, why not work with what we can control to make our lives better? It sure beats hanging up the towel in my opinion.

It's okay to battle depression. Millions (myself included) do every day. I'm just trying to spread some encouragement around here rather than a static defeatist attitude.

I used to be really pessimistic. I mean really pessimistic, total misanthrope raging at the world, never thinking anything would get better. Now I'm a die hard optimist. It's hard to say how or when that changed.

It's not that the world changed or anything. I think getting older helped. I had two near death experiences that I really had no chance to live through, but somehow did anyway. Oh, and spent some time in a psych ward on suicide watch (worst experience ever.) But, i dunno, living through some awful stuff made me slow down a lot and rethink things.

Just stepping out of the psych ward after being locked in for a week, it was like getting out of jail. Walked to the park across the street and took my shoes off just to feel the grass. Made me realize that a lot of the "big evil crap" that was upsetting me all the time maybe wasn't so big.

A loy of optimism is learning how to laugh at life. It wasn't easy for me to learn. I had my two best friends go schizophrenic at the same time, really scary. the first symptom was a complete loss of humor, even dark cynical humor. Nothing was funny. Everything was very serious. I figured I needed to learn how to start laughing or I was going to go nuts after all.

Laughing seems like an important art of being positive. You try something new and make a mistake? Laugh at it so you can learn from it. One thing I figured out about laughing is that fun = stupid, stupid = fun. I used to get upset at "stupid" things (or humans), now I can laugh at them and it doesn't bother me. It's a safety valve for your brain. You need to open it now and then to relieve pressure.

But yeah, for me being positive is about being supportive. If my someone I know wants to learn something, I'd rather teach them than scoff at them for not knowing already. Rather encourage people than shoot them down. I mean, I'm not going to lie to them and tell them that everything will be perfect for them no matter what if only they put their mind to it. But even failing can be fun.

Let's take adventure, for example. I'm fairly adventurous, in my own little domestic way. But the way I see it, adventure is when everything goes wrong, and you just keep plowing forwards. Sucks at the time, but it makes for great stories. Better stories than when everything goes right. It's just a vacation when everything works out. Vacation is going to the park, camping out for a couple days, the weather was great and you walked around and looked at stuff. Boring story. Adventure is where you got a flat tire on the way, couldn't get cell reception and had to walk miles to a gas station to get a tow, make it to the park late and need to set up in the dark, it starts pouring rain and you can't start a fire, raccoons attack your stash of food overnight, and so on. GREAT STORY!

So when awful stuff happens, I just make myself laugh at how stupid life can be, and think about what a great story this is going to make. I'll admit that sometimes I go looking for adventure, just to see what will happen. Like I'll bike into a town on tour, and just go to the coffee shops and cool stores and see if I can scam a couch or porch to sleep on. As long as I'm nice to people, it usually doesn't take more than a couple hours to find a place. But if I went around thinking "man, everyone in this town sucks. Nobody is nice enough to give me a place to crash," well, then I'll never find a couch. Worst thing that could happen is that I'd crash in a park outside town or on a roof or something. No big deal, in the grand scheme of things.

So yes, it can be learned, artrat!

[oops double post] D:

That was a very nice post burnbridge.

The strange thing is that right now it is not so hard to be optimistic and an hour ago it was.
I found that sitting around feeling bad for myself makes me more pessimistic.

It is better to keep busy so I don't think about negative things.
I have done that today. I have been focusing on my interests and they make me happy.

My family is very positive and compared to them anyone would look negative.

There is hope for me yet.

Try similing.

Just a smile. Whenever you feel down. It's been scientifically proved that smiling triggers mechanisms which get us in a good mood. And good mood is essential for optimism.