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Being Optimistic Will Improve Your Life. Here’s How.
Six habits of natural (but not annoying) optimists
“I’m a huge optimist,” my client said.
She’d come to therapy to talk about difficulties in her family but, if I’m honest, her optimism was getting in the way.”
She’d name a problem, then in the next breath she’d minimise it: It’s not that bad. I’m not sure why I’m even talking about this. I’m sure everything will be fine. Other people have it much worse.
Therapy is always a micro look at what’s going on for people in the outside world. It didn’t take long to see why her habit of looking for the “gold” was causing problems for her partner and family.
As well as denying her own difficult feelings, it was causing her to gloss over their problems and fuelling a “get over it” attitude to what they were going through.
This kind of therapy is a delicate balance, because my client’s optimism had served her well throughout life. We had to find a way to create space for her family to raise their problems, without undermining her base optimism.
“Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.” — Voltaire
