![]() Psychologists see optimism as a personality trait-in other words, something that is relatively stable and consistent over time. ![]() Studies have found that, on average, people tend to be more optimistic than pessimistic. Instead, optimism is a mindset that we can cultivate that empowers us to cope with life’s challenges (in fact, as I’ll discuss below, some research suggests that optimism may actually help us cope with stressful events in more beneficial ways). Importantly, and contrary to what you might think, optimism doesn’t need to mean denying or avoiding negative events. Although we often talk about people being either optimists or pessimists, researchers actually tend to view optimism and pessimism as a spectrum-someone might be more optimistic, more pessimistic, or somewhere in the middle. Optimism relates to how people see the future: people who are optimists expect good things to happen to them across a variety of domains in their lives. Instead, optimism is a mindset that we can cultivate that empowers us to cope with life’s challenges. Optimism doesn’t need to mean denying or avoiding negative events. In today’s post, I’ll review what optimism is, explain its potential benefits, discuss whether pessimism can ever be beneficial, and suggest ways that more pessimistic people can work to cultivate optimism. Researchers studying psychology have investigated how positive emotions benefit us, why we should focus on our strengths instead of dwelling on perceived weaknesses, and how positive psychology can help us to be more resilient in times of stress. Optimism is an important aspect of positive psychology (an area of psychology that looks at how individuals can become happier). ![]() More optimistic people-those who more strongly agree with example #1-tend to have higher well-being, better health, and may even be more successful. Researchers who study optimism have found that our answers to questions like these have a wide variety of consequences. “If something can go wrong for me, it will.”.“In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.”.Which of the following sentences best describes you?
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