It is good to be optimistic as it can keep our spirit up and optimistic people tend to achieve what they want to achieve. Isn't that true? Yes, that is what the experts or everyone is saying. But how true is this theory that being optimistic is beneficial to us?
Let us take a look at The Secret. The theory of The Secret is that you will need to keep thinking about what you want in order to attract it to your life. So naturally this means that you will need to be optimistic and think only about the positive. I am not saying that being positive is a wrong thing to do but I am questioning whether it is the best approach?
I had seen people who embrace the theory of being optimistic in every situation and it does well for them because they feel happier at that very moment. But it seems like to be that they are being blinded by their optimism that they lose their perception of reality. They drift to the future and lost sense of what is right in front of them now.
Let us take a look at an example. Let's say John has a goal and his goal is to achieve financial freedom. But his situation right now is not favourable. He is working in a 12 hours a day job and earning $1500 per month. He decided to adopt the optimistic approach, be optimistic, think positive and hoping that things will get better.
Optimist Approach vs Realist Approach
How many of you believe that staying optimistic is going to help John achieve financial freedom? Yes, The Secret says so that staying optimistic and thinking positive will attract the scenarios to help him get his dream job and earn $100,000 per year. But I am sure that this approach will not work out well.
To be fair to The Secret, I got to agree that staying optimistic to a certain extent does help to keep the mind sane. But this approach isn't really the best way to achieve what you want in life. So what if John takes another approach instead? – The Realist Approach.
John has a goal to achieve financial freedom and he is stuck in his day 12 hours day job earning $1500 per month. He chose to be aware of his current situation. He knows that what he is doing now is not going to get him to where he wants to be. The reality, the harsh facts and true numbers are staring in his face. He want to change and he knows that he is not optimistic about his current situation and in fact, he felt pessimistic about his future if things are going to continue the way it is. This is the point where he decided to change because is aware of his present situation.
Which approach do you think is the better one? The optimistic approach where John just stays optimistic and think positive or the realist approach where John is aware of the truth right now and decided that he needs to fix it in order to move on?
Just staying positive and overly optimistic puts you into a self denial mode and eventually you will become the world's biggest liar by lying to yourself everyday. You lose your sense of reality (not earning enough money now) and escape to the future (financial freedom). This is not a very smart thing to do because if you do not fix your problems of today, the problem will still be there tomorrow. The problem doesn't go away if all you do is to be optimistic of the future and stay ignorant of the problem staring at you now.
Parting Words
What I want to reinforce here is that you will need to avoid letting optimism take over your sense of reality. If you are unhealthy, broke or unhappy, it is a problem that you need to fix now. Don't hold on to the thought that things will be better tomorrow when you are not taking any action to fix it. If nothing had been done, things are going to stay the same way! What do you think? Do you think the realist approach or the optimist approach works better?
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