On positivity

There’s a quote I like: “Pessimists tend to be right, and optimists tend to be rich.” I don’t have any data to back up the claim, but intuitively it makes sense to me. It’s easy to become negative. Perhaps something at work didn’t go as planned. Perhaps you recently watched the latest horrific war update on the news.

Negativity and pessimism are pernicious because they reinforce bad outcomes. If you get fired at work and become disillusioned with capitalism, you are inevitably going to become even poorer. If you fall into a well and decide there’s no hope and stop treading water, you’ll certainly die.

It’s important to examine the counterfactual in both of these cases. If you don’t give up on capitalism and instead use your setback as a lesson, perhaps you can be even more successful in your next gig because now colleagues will see you as more mature. If you keep treading water with the hope of someone eventually hearing your screams, you might indeed eventually be saved.

The key word that pessimists cling to is the word “maybe.” Pessimists love to round the probability of “maybe” to zero. What’s the point of finding a new gig if the whole system is broken? What’s the point of treading water if there’s no chance someone will happen to walk by the well I fell into? Indeed, the probability associated with “maybe” is often low, but it’s certainly not zero.

What pessimists often fail to see are the other potential outcomes besides the two most obvious ones. You might drown and someone might find you, but maybe an intermediate state is finding a ledge to grab onto. Or perhaps you have a waterproof iPhone in the backpack you are wearing. All these options ultimately increase the likelihood that you will eventually end up in a positive outcome, but a pessimistic attitude dooms you to failure by blinding you to other possibilities.

How do you know if you are a pessimist? I encourage you to look back at recent messages with friends and family. How many of the messages are of the sort “but X, Y, Z” where X, Y and Z are concerns/fears/worries, and how many are of the sort “yes, and X, Y, Z” where X, Y and Z are new possibilities?

It’s not always easy being optimistic. Especially when negative events are fresh in your memory, the battle is hard. However, I hope this essay opens your mind to the idea of using positivity to win these battles. If you stay resiliently optimistic, you maximize your chances of ultimately ending up in a better place.