Is Your Optimism Slowing You Down, Or Accelerating You Through Life?

By Samantha Weller on October 1, 2016

Everyone has experienced feeling disappointed when something didn’t turn out as they imagined it would. How you were sure everything would go your way, but instead you were left mindlessly baffled or in deep regret. This experience is a normal part of life, but how often should it occur? A positive outlook in life is deemed as vitally important, but its usefulness is surprisingly divergent.

People normally associate positive thinking with success, but forget to think on another level of positivity. Optimistic people are labeled as one of the positive-associated groups, and in fact, science says 80 percent of the world is “delusionally” optimistic. So, not only are some of us unaware of our optimism, but we don’t ponder how it might affect us because we only think of it as being a good thing.

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Optimism is a trait people either have a lot of or lack entirely, and either use in the wrong way or wish they had. While being optimistic may be viewed as an uplifting solution to some hard parts of life, or a generally laid-back approach towards working, there’s another side of optimism that not many people realize.

Although rather counter-intuitive, optimism can wreak havoc on your life if it intervenes too much with it. If you base everything that you need to do on optimistic thoughts, for example, it could secretly be holding you back in life while you are perpetually unaware of its circumstances.

If you always imagine that everything will turn out as the perfect outcome you anticipate, never preparing for the unexpected, you will constantly be disappointed, or worse, miss out on opportunities. Hence, not all positive thinking is as beneficial as people deem it to be; it isn’t a guide to life, but rather a small aid.

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One study on optimism shows that those who are consistently late, are usually optimistic people, making the mistake because of their far-too-influential optimism. The study furthermore points out that optimistic people may have skewed ideas of what kind of attitude they should have in life, which is sometimes the wrong one.

Optimism can lift you back up in times of distress, fuel your ambition to achieve a certain goal, and overall motivate you. On the other hand, it can also lead you to not work as hard as you need, expecting too much out of things, and being let down. In other words, optimism needs a healthy balance as does a lot of other aspects in life. We can’t have too little of it, or it won’t do us much good, but on the other hand, we can’t have too much of it, or it will do more bad than good.

Sometimes once you gain it, it’s easy to lose control and have optimism take over more than it should. Don’t unknowingly let it cross the line because while optimism can definitely boost parts of your life, it can’t be the only thing that does.

If you don’t find that you’re challenging yourself as you should be, and are instead sitting back believing what you’re doing is enough and what you want to get out of things will just happen, then you need to reconsider your level of optimism. It can be a good trait, but when relied on too much or over anticipated, just serves as a hindering ideal.  A study conducted by Gabriele Oettingen, a psychologist at New York University, warns that too much optimism can actually hinder your life goals.

Thinking positive is a great ability, but can only do so much good in your life. It can certainly accelerate certain situations, aspirations, and ideals, but you are ultimately the one to make things happen by taking action. If optimism gets in the way of your goals excessively, you’re going to set yourself up for loads of disappointment because you didn’t truly consider all the possibilities, and instead rely on a figment of your imagination. Use optimism and think positive the right way, or don’t use it at all.

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