I explain to him that, for me, optimism has always felt a bit nonsensical - expecting things to go swimmingly all the time feels naive to the point of irresponsibility. I got in touch with Dr Ricardo Twumasi, lecturer in organisational psychiatry and psychology at King’s College London, to help me on my journey. So I thought I should try to make myself more optimistic: could I just decide to start expecting the best? Is optimism an opt-in club? It would be a pretty massive behavioural change affecting my whole outlook on life. That’s all very well for cheerful 90-year-olds with their pension pots and houses, but how can anyone younger than that find it within themselves to be optimistic in 2023? The news is a constant cycle of terrible people doing awful things and getting away with it, projections that most bad things are set to get worse and reminders that the planet is dying.īut, in spite of the future looking less than inviting, not cutting my life short with pessimism would be preferable for myself and my loved ones. Expecting things to go well seems to work. One long-term study of 150,000 people published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, found that optimists lived, on average, five years longer than their less optimistic peers, and were significantly more likely to live past 90. There are now fairly well-established links between optimism and well-being, reduced chances of dementia and longevity. This is all well and good but the slight hitch for me and my pessimism is that increasingly research is showing that optimists live longer. Are you a glass half full or glass half empty person? (Photo: Supplied) You see a beautiful spring day, I see long-term sun damage and hay fever. A delightful country walk is a countdown to treading in fox poo. After all, if you expect the worst, you can never be disappointed, right? Every time I lock my bike up I mentally bid it farewell. I am one of life’s pessimists, always have been. (To anyone who suggests a plastic cup, have you read anything about BPA chemicals in plastics that are polluting and destroying our bodies?) Then there are those of us who assume that the glass will simply shatter mid-gulp and we’ll bleed to death from the inside out. It’s often said that if an optimist and a pessimist are both shown the same glass of water, the optimist will view it as half full and the pessimist as half empty.
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