If all the people in the world had to be divided into optimists and pessimists, the vast majority of us would want to be optimistic. Deep down, we know that this way of thinking leads to a happier, more fulfilling, and calmer life. However, for various reasons, it is difficult for us to fully adopt it. Some of these reasons are related to the fact that not everyone clearly understands how an optimistic person thinks and behaves, what distinguishes their personality from other types such as an idealist, and of course, that making this change is difficult with short and contentless advice like "just think positive." Today, we will try to help you overcome these difficulties and provide you with six detailed rules to help you become more optimistic and happy.
1. Make the Best Use of the Options Available to You
Sometimes we encounter people who get annoyed by others' optimistic responses to stressful situations and various problems. In fact, this results from confusion between two similar terms, optimist and idealist. A true optimist is actually a realist with a positive mindset, not someone who is in denial or incapable of understanding reality. An optimist believes in fully utilizing the range of options available, no matter how wide or narrow. As a result, they can see the big picture and understand whether there is a better way to act or perceive their situation. In contrast, an idealist focuses solely on the best possible option, while a pessimist cannot see positive possibilities at all.
To explain the differences in a more practical way, imagine an orange tree full of ripe fruit. An idealist will try to reach for what they believe is the ripest and tastiest orange, even if it is out of reach. A pessimist will simply take the closest orange. An optimist, on the other hand, will gather all the ripe oranges they can reach and make juice from them. Try to adopt this way of thinking in different situations in your life, and you will see how rewarding it is to act optimistically.
2. Respect Yourself
As children, we constantly amazed ourselves by discovering that we could crawl, walk, run, and jump, and we didn't need much convincing to do so. Deep down, we wanted to imitate what we saw around us, and we had no doubts or fears stopping us, even if we fell many times. The problem is that this approach changes over time, and as adults, we are influenced by social pressure and societal expectations. Instead of seeing what others have and striving to achieve it despite the fear of failure, we become bitter and gradually stop trying new things or valuing our abilities.
Optimism protects us from this in two ways. First, by restoring lost self-confidence in everyday actions. Just as you learned to walk by watching adults walk, you can accomplish many other things that people around you do, such as losing weight, saving money, making new friends, and so on. You might stumble along the way, but eventually, you will succeed. The second way is by ignoring self-judgment based on unrealistic external norms and expectations, such as images of celebrities in magazines. Ultimately, you should always love and respect who you are, enjoy your current situation, and at the same time, continue growing and learning to become stronger and wiser.
3. Learn to Separate Achievement from Happiness
To truly be optimistic, you must be generally satisfied with your life, and this feeling is created from internal processes, not external ones. If you seek happiness outside yourself and associate it only with achievements, you will encounter two significant problems:
1. If you feel that something is wrong with you and needs fixing, you may never fully succeed and will always be disappointed with yourself. Eventually, you will enter a cycle of self-destruction, frustration, and such low self-confidence that you won’t believe you can succeed in anything.
2. One or two achievements may not provide the desired satisfaction, and you will keep wanting more. After buying a house, you’ll want to pay off the mortgage, then invest more in the stock market, then increase that investment further, leading to an endless cycle where nothing brings happiness—just the desire for more.
Optimists seek happiness within, not outside. This means they "allow themselves" to be happy even without a specific achievement. Of course, adopting this mindset does not mean complacency; we should still have goals and desires. However, there is no reason not to enjoy the journey and not just the destination.
4. Choose Your Social Environment Wisely
The well-known saying "Tell me who your friends are, and I'll tell you who you are" is doubly true when it comes to one's approach to life and sense of satisfaction. If you spend too much time around negative people, it is highly likely that you will struggle to adopt a different approach to your life. Do yourself a favor and try to distance yourself from such an environment, or at least avoid engaging in strongly negative conversations by changing the subject or, in extreme cases, directly requesting the person to do so if they are negatively impacting your overall mood. Keep in mind that this action may cause that person to become upset, but sometimes it is unavoidable.
The reason why you should be mindful of your environment is that optimism is considered an acquired skill. Some people can quickly and naturally become optimistic, while others require the right conditions to successfully adopt such an outlook. Additionally, optimism is "contagious," meaning that if you surround yourself with people who have a positive approach, you will find yourself adopting a more positive outlook on life and feeling happier. On the other hand, pessimistic and negative individuals will only bring feelings of distress and depression, and there is no reason to give such emotions a significant place in your life.
5. Embrace Life’s Ups and Downs
As previously mentioned, optimistic people do not live in a pink bubble of positivity—they are well aware that some days are less good. The "secret" to dealing with such days or periods lies in adopting a balanced perspective that does not give undue importance to a negative event to the point where it overwhelms your entire mood and thoughts.
Try to think of your life as swimming across a vast ocean where the waves lift you up and bring you down continuously. Naturally, when you are on the rise, you feel happier, but even when the waves begin to crash back into the water, the ocean remains the same, life is still life, and you still have control over your direction. The essence of optimism, according to this metaphor, is simple: understand that downturns in life will inevitably come, and prepare yourself accordingly by following the other advice in this article. At the same time, make the most of the "waves" of positivity— even if you do not succeed in doing so every time, always remember that another similar wave will come soon.
6. Change the Way You Express Yourself
Reality does not shape our mood alone—how we choose to interpret it in our thoughts and words also plays a significant role. To understand the importance of this, imagine an optimist and a pessimist, each attempting to assemble a new piece of furniture for their living room but failing. The optimist will manage the frustration by focusing on external factors, self-encouragement, and creating a temporary separation between failure and the rest of life. Their response might be something like, "Perhaps the assembly instructions for this furniture are unclear (external factor), or maybe I just need to put in more effort into this project (self-encouragement), and perhaps I am just having a bad day—tomorrow I will succeed in finishing this (temporary failure)." In contrast, the pessimist will simply blame themselves and their inability in a way that leaves no room for hope of improvement—"I failed to assemble this furniture, I am just not good at these things."
In addition to changing how you talk and think, there is another small but significant detail worth noting—your smile. Smiling has an amazing ability to positively impact your mood, even if you do not necessarily feel that way at the moment. The brain influences facial muscles when you are happy or sad so that your facial expression matches your feelings, and surprisingly, this mechanism works in the opposite direction as well. If you make a small effort to put a smile on your face even when circumstances do not necessarily justify it, you are essentially sending a message to your brain that "Despite everything, things are still okay, and I can be happy." The mood change will not happen immediately, but gradually, you will notice that the negative mindset fades away.
