Optimism comes from our genes, but pessimism is also our nature.
From an evolutionary point of view, we are all descendants of our own optimism genetic ancestors, and in the distant years, in millions of years of human destiny, suffering occupies the vast majority.
And in the misery, there is no way to get out from it and evolve without an optimistic mentality.
So, our genes come with an optimistic gene from our ancestors. So, most of us are optimistic.
There are researches on some of the psychological concepts, such as self-rationalization, endowment effects, loss aversion; behind these, which come from our optimism genes.
Genes are optimistic, which underpins our millions of years of evolution, but the nature of being trained in harsh environments makes us naturally sensitive to pessimism.
Those negative things always can gain our interests.
If you are pessimistic about our humanity now, desperate for the future of humanity, and give all sorts of inferences, then you are vulnerable to media transmission, thus becoming a celebrity, and might win a variety of awards.
But if you give a positive point and say that we humans will eventually get better in the future, our future is bright, and give all kinds of evidence, people will say “we all know that”.
The idea of optimism can rarely be known, but the doomsday wheel of pessimism always attracts everyone's attention.
This is based on the whole population of mankind to look at pessimism and optimism.
From the group back to the individual, optimism and pessimism will become very three-dimensional.
Three-dimensional to each person's way of thinking and behavior will be different.
For example, we operate a task from a direction, to plan the path, to landing execution, need at least 10 steps.
Inside these steps, from A, B, C ...
To the final completion of Z, there are problems need to be faced and indicators to be achieved, the closer you get to the end, it will get more difficult.
In this, pessimism and optimism will have different thinking.
For a pessimist, from A to Z, they will see difficulties in each step and need to achieve so many conditions, they will feel that the task is too difficult.
So they will list all sorts of reasons, exaggerate the difficulty coefficient of each condition, and persuade themselves to give up.
But for an optimist, will sees Z to A, assuming that the final task Z is complete and then starting to push back, and that the condition behind Z is certainly the most difficult, and follow by Y and X, the difficulty becomes smaller, until A, and then finds a simple step behind A.
As a result, optimism can pass through this set of plans, see the path of each step, and then start with a step after step, and finally reach to the Z.
Optimism comes from the way of looking at the problem.
But there are also many people in order to pursue the perfection of the plan, every day searching for problems, find alternatives to improve the plan, and thus missed too many opportunities.
From the surface, pessimistic and optimistic focus on a different point, the pessimists amplify the difficulties, that is, failure rate; and the optimists avoid difficulties, pursue the success rate.
But essentially, the two protect themselves in different ways, and pessimists are evading the challenge to protect themselves. Optimists protect themselves by meeting the challenge.
The former acts as a guard, the latter acts as an attacker. The former protects themselves by creating comfort zones.
The latter protects themselves by building self-confidence.
Absolute pessimism is a minority, and natural optimism is also a minority.
Most of us wander between the two.
But no one likes pessimism.
So those of us who are ordinary wandering people need to tilt in a multi-optimistic angle.
How do you tilt it?
It is still the behavior pattern behind the “yes” & the “and” in a sentence.
Start with “Yes”, accept first, be sure, and blend in.
And then go “and” imagine how you can get it done and happen step by step when you join in.
Although we will eventually end up dying, but we are getting a new life every moment.
