To be honest I would describe myself as a pessimistic person. It’s not that I try to be one but I am. It seems to be that the more I learn about the world around me there are more things that I become aware of. Name any major topic in the world and I can name a couple of dangers and concerns about it. But what I am trying to find out is are people born being more positive? Is it part of our genetic code to hope for the best? I realized after many years that positive people lead happier lives. Maybe that is just my experience.

The thing about positivity is that positive people tend to have better relationships with other people. I will always remember the time when I just joined a new company. And one person working in my team just stopped coming to work. He had trouble with his attendance and attitude even before I joined so it was no surprise that he ended up leaving the company for good. But at that time after he didn’t show up for work for a couple of days without notice I was ready to confront him. I was ready to text him and call him out on abandoning his team and making other people cover for him. And out of the blue another staff just told me as I was about to text him and suggested to me to just ask him how he is. How is he feeling? Does he need some assistance? The thought would never come to me to start the communication this way. And the person who suggested it was one of the great team members that everybody liked. I followed his advice and avoided a confrontation that would have brought much negativity and unrest for me as a new manager. And all it took was the mindset of thinking more positively. Not to mention that the staff member who resigned ended up coming back to the company in a year with an even higher position than before. And because one of my staff suggested at that time that I cut him some slack I was able to work alongside him without any bad feelings. But if I had followed my mindset it would have been entirely different. From that point on I stopped listening to my first negative feelings and started to question on what is the proper way to make decisions. When you are a pessimistic person like me it took me years to realize that what I feel and how I make my own decisions following those feelings will eventually come back to bite me.

The traits of a pessimistic person

I can only talk from my own experience. My experience has taught me to only expect the worst. I understand that people are guided by their own life experiences. And that a person coming from a happy family who didn’t have to struggle in life will tend to think more positively about their place and the people they meet. We all carry our childhood, family financial situations, and relationship issues in everything that we do. So as a true pessimistic person, I tend to see issues and problems in the future that may not even happen. If I’m planning to buy a house I automatically think that the seller will try to cheat me. If I were in charge of a project at work I would make a plan A, B, C, and X for every possible thing that can go wrong. If something fails in my personal life or even if somebody I know is getting married I would see failure in the future for them and me. Why do I do that?

The answer is simple but it took me years to figure it out. Pessimistic people negatively deal with things because of fear. We all know that a million and one things can go wrong in life. Most of us don’t think about it much because it doesn’t have to happen. Most of us focus on the present and leave the future events for later. But a pessimistic person like me will be too scared to do that. We will never stop thinking of what could go wrong. And then to try to shift that fear into knowledge we will spend our energy and focus on trying to deal with events that maybe will not even happen. It’s like a vicious cycle where we are not able to enjoy things because we are too busy planning for an escape. And I don’t want to live like that anymore. I want to be able to enjoy and make memories, be happy for other people, and expect nice things to happen without the shadow of fear of future catastrophic events. So to describe a true pessimistic person I would say:

Not being able to enjoy the moment. Always expecting something bad is going to happen and being relieved when it does because it just proves our point.

Delaying making big decisions in life like buying a house, starting a new job, or getting married. All because of fear that it will not work out. The house will be too expensive and we will end up evicted, the new job is way over our league, and marriage will crumble.

Expecting the worst from people. Pessimistic people tend to think that other people always want something from them. Even friends and family. And we just wait when they will show us their real face. That is why it’s difficult to make friends or just be friendly to family members.

Having a lot of anxiety. When you are constantly driven by fear of something bad and unknown you limit yourself to things you know and tend to avoid doing new things in life.

Why is important to be positive?

I’m not saying that everyone should be crazy positive about life. There is still a level of common sense that needs to be taken into account. I mean world is still a dangerous place. And bad things happen to good people all the time. But instead of worrying about it why don’t we do all that we can about it? Surround ourselves with people who we can trust, people who know and love us.

The fact is that always being negative will take a toll on your life. On your friends and family, even your work. Wasting so much energy on avoiding things that will happen and must happen because bad things happen to everybody. Marriages fail daily. Family members pass away. People lose jobs and homes and have hard financial times. But instead of saying I knew that was going to happen, we need to be positive and think that for now we are in a difficult period of our lives but let’s turn to some support from our family and community and try to get over it.

Being positive will give you more confidence in life. If you are expecting good things the universe will send you the things that you long for. Also, it will make you more empathetic to other people. You will always try to find good things in others. Offer a helping hand, extend a friendship, or just a get-well-soon card. Positive people also tend to be more forgiving and loyal to their friends and family. They tend to shy away from conflict and get over difficult discussions without cutting ties. But most of all positive people tend to be happier in life. Even when bad things happen to them as they do to us all they are more adaptable to change. They can rise from the ashes quickly and continue despite the difficulty.

The things you need to learn

The hardest but also the most rewarding thing for me to do was to learn how to let go. I am a person that remembers very well of past events. I would often get into discussions with people close to me and remind them of times when they would hurt me. By doing that I would feel hurt all over again because I couldn’t let go of those feelings. Because of that, I could never have a good relationship as I would always basically reset to the time that I was hurt. Letting things go and stay in the past has been one of the most important things I had to do to save myself from my negativity. Now I imagine it as wiping the board clean and making myself forget about the past. Not thinking about it anymore. And letting people show me who they are by the ways they are treating me in the present not in the past. I would recommend this to everybody. When we carry feelings of hurt and pain because of something someone said to us most of the time not even intentionally it hurts only us.

Looking forward to things with expectations of happiness. That is something that I still struggle with. When planning to go on a vacation or just a family gathering I stopped expecting conflict or negative things happening. I try to imagine that I will have a great time and plan for doing things that I like to do. And every time when I think about future events I tend to focus only on the good things pushing that fear deep down where it can’t hurt me anymore.

Admitting not only to yourself but also to the people around you what you are going through. Saying loud and clear about what your fears and concerns are. Stating that sometimes you can suppress the anxiety and sometimes it will get the best of you. We are not perfect and everybody is vulnerable. But making people know that this is something that you struggle with will give them a chance to offer you more support and maybe even not react to times when your negativity gets the best of you.

Think well before you say anything. We can all be impulsive and talk before we think. This is something that will take some time to learn and adapt. But listening to your first feeling when reacting to people or situations is not always the best thing in life. We need to learn to stay more objective. Distance ourselves from our feelings and little bit and take time to think more before we say anything. Even if you enter a discussion you can always take a break for five minutes and try to get your feelings under control.

Tools to being more positive

It’s all about changing your mindset and can’t be done overnight. This is something you will have to work on. Making a decision is easy but sticking to it is the hard part. To give you a better chance to succeed there are things you can work on that will help you on your way.

Gratitude. This is a big one. Being grateful for things that you have in your life even when things get difficult. The number one things I’m always grateful for are my health and the health of my family. People can achieve anything as long as they are healthy. You can be grateful for so many things in life that don’t have anything to do with money or popularity. Just look around you. We should be grateful to be happy, and safe, have a roof over our heads, live far away from wars and conflict, be grateful for our children and parents, have food to eat and a job to go to each day. Things that we take for granted but not all people have. Gratitude is the one thing that will show you how your fear is small when you remind yourself of all the good things you have in your life already.

Surround yourself with positive people. As in the beginning of this article if I didn’t have that one positive person in my company give me good advice my position there would be a much worse one. We can learn so much from positive and strong people around us. If you don’t have any go and make some. And then you can ask them questions or advice if you are not sure how to do certain things. You can discuss when bad things happen and they will offer words of encouragement. Don’t be alone. Stay connected to people who have a positive influence on your life because that way you will learn more.

Go outside. Seriously just go. Step out of your house, apartment, or room and go anywhere. Spend some time in nature. If can with other people or if not just go alone. Go to a movie, beauty salon, massage, or if you don’t have money just take a walk around the block. Join a book club, and participate in community events and groups. Meet new people or just pick up a hobby. What you don’t want to do is spend your free time stuck in the house because you think it’s going to rain. Or avoiding meeting people because you think you are too fat, too ugly, or too ordinary. Do not wait. Go now and trust me you won’t regret it. There are good people out there and yes some will let you down but some will lift you back up and for that, it’s worth it.

Set goals and solutions but don’t focus on the failure. Think about what you need to do in life. It can be getting a better job, getting married, having kids, finishing school. Set a goal of when and how you want to do it. And then just think about how great it’s going to be. How happy you are going to feel. As I said before bad things happen to everybody but you don’t need to be scared. If you did all you could and put in your best effort. With time you have to realize that some things are out of your control and often happen without any reason. Instead of thinking of all the ways you can fail think about all the things that can and will go right for you. Remind yourself every day that this day will be a good one.