Where are my roots of optimism?
Winston Churchill once said “For I myself am an optimist, it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.” Like him, I feel it is best to live an optimistic life. Optimism is within all of us, but for it to grow it needs to be nurtured. I have been blessed to have many sources which encourage optimism in my life,including family, friends, failures, and faith. Family is a source of optimism that many people take for granted, but I know their importance in my daily life and the influence they have on me. My two older sisters and parents have been good examples of seeing the positive in all things. My older helps me to to become optimistic when i am upset. She talks to me and has enlightened me on how to solve
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My many friends are also there to help. Studies show daily social support is a key factor in feeling optimism. This is even recognized in the optimist pledge when it says, “To make all your friends feel that there is something in them”. My friends excel at doing just that. They look at my positive traits and talents and focus on them instead of my faults. They are there to talk to, joke and laugh with, and confide in. My friends constantly encourage me which helps me to notice all the positive in my everyday life. In addition to the friends I have at school, I have many teammates that support me. Throughout my many years of sports, including softball, volleyball, basketball, soccer, and track, my teammates keep me motivated by encouraging and challenging me to improve. I have been on losing and winning teams, but as a team we stay optimistic and that carries into my individual …show more content…
Sometimes this failure can even occur with my friends and teammate. For example, during my last basketball season we were losing every game. Though My team was striving for victory, we could not achieve our goal. Despite our many defeats we remained hopeful that we would win the next game. In one of our final games we won with one point. Even though that was the only game we won in the entire season, we always remained positive and focused on improving our skills. With every failure, I learn how to see each one as a success in disguise.Thomas edison once said “ I have not failed. I have only found 10,000 ways that dont work”. Each of his failures was a success in finding a way that didn’t work. Being an optimist though, means to be persistent in things but also learning from negative experiences. As one of the recipes my sister and I tried we made macarons. We did everything the recipe said but it didn’t work out. I saw this experience as something to learn from and that not everything works out as we planned. Failure will always be something that gives us a reason to work harder but also to be more
The importance dispositional optimism as a facilitator of well-being, positive health, flourishing, and quality of life has been documented in the positive psychology literature. Dispositional optimism evaluated by the LOT-R is a positive personality trait characterized by favorable personal future expectation (Scheier et al., 1994). It has been emphasized that optimism is a malleable personality trait and that pessimists can become optimists by utilizing techniques such as positive psychology interventions (Carver et al., 2009; Seligman, 2011). In contrast to traditional psychological interventions, positive psychology interventions have a strong focus on cultivating positive personality traits including dispositional optimism.
Success and failure seem to be pretty distinct opposites, but many times the differences between success and failure aren’t as obvious as we may think them to be. Sometimes a failure can be turned into a success if you are willing to look back at them, and are open to learning from them. Many times, one’s attitude toward a failure can determine whether or not anything is learned from it. Those who remain upbeat and positive after a failure may be able to get something out of it, but those who just don’t think about it and ignore it won’t get anything from it.
People have said that to succeed, you must first fail. I didn’t really understand this until failure became so present in my life. In the beginning, my team was losing game after game, and getting knocked out of tournament after tournament. It was hard to keep playing on a team that was struggling so much. “Hang in there guys. We’re
Merriam -Webster defines hope as “a desire accompanied by expectation or belief in fulfillment.” I see hope as neither polished nor refined. Hope sometimes is misunderstood as a characteristic that has to do with religion; however, hope is used in more than just a religious sense. Although hope is not a physical attribute, one can easily see the physical appearance of the person change, who has hope. Hope fuels desire to not give up, it provokes a positive outlook on the future, and makes way for change.
Failure can cause a torrent of mixed emotions and thoughts. One can begin to doubt their motives for even attempting to succeed at a certain task. Some people may choose to give up after failure, but there are a select few who rise up to the occasion and move forward to try and succeed no matter how many tries it takes. By overcoming those difficult moments in life, it gives a person a sense of accomplishment and pride and that alone is a beautiful thing.
A time when I experiences failure is when I made the B team for volleyball. From not making the A team I learn a lot of lessons. I knew that if I wanted to be on the A team then I was going to the have to push myself to improve. I knew that just because I didn’t make the team that I wanted to I shouldn’t give up and quit. I also knew that because I didn’t make the team that I want I couldn’t take it out on other people. I had to show good character and prove that I wasn’t taking it out on anyone else. I also knew that I could set long term and short term goals to reach to become better.
Firstly, optimism increases an individual’s motivation in order to accomplish their goals. Additionally, people who encourage themselves to accomplish what they want, tend to be successful in life. Therefore,
Firstly, people who show an optimism bias feel more happy and satisfied with their life. These people are also more in control of and engaged in their life’s goal, they will not just think about happy thoughts and wait for life to pass, instead they will be engaged in a meaningful life and do whatever it takes to accomplish their goals. They are also less likely to give up on a difficult situation and will cope with it. These are people who will not wait for the rain to pass but who learn to dance in the rain in order to fulfil their life’s goal. Unrealistic optimism shows an increased well-being and happiness. With this increased well-being, unrealistically optimistic people are also more able to pick themselves up after a major life
Happiness is the main focus in life and should always be held most high according to Aristotle. He spends a great deal of time explaining how to achieve this we will see that, Aristotle was sure a genuinely happy life required a combination of many things. Which included physical and mental health? Bringing about a scientific way to look at happiness in its entirety.
It also has less to do with believing that everything is for the best and more to do with simply appreciating the good in the world. When one chooses to focus only on negativity, it can actually be more dangerous than blind optimism in the long run because it causes one to become unnecessarily depressed and numb to reality. That is no way to live one’s life; some degree of optimism is necessary to be happy. Everything that happens may not all be part of a plan or for the greater good, but there are most definitely good things that happen in life. To me, being optimistic means appreciating those things and hoping that good things will happen to you. For the last few years or so, I have tried to adapt my own way of thinking to this kind of optimism and it has benefited me greatly. It is not necessary to force oneself to believe that everything that happens is good or for the greater good. That is just not reality, but what is reality is that both bad and good things happen. When one focuses on the actions of love and goodness and how important they are to all happiness and success that is found in the world, one also realizes that those positive happenings are truly what matter in the long
My family has been there for me through thick and thin. Their love has driven me to achieve greater things in life. One example of this is when I won a student of the month award back in 8th grade. Although this was sometime ago this wouldn’t have happened without the love and support of my family. My mother always motivates me to get up in the morning and have a very productive day (even if I don’t want to).
family had a great influence in my life. They always helped me to make good choices, or made me laugh
Failure however, does not ensure success. Whereas failure helps one develop grit, not everyone can handle failure. Those who are determined and change their ways after failure will succeed. Anyone else may get too wrapped up in the thought of failing again
These phycologists have wondered if there are more optimist or pessimists in the world. They have made an attempt to find out what approach is greater or better. There are some advantages to optimism because it makes people feel better about life, however, there are also some advantages to pessimism in that looking at the unfortunate side of things can help some pessimists cope better with the world. Both optimism and pessimism have important roles to play the lives of everybody. Being optimist permits people to go after their goals in a positive way, to dream bigger and better dreams, which they can strive to work towards. Optimist also tend to respond better to positive feedback, and a part of being an optimist may be producing this feedback for themselves, example, thinking positive thoughts. While on the other hand, being pessimistic may help people to better acknowledge negative feedback and reduce their natural anxiety to perform better. Once again, part of the reason why pessimist generates negative thoughts is that it helps them perform a lot better. People tend to utilize both optimism and pessimism in order for them gain out of their advantages. People who are mainly concerned with growth or advancement often manifest an optimistic view, whereas those who are concerned with safety and security, or avoiding negative outcomes, focus more on pessimism in order to improve their
I believe that happiness is the key to living a good and prosperous life. Through all of the sadness and hate in the world, happiness gives me hope. It gives not only me, but others hope and joy. Happiness gives us something to hold onto, therefore we cherish it as much as we can.