It is difficult to be an optimist when everything seems to be going wrong. When people have to deal with unpleasant things in life it is easier to see the negative. Yet, having a positive outlook can help one be happier because attitude is directly related to mood. The disposition of a character and how it is linked to attitude is revealed many times in the novel by Jerry Spinelli. Despite being labeled as a “loser” by other kids, the character Donald Zinkoff in the book Loser shows that keeping a positive attitude helps a person to stay happy. Donald’s positive attitude makes himself more happy, the people around him happy and other people’s attitude change. To begin with, Donald keeps himself happy by keeping a positive attitude even through …show more content…
upsetting situations. An older boy takes Donald's hat and taunts him by claiming it is his hat and not Donalds to get a reaction but Donald becomes happy because of his compassion.
While dealing with the bullies clams of the hat the narrator explains Donalds emotions: “Zinkoff is sad. He has really come to love the hat that he thought was his. But he is not sad too, because he can tell how happy it makes the tall boy to get his hat back” (Spinelli 23). Regardless of being sad because the bully is potentially going to take the hat, Donald looks at the situation in a positive light. Instead of just thinking about losing something that holds special meaning to him Donald also thinks about the older boys emotions. The compassion Donald has from having a positive attitude keeps him in a healthy state of mind making him happy. Donald thinking of the situation as an opportunity for the bully to be rekindled with something important to him in return makes Donald “not sad too” because he understands the impact that the hat has on the other boy. Donalds compassionate outlook on the situation and positive mood towards it relates to Donald being happy whether getting to keep the hat or giving it to the bully. Donald is able to disregard other people's opinions of him which helps to …show more content…
keep himself happy. It is easy for every reader of the novel to pick up on Donalds traits while he is going through unpleasant situations: “Despite the taunts and barbs of his critical classmates, Donald maintains a ‘what, me worry?’ attitude due to a healthy optimism and a lack of concern for what others think” (Contemporary Authors Online). Due to Donald being used to other kids not always accepting him, he is able to not think about others thoughts of him. Donald thinks about himself in a positive light which helps him do what he wants and be himself. The more Donald stays true to himself the happier he is because he doesn’t do anything that would upset him. Not being worried about other people's thoughts on him helps Donald to be happy because he doesn’t need approval from others which in return fuels his optimism. In such a fashion, Donald is able to make himself happy by just being an optimist and looking at every situation positively which helps give him the qualities such as compassion for others and the confidence to be himself. Just as Donald keeps himself happy due to having a positive attitude, he also impacts other people's emotions by keeping a positive outlook around them. Donald makes decisions based on thinking about other people which helps to uplift their feelings. After winning his soccer game Donald tries to make Andrew happy by giving him his trophy: “[S]uddenly he’s running, he’s yelling, ‘Andrew! Andrew!’ Cherise and Andrew turn in the parking lot. Zinkoff runs huffing up to them. ‘Andrew, here.’ He holds out the trophy. The look in Andrew’s eyes tells him he has done the right thing. ‘You take it’” (Spinelli 48). Instead of bragging and acting like the other kids Donald is more concerned with how disappointed Andrew is about losing.
Donald stays positive about the situation and figures that he can stay happy with just winning and doesn’t need the trophy as much as Andrew seems to want it. Donald wants to share his happiness and does so by putting Andrew first which in turn makes Andrew happier. What Donald decides to do makes Andrew happy despite losing. Due to Donald being so positive and creating his own happiness he wants to share the experience with other people. The effects of being positive can be shown in Donald’s life: “[T]he words of Buddha on how ‘Happiness never decreases by being shared’ , you will constantly look for ways to inspire and to share your happiness with everybody around you and making sure that at least one life has breathed easier because you have lived” (Saviuc). Being happy no matter what helps to make other people happier because they see the impact it has. Donald tries to stay as happy as possible in all situations because it makes him feel good about himself. Donald finds happiness in simple thing and by helping people. When others see Donald generous actions and how well his life seems to be going because he is always happy they start to subconsciously mimic him. Everyone wants to be happy and when other people see Donald ability to stay happy because of his positivity and thoughtful action they in return have no choice but to be happy as well around
him. Along with making other people happy, Donald’s attitude makes other people want to change their attitudes to mirror his. Due to Donald never giving up on being positive people start to respect him and instead of ridiculing him they learn to be more positive also. When picking teams for football Bonce starts to see something in Donald that he respects and instead of being a bully Bonce’s attitude changes, “This kid won’t back off, and his stare is hitting Bonce like a football in the forehead. In those eyes Bonce sees something he doesn’t understand, and something else he dimly remembers…[t]his is goofy, he thinks. He thinks of a thousand things to say, a thousand other ways this could go, but in the end there’s really only one word, he knows that, one word from him and who knows where we go from there? He points, he says it: ‘Zinkoff.’ And the game begins” (Spinelli 218). Instead of excluding Donald in the football game like would usually happen because of the persistence of Donald, Bonce decided to add Donald onto his team. Donald stays positive through thick and thin which helps him over feeling sad or disappointed. When Bonce sees that Donald is not backing down despite never being pick to play with the other kids he becomes confused. Bonce becomes impressed with Donald and begins to look at the situation in a positive light also. Bonce knows Donald has no skills or talent and can barely walk without tripping but because of Donald's attitude Bonce now tries to be positive and includes Donald in the game. Donald’s attitude changes the reader's view almost immediately to be more positive and supportive of Donald corky ways. The conclusion to the novel is where the characters begin to have the same view as the reader: “Zinkoff's efforts to find a little girl lost in a snowstorm don't make him a hero--in fact they make him even more of a laughingstock--but one boy, getting up a football game, looks at Donald and ‘sees something he doesn't understand’ and can't stop himself from choosing Zinkoff for his side. He's beginning to see something the reader has known all along” (Sieruta). From the beginning of the book the reader has known that Donald despite not always cool is still a very sweet kid who means well. Through getting bullied and ridiculed Donald has stayed happy and positive but not many people seemed to notice. After doing something that shows Donalds compassion for others and inability to understand what is considered “normal” the other characters begin to understand who Donald really is. Due to this revelation the people who once made fun of Donald now respect him and also have more positive outlooks on situations. Donald’s main skill of being positive and never giving up helps to inspire the other characters and even the reader to try to use him as an example. Even through the ridicule of other people Donald Zinkoff, a character in the book “loser”, sets an example that having a positive outlook can keep a person happy. Furthermore, people becoming more positive, the happiness of others and Donald's happiness can all be related back to Donald's positive attitude. How people handle situations is a personal choice that can affect a person’s whole life. Optimist choose to look at every situation as a learning experience which overall helps them to stay happy. It is almost impossible to be upset at a situation if someones thought process is that every situation will help to make life better in the end.
As Happy begins, he minimally cares about his performance and is more focused on only participating in order to get paid. He does not think that he can be the best and does not care enough to work towards being the best. He simply wants to put in minimal work to get just enough of a reward to buy his grandmother’s house back. Happy is a naturally talented golf player and performed amazingly well under little pressure, but as he began the Pro Tour, his competition got harder and harder and as the pressure and crowds grew, Happy initially began to struggle. However, as Happy continued to play golf throughout the Pro Tour, he becomes to play better and better until eventually winning to him is even more important than getting his grandmother’s house back. He wants to succeed and begins taking lessons to improve. After taking lessons, Happy not only was able to make it by under pressure, he thrived playing under pressure and in front of a crowd. He even asks for the crowd to cheer as he takes his opening drive at the Tour Championship. And in the climax of the movie, in front of the biggest crowd yet, Happy is able to sink a shot by bouncing it off and through a fallen TV tower to beat Shooter McGavin by one
I don’t know why, I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice ‘Sleep tight, ya morons!’”(68) Putting the hat on comforts him and gives him the confidence to yell and wake everyone up. In private he uses the hat to make himself seem more individual and to give himself confidence. He puts the hunting hat on again once he leaves Pencey, “I didn’t give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway.”(69), but once he gets on the train, “All I did was take off my hunting hat and put it in my pocket.”
In the moment neither of these feelings are amazing but in “Competition Makes a Comeback”, Caitlin Snaring shares that this was actually results in an outcome that is well worth it: “‘Losing made me want to win even more… got me fired up’ to win the 2007 contest.” (Kronholz 18). Because Caitlin felt upset after being eliminated at a 2006 geography bee, she realized that she didn’t want to feel like this again, and the only way for that to happen is to push even harder to reach goals. Without failure against others people assume they are the best or they are just a natural winner so they don’t need to try. This mindset automatically sets society up for failure, because with everyone just sitting back waiting for a trophy to be handed to them for anything and everything nothing would get done, and there is no way for everyone in a society to all win one way. Just imagine a computer engineer thinking they can release a computer that is only a small percent finished just because people loved their last
Oliver Burkeman, author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking and column writer for The Guardian, explores the human need to seek for happiness and its connection to the Museum of Failures in his article Happiness is a Glass Half Empty. Burkeman’s purpose to writing this essay is to give readers a new view on how to seek happiness – embrace negativity and expect the worst. Burkeman’s use of a friendly, almost informal tone to help relate to his readers is a brilliant attempt to catch his reader’s attention and hold it, therefore enabling the delivery of logic seem almost effortless.
Despite all the challenges we are faced with there is always a strong sense of positivity through those who believe in hope, friendship and have a sense of belonging.Determination and a strong connection with the natural world can uphold a person's sense of hope, Dedication and friendship can promote a person’s sense of belonging and that through trust and loyalty you can always rely on friends to be there in difficult situations.This is a inspiring message represented in The Outsiders by SE Hinton a tale told through the eyes of a determined and courageous fourteen year old boy who through , loss ,pain and difficult challenges finds a impression of positivity as a result of hope, friendship and belonging. The Outsiders is set in Tulsa
The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.
There’s optimism in all literature known to man if not optimism then it would be pessimism. They are the basis of any literature work. It’s found in many books and poems today. In the novel Fahrenheit451 by Ray Bradbury evaluates the theme of optimism. The author Ray Bradbury writes about a guy named Montag who is in a society where firemen burn houses instead of putting fires out. Montag seeks out the good in the books which are banned in this dystopian society where knowledge is forbidden to rise from society. He and other literature seekers pave the way for him to learn knowledge and the freedom of thinking which is against the law in this society. Montag falls in love with books so much that he tries to find someone who can teach him about the books and how important they are to life. The world would fall apart without knowledge no one would have a clue on what to do or how to eat since they don’t have that knowledge at hand. Optimism can also be found in the William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus”, Freedom to Breathe” by Alexander Solzheitsynand and in the speech “The Nobel acceptance by Elie Wiesel.
A smile has the incredible ability to hide anything. “The funny thing is, nobody ever really knows how much anybody else is hurting. We could be standing next to somebody who is completely broken and we wouldn’t even know it” (Anonymous). Many people in our world internally suffer. Some may say that “[t]he hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy” (Anonymous). During these years of life, people face an uncountable number of struggles and are exposed the true disfigurement of the world. When people undergo extreme or stressful situations that they cannot possibly handle and face the grief-stricken tragedies of the world, such as death, they normally fall into a dark hole called depression. Depression resides everywhere and it has existed for centuries. Throughout the years, however, it has progressively gotten worse. During the 1970s, depression constituted a less severe issue than it does in today’s society. In the 1970s, depression started to gain more attention as such an extensive problem, and began affecting humanity at a more youthful age as the years continued. The number of people suffering from depression today has nearly doubled since the 1970s. However, depression presents just as much of a concern today as it has in the past. In The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty portrays depression through the juxtaposition of characters, her use of symbolism, and verbal irony portrayed throughout the novel.
Having a positive outlook can be very important when being involved in a conflict or trying to solve one. This is how Anne Frank and Louise Ogawa from First Read: Dear Miss Breed got through the roughest times of their lives. They kept a positive outlook on things and tried to make the best of the worst. Just looking on the bright side, even if it feels like there isn’t one can make a huge difference. As a great thinker, such as Joyce Meyer, once said, ‘’A positive attitude gives you power over your circumstances instead of your circumstances, having power over you’’. If they did not maintain a positive outlook, then who knows how they would have survived. Having a positive outlook gives you the strength to keeping going
Happiness plays an important and necessary role in the lives of people around the world. In America, happiness has been engrained in our national consciousness since Thomas Jefferson penned these famous words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson). Since then, Americans have been engaged in that act: pursuing happiness. The problem however, as Ray Bradbury demonstrates in his novel Fahrenheit 451, is that those things which make us happy initially may eventually lead to our downfall. By examining Guy Montag, the protagonist in Fahrenheit 451, and the world he lives in we can gain valuable insights to direct us in our own pursuit of happiness. From Montag and other characters we will learn how physical, emotional, and spiritual happiness can drastically affect our lives. We must ask ourselves what our lives, words, and actions are worth. We should hope that our words are not meaningless, “as wind in dried grass” (Eliot).
“Choose Your Attitude.” The Mind Connection, Hachette Book Group, 2015 page 42. Accessed 20 November 2017. In her book, Joyce Meyer explains the importance of a positive attitude in relation to achieving happiness.
...e this unfair life for Donald to come out ahead in the end." Donald had invested the one hundred dollars the Pete gave him on what Pete thought was extremely outrageous then got worried when he felt Donald would do something to out smart him.
While reading an article written by Richard Smith about feeling happy when someone has made a mistake, he concludes that “when the other side stumbles-- be it a political party or a sports team-- it’s natural to feel good”. One of the facts he writes in his article is that we gain from others misfortunes. We might gain ahead in a competition or we might gain an e...
...r attitude upside down to combat her depression and achieve both hers and Natalie Coughlin’s dreams. In all these ways, a positive attitude leads to a better world for both the person and society around them. In summary, one can only better their view of the world by changing their mental outlook on themselves, life, or other people.
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