Vol. 012–Optimism, pessimism, and realism ow my! But I have the best viewpoint and other lies we tell ourselves.

1 oz of water to garden your health

2 Tools for growth

1 Cool Product

Mystery Prize

Reading Time: 2 minutes and 17 seconds

Action to water your health

Last weeks issue we talked about the benefits of optimism ( health, better coping strategies, more successful) and simple ways to use it. This week we’ll talk about optimism alter ego, blind optimism.

Let’s give a simple example. After graduating school you get your dream job. One week in your boss tells you “have the presentation ready in one week.” Wow! I just started (does he know that?) anyways, you start working on the presentation. Its data driven, numbers up the wazoo, formulas and other brain numbing stuff.

Two days left until presentation.

You’re about 50% finished and your buddies tell you about this once-in-a-lifetime party ( I hear drake is dropping a secret song). You attend. Get smashed, and recover just in time for the presentation. You are blindly optimistic and think “I’ll do awesome, and get a raise.” You don’t. You get fired, and realize, dam I should have prepared more.

People With Unrealistic optimism:

• Are more difficult to update beliefs

• Higher risk for negative outcomes ( Smoking is bad, but I won’t get lung cancer)

• Seek out less information about risk

let’s all be pessimistic

Always expecting the worst, never being happy. Never enjoying the small wins. Don’t fall for this trap. I’ve lived most of my life thinking this way, it sucks.

At 55 years young our optimism hits a peak ( we can dive into why another time). So you only have a certain number of optimism years left. I don’t believe this to be true ( I hope this isn’t blind optimism).

If this is true. More reason not to be so pessimistic all the time.

But what about the realist

A realist is someone who has a perspective of looking at things as they are, at this moment. They take things as face value.

I could go on and on. But the gist is. We all live in some weird spectrum of optimism, realism, and pessimistic. Ebbing and flowing within the river.

So next time you face a tough situation. Change your perspective to see through each three of these lenses. Take a second to think, what does that path look like? Does it make sense? 

Tools for growth

Acapela: I’m not sure if this is the first company to do this. But having all work notifications in one spot makes so much sense. No need to go between slack, discord, or other message apps.

One-Sec: This is simple and pure genius. When you open a social media app on your phone one-sec pops up. It makes you think "Do I really need to scroll Tiktok right now?"

Cool Product

Oncloud running shoes: Feet hurt? tired of snapping your ankles? These shoes do feel like you’re walking on clouds. Comfortable and stylish. They are pricey but I’d pay to prevent folded ankles.

Mystery Prize

30-for-30 Tracker: You can use this tool, your calendar, notes app, pretty much anything to keep track of a habit of skill you want to improve or build upon.

• Commit: 30 days, 30 minutes.

Need an accountability partner? send me an email and I’ll follow up with you each day and see how you’re doing for 30 days. 

🎒let’s go

Martin

PS: If you found this newsletter or a prior one helpful please forward it to your friends. I appreciate ya!