Optimists don’t know what it’s like to have bad luck

REALITY

Contrary to perception, optimists do face adversity – they just choose to see the silver lining. Instead of catastrophising a situation, they take a step back and keep things in perspective. Suppose you bungle a work presentation. Instead of then writing it – and yourself – o as ‘terrible’, optimists will frame it as ‘That was bad, but I can learn from it to do better in the future’. It’s about remembering that circumstances don’t drive happiness, your response to them does. If a test doesn’t go well, there are multiple ways to react. A pessimist will feel like a general failure while an optimist will think ‘Maybe I didn’t study hard enough. I’ll do it di erently next time’. In other words, you didn’t fail, your approach did, and next time you’ll think of strategies likely to bring a more rewarding result.