Today is your lucky day. Today is the day you learn how to be a Class Act Optimist.
But first, to recap yesterday's post:
You recall we did some sleuthing to find out if you were an optimist or a pessimist by answering these questions:
- Do you believe defeat is just a temporary setback, limited to one case and the situation is not your fault?
- Or do you believe a bad event will last a long time, will undermine everything and is your fault?
- If you answered yes to the first, you are a full-fledged optimist. But if you answered yes to the second, you are a pessimist through and through.
Truth be told, most of us find ourselves in the murky middle of these two mindsets. But here's the good news: Even if you have pessimistic tendencies, there's a cure.
David Mezzapelle, author of Contagious Optimism, offers up quite a few ideas for how to court optimism but the first on his list is to be grateful. Here are Mezzapelle's own words:
"Take inventory of the good around you. But don't neglect what's not good either. You also need to be grateful for the hardships, the obstacles, the failures .... All this is the foundation of optimism, being psyched out about the good and the bad and knowing they all point to a bright future."
So there you have it. As long as we court gratitude, it looks like we all have a good shot at being a Class Act Optimist. Who knew?