I really hate people who are super positive. I disagree with the idea of optimism in general, honestly. Now, I may be slightly biased against it, as I was voted Most Pessimistic for the senior superlatives in the yearbook, but I am not just a Debbie Downer. I have even done research on the dangers of optimism before, and when you seriously think about it, optimism is not necessarily the best way to go about life.
Optimism can cause people to ignore warning signals because they are too busy thinking the best will happen. Where an optimist may look at a situation and say that everything will be fine, a realistic individual may look at the same situation and say that there is a real mess going on and find a way to deal with it. Realism can help people to see the world around them clearly, and pessimism can prevent people from being lulled into a false sense of security by becoming too confident and overly trusting, while also motivating them to do something about the future. Actually, there have been studies that have suggested that people who are overly optimistic tend to have short planning horizons and act in ways that are not generally considered to be smart, like saving less money. It also leads to a lack of willingness to accept outcomes different than those for which one had hoped and even denial at the outcome.
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Also, if you do not expect much in life, then everything you get is a gift, whereas if you think you only deserve the best, it is likely that you will live with constant disappointment. By this I pretty much just mean that if you are pessimistic about future prospects, it allows you to feel lucky when you get something you want, making it a pleasant surprise versus being optimistic, which allows for not getting something you want to become a source of discouragement and possibly even depression. Even the ancient Greeks practiced what they called “the premeditation of evils” which basically recommended deliberately visualizing the worst-case scenario in order to reduce anxiety about the future, because when you thoughtfully picture how badly things could go in reality, you usually conclude that you could cope. By using defensive pessimism when anticipating something about which you are particularly anxious, you can set low expectations and think about all the possible things that could go wrong, and by considering the specific ways this could happen, you can actively prepare yourself and possibly prevent disaster.
