The problem with optimism
Seth Pimentel @african_ginger
Now what does this mean? I am a self-proclaimed Optimist. I have been since the time I was in grade school when I first heard the word “Optimism”. I think we were questioned… are you an optimist or are you a pessimist or are you somewhere in the middle?
I thought, “I'm an Optimist! Obviously I am going to believe that things are going to improve and that the best is going to happen… if I have a negative mindset or if I see the glass as half-empty then that's going to affect me negatively. I'm going to feel bad.”
So as a self-proclaimed Optimist, why would I say that there's a problem with optimism? Well, here's why:
Because this can delude us into not changing, into not taking action, into not actually doing anything to create a result that's going to improve our lives!
I was talking to a friend of mine recently and he was saying, “Well, I know things will get better if I just wait long enough. The good things will come back around.”
I said to him, “Bro, you cannot think that way! You have to do something differently… look at your life, look at what you're doing. You do the same things every single day, so you're going to get the same results.”
He responded,”Well 3 years ago things were better…”
Let me ask you this - Do you want to wait another 3 years in the hopes that things will improve?
I gave him an opportunity to come to one of my Qigong classes, because they've been producing massive results for people. One of my clients recently said, “This has really changed my life in the last month, like everything has changed! I’m on fire, and the one thing I can point to that is causing this is the fact that I've gotten out of my head and I'm into my body. These classes are incredible!”
Well, this isn't a sales pitch for my Qi Gong classes - although I highly recommend them…it's just to elucidate that if you do something that gets results, sure it might be difficult. But if you put the work in you can make massive progress in a short amount of time. I offered this to my friend and he responded, “I can't get up that early.”
I honestly wanted to grab him and shake him in that moment. Perhaps he needed a good throttling, and if I could have reached through the phone and done so, I would have!
Ok, maybe that was my own issue, but do you know how I feel?
“DUDE, you have got to make a change… you’ve got to expect it's not going to be easy, and you’ve got to do something differently and then, yes you should be optimistic. If you're doing things, if you're working at life, there will be change. But change is usually accompanied by pain. Pain is unavoidable. I experience it all the time and I'm an optimistic person.
I realize that difficult things happen sometimes, that's part of the path, that's just life. But you know what I'm not doing? I am NOT just doing nothing… drinking and smoking away my problems, taking a bunch of fucking pills and thinking that things are going to change! That's absolute Insanity.
So this message goes out hopefully to inspire someone to make some kind of change, to make an effort to do something differently - do anything differently, make some changes. If you want a different life, if you truly want your life to improve, yes, you should be optimistic… but you should also not bullshit yourself into thinking things are just going to get better if you wait long enough. Because that's not the way that it works - sorry, that’s just not the way life works.
So if you are struggling, if you are feeling challenged but you're thinking, I know things will get better. I ask you, I invite you to do something differently, to make some kind of a change.
Maybe start getting up a little earlier, maybe start reading some books that are inspiring… and then don't just stop there. Do NOT just consume information, because we can get stuck in consumption and think we're actually making progress. Just because you’re reading a lot of books, or you are watching a lot of YouTube videos, you still need to take action to move the needle.
And when you’ve completed this assignment, then I want you to reach out to me and let me know what happened. Let me know what changes have come about. If you have a difficulty come up, I'm more than happy to listen to it, as well as give you some feedback. We can be positive together, but I'm only interested in talking to you if you're actually willing to do some work.
All right that's it for today, much love!
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