How to be an optimist

[hermes2007]

I think of myself as generally optimistic (though of course we all have bad days) but so many people I know seem in a 'glass half full' mood at the moment. I don't suppose the economic and weather climate is helping. Anyway this seems a useful article to remind us that it is better to be positive, whenever possible, and to look forward to new things.

How to be an optimist
Smile, and the world smiles with you: but what makes the likes of Bill Clinton and Richard Branson so smiley in the first place? Laurence Shorter goes in search of eternal sunshine
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article5388787.ece

[Andy]

I thought the 'glass half full' mentality referred to being optimistic, rather than pessimistic being 'glass half empty'.

Maybe I've misread your post Hermes, but you seem to be inferring that people are being pessimistic/negative by their glass being half full?

[hermes2007]

You're quite right Andy - I wake up very early (a habit from my working days) and my brain wasn't quite in gear. I am just struck how a lot of people (not all of course) seem really down and gloomy at the moment. The end of the world is nigh. Things are pretty bad and to be falsely optimistic is stupid but I do think positive thinking does help and being around optimistic people does lift my spirits at least.

[Greenman]

Currently reading Thomas Moores "A life at work" and there is a passage that goes" life seems glorious for a while then it seems poisonous but you must never lose faith in it , it is glorious after all" (Wallace Stevens). Keep on keeping on.

[Clevercat]

Thanks for that Greenman.

I do desperately try to be positive but I am afraid I am one of those pessimistic people you refer to.

I have been to counselling and the like in a bid to rid myself of my negativity, alot of it is due to being brought up in a certain way, and I am trying to shed my learned behaviours!!!!!!

I am an anxious person, and I know that it is completely unproductive to worry, but I still do.

If there were a magic potion I could take to rid myself of my worry genes I would in a second!!!

Postive people attract positive people and positive things, and they also live longer as well!!!