the practice of optimistic realism
Solidifying one’s self-love and a positive self-image is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. I’ve found that the best method for cultivating a positive, healthy self-image and self-love is through positive self-talk.
Positive self-talk takes a really long time to get good at because, for a lot of people, it’s unnatural. Being critiqued by one’s parents is a normal part of childhood, so it’s normal for someone to carry those voices and comments with them into adulthood. While everyone needs to be critiqued from time to time, when the critiques far outweigh the compliments or even worse — if the compliments aren’t even present in the first place, then that’s when the critiques start to do more harm than good.
These critiques can fester and morph into a negative self-image which leads to lowered self-esteem. But one way to move past this headspace is to start practicing positive self-talk.
I improved my positive self-talk by ditching my pessimistic view of the world for a lens of optimistic realism. What that means is that I look on the bright side of all situations, but with a lens of healthy realism. When implementing a sense of optimism I don’t mean an ignorance-is-bliss-no-one-can-do-no-wrong way of looking at life, but rather one that’s concrete, understanding, empathetic, skeptical, yet hopeful, and curious about the future.
By rejecting pessimism and viewing the world from the lens of optimistic realism, I find myself feeling happy even in the face of strife. At first, you’ll have to force yourself to see the bright side of a situation, but after a while, it’ll become a natural tendency.
Being optimistic can be hard at times — trust me, I realize how difficult it can be to try and find the good in certain situations, but it’s worth putting in the extra effort. It’s proven that optimists live longer lives than pessimists, and because they’re looking for the positives in situations, they’re also enjoying life more while they’re at it; so being an optimist is worth the effort.
When I was younger, I was a full-on pessimist. I believed that if something could go wrong, it would. Paired with crippling low self-esteem, and a mountain of self-hatred, among an assortment of other mental baggage that I had yet to begin the long process of working through, I had a hard time seeing the good in things. I had a hard time just being happy in general.
When I got into high school I started unconsciously making the switch to being an optimist, and after losing a best friend the summer before tenth grade, I consciously became an optimistic realist. I could’ve let the loss push me even deeper into the hole of depression I was already in, but instead, my brain just kinda flipped a switch and made me a whole new person. Looking back, I feel like I was living life on autopilot until that point, but once that best friend broke things off I gained consciousness or something. I started living my life center stage. Maybe that’s how life sort of felt for everyone as a kid, but I don’t think that my pessimistic attitude was helping me live in the moment. It definitely wasn’t helping me enjoy life.
When bad things happen, I almost always instantly view it as an opportunity for something new rather than as a failure. Of course, sometimes it’s harder than others (and sometimes almost if not genuinely impossible), but in my case, I always manage to find a way to see the good in a situation. Even the worst ones. Especially the worst ones. I refuse to just give up in a situation, I can always find a workaround and find a way to be happy with the circumstance. By living this way, by refusing to not see all the potential good, I just feel better. I just feel happier. And now that I’m happier, positive self-talk comes so much more naturally than it ever did before.
Be kind to yourself, be kind to others; be an optimistic realist.
