Optimist or pessimist: Which mindset are you choosing?

I love the quote from James Borg’s book Mind Power that goes:

“Whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist may not affect the outcome. It’s just that the optimist has a better time in life”.

What I want to recount to you now is the key to the magic box where you can retrieve your subscription papers that declare lifelong membership to the Pessimists Club. Actually, it’s not so much a key as a question, really, and it might just change the way you see yourself and the way you justify your thoughts and your feelings to yourself.

Do you control your mind?

The key question is this:

Do you control your mind? Or do you let your mind control you?

We are all the product of what we think, from second to second, minute to minute. The incessant commentary that we create as we talk to ourselves in our heads will lead us to the actions, and then create the feelings that we experience. It's worth repeating that….

Your thoughts come first, and then feelings follow.

It is simply not possible to have a feeling without the precursor of a thought. So when we tell ourselves, “I can’t help the way that I feel, it’s just the way I am, and there’s nothing I can do about it”, what we are actually doing is choosing to keep ourselves boxed into that negative mindset because those are the thoughts that we are choosing for ourselves.

Are you choosing optimism or pessimism?

So what are you choosing to be, and did you think you were born that way? Well, no, actually, that’s what you are choosing for yourself, because that’s the way you are choosing to think.

So obviously, if you are an optimist, then well done, you and long may it continue. However, if not, and you are a glass-half-empty kind of person, does it make you stop and wonder how you pulled the short straw…oops, there it goes again!

Some even argue for their weaknesses and list reasons why they can’t improve their life, such as “it’s my upbringing”, “it’s my genes”, or “it’s bad luck”.

We always have a choice

However, these things, no matter how strong, can only ever be influences upon us; they do not determine us. We can always think differently and thereby improve ourselves and our responses to all that we encounter and experience. We cannot control what happens to us or how other people treat us, but we always have the freedom to choose our mental and emotional response, our outlook and attitude.

I give full credit to James Borg for these ideas, and I recommend you read his book in full; it’s a potential life changer.

So What Are You Choosing?
So what are you choosing? Do you think of yourself as a pessimist?

Don’t forget:

“Whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist may not affect the outcome. It’s just that the optimist has a better time in life”.