I don’t know if the optimists or the pessimists are right. But the optimists are going to get something done.
Craig Venter
Many people argue that optimists and pessimists are two sides of the same coin. One deliberately chooses to look at the positives while disregarding the negatives, howsoever many; the other spends all his time looking at the negatives. This might be true, but with there’s one major factor that makes a world of difference to the end result.
For all the accusations of being too upbeat in their outlook, an optimist is bound to do one thing that a pessimist will most likely struggle to – move ahead.
That’s right. You see, just by focusing on the positives of a situation, an optimist knows that he needs to keep moving forward to accomplish his goals. He doesn’t fret about the unfavorable circumstances and wait for things to go his way. He rather acts proactively to turn the tide. Needless to say, it is this dynamic approach that is likelier to yield success than a passive, pessimistic attitude.
How does this work, you might wonder? Well, when you look at what could have gone wrong instead of what did go wrong, your focus automatically shifts to making sure that the journey ahead goes smoothly as well. An optimist’s outlook is always action-based. They do take their time to plan things out, but they know that it is eventually the implementation of those plans that will get them where they set out to be. For them, any difficulties along the way are part and parcel of the process. This, in turn, makes it easier for them to modify their plans instead of giving up on them altogether.
John Craig Venter, popularly known as Craig Venter, is an American biotechnologist and businessman. Known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome, Venter is all for positivity. He once remarked: “I don’t know if the optimists or the pessimists are right. But the optimists are going to get something done.”