If you divided everyone in your life into two columns, optimists on the left and pessimists on the right, you would wind up with one full column and one empty column. Which is which?
The question of optimist or pessimist has an easy answer every time. Like many questions, the answer can go only one way if honesty is employed. Optimism represents life, and pessimism represents death. That’s reality, not a metaphor.
Like most life forms, we involuntarily fight for life. It’s in our nature. And it stays firmly planted there all the way up until the end of our lives here.
The idea of pessimism gets validation only when people are treated poorly, often in repeated fashion, until their spirit is broken. Even after a person’s spirit is broken, their inner optimism usually still grasps a glimmer of hope for something better such as escape, redemption or success.
The only possible honest answer to the question of optimist or pessimist is: optimist.
Kelly Hobkirk - teaching marketers how to harness strategy, goals, reality, and purpose to connect and do better work.
Kelly Hobkirk has been helping companies succeed in creative ways for nearly 25 years. His work has been featured in Time Magazine, and books by Rockport and Rotovision. Get exclusive articles when you sign up for his monthly newsletter.