Become Optimistic and cultivate hope without lying to yourself

Optimism is a perspective that healthily encourages people to focus on positive events (without ignoring negative events) and hope for better outcomes in life. Optimism isn’t about blindly believing the world owes you better. It is about cultivating positive outcomes in life by choosing what you focus on. Hope and optimism are intricately linked to life satisfaction through negative thoughts.

Overthinking, negative thinking, and excessive worry often kills hope and blinds us to any optimistic outcome. Dealing with negative events is a key part of happiness. Preoccupation with negative events converts into intense negative thoughts and that pulls down life satisfaction. However, forgiveness (self & others), regulating emotions, de-fusing negative thoughts improve life satisfaction.

Care should be taken that self-reflection while regulating emotions is constructive and does not lead to more negative thinking. The best way to reduce this is to tell yourself what you value in life and paint a realistic picture of how you are. Be constructive in improving yourself without playing a blame-hate game with yourself. Constructive self-reflection improves the quality of your inner-life. A large part of this accepting your personal reality as it is so you don’t end up lying to yourself.