Cultivate optimism and reduce overthinking to find hope & clarity

Everyone suffers in some way and has disappointments in life. It’s a part of our existence to battle through tough times and emerge victoriously. Cultivating optimism is akin to being hopeful and striving to do whatever it takes to reduce your suffering so you can expect a better tomorrow. It’s a fight for a better future. The enemy of realistic optimism is overthinking. Overthinking can make you pessimistic by pushing you into a slippery slope of losing hope, which unnecessarily puts the focus on the negative aspects of life. It often prevents one from gaining insight into the problem and obscures positive outcomes.

If you want to stay happy and become a fully satisfied person, you shouldn’t ignore or deny negative emotions. Dealing with negative emotions and events can help build resilience. Dealing with ‘negativity’ in a healthy way is the key to sustaining a happy life. Negative experiences can lead to constant preoccupation with negative thoughts. Such thinking lowers life satisfaction. However, regulating emotions constructively and forgiveness^[6] can improve life satisfaction. Just feeling happy and content once in a while won’t make you a happy person. The goal is to frequently experience happiness, satisfaction, and contentment, which means you have to accept and deal with negative emotions.

Overthinking can get a little tricky. Many of us overthink with a hint of self-reflection and rumination (revisiting existing maladaptive thoughts). One study points^[7] out that constructive self-reflection can increase happiness, but only when self-reflection does not lead to rumination. So if you want to feel happy once again after forgetting what it feels like, reduce fixating on the past.