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I've started to feel like the times when I'm happiest are the times when I'm regarding myself with the least amount of realism. Like, I'd have to be delusional to be optimistic about my future.
Which is the diseased way of thinking: unrealistic optimism, or pragmatic pessimism?
Which is the diseased way of thinking: unrealistic optimism, or pragmatic pessimism?
Anyway. This brought something to mind that I read... somewhere. A long time ago.
They did some kind of study on people with depression, and what they found was that normal people have unrealistic views of themselves. You're familiar with it, stuff like "I'm a better driver than everyone else". Stuff like that. They all place themselves as better at everything than everyone else, when they compare themselves. This is *normal*.
People with depression, though... actually clocked in as viewing themselves exactly as they are. That is, they happen to view their abilities as on par with what they actually are, rather than inflating them like everyone else does.
What the hell does this mean? Is it societies fault for shit like barbie dolls and media hype? Or is it just that we're hardwired to try to exceed our limitations, so we naturally view ourselves beyond our current limits, which may often lead us to push our boundaries... (For better or worse. Hopefully better.)
But anyway. Go with the unrealistic optimism. There is no point in aiming low. So what if you fail to land on the moon... if you aim at the sewer, you're only ever going to land in the sewer. If you aim at the moon, you have a very good chance of landing somewhere better than the sewer. You just have to learn that missing the moon is not failure, as long as you tried (which is my problem :P)
One thing that I got to read over and over and over again in BOTH of my psych courses, and can't remember the term for now! (yay education), is the basic idea that, "if you THINK you can do it, you CAN do it." Obviously, it's not entirely literal, but the idea is that if you approach something with the mindset that you CAN do this, you are infinitely more likely to succeed at it than if you approach something with the "oh god I'm going to fail" mindset. It even triggers biological responses that make you more likely to succeed if you approach something with an "I'm going to do this" attitude, which I found pretty interesting.
"Relabel" your situation to make it more likely that you will achieve your goals, and it WILL be more likely that you will achieve them. Sit around moping and it's highly unlikely that your goals will go achieve themselves.
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