A mental attitude of being hopeful, even in difficult
situations.
The opposite of pessimism. I used to think that intelligence was
great, but then later realized ignorance was bliss, and then even later
realized it's just that schools guilt-tripped me into thinking anything
not in the curriculum was useless and time better spent studying, but
then I reversed my mind and realized I can be optimistic and smart at
the same time! In reality, a dose of optimism contributes greatly to
pleasure and learning, and as it is just a state of the mind, it
does not imply that you are oblivious to problems (rather, optimistic
people may be socially aware and selectively decide not to talk about
problems to avoid ruining a good mood.)
The brain is too optimistic or nostalgic/bright about the past or the
future. To the point there is the planning fallacy.
The reality of the pain in reality may be the most reliable real reality
sensation.
"Will never be in an optimistic state...
Well well well, guess what, I knew it all along: the more I know, the
less good I feel, and I have destroyed the used-to-be optimistic state
of a human, but knowledge is power, and optimism is ignorance, so
optimism is a trap…"
The simple one, yet the biggest one, is the risk of sudden disbelief, disappointment, depression, and collapse, because fundamentally you assumed more than life actually is, which is a loop of suffering, so returning to normal or even a normal-bad event occurring would hurt more than it would have had without it. In reality, perhaps my brain overweighed the last moment's disappointment due to a cognitive bias?
To be fair, I was against this for a long time. Because I thought it made you careless and fail to prepare for adverse scenarios.
But then I realized that it can actually help with action and that it can help with mental health. Still, a bit of my old self "lingers," so I might need a bit of time to adapt my attitude.
I thought hope was a coping mechanism for quite a while, but I realized that even if I know a lot of cognitive science, I am inevitably human and subject to the same effects as others of mankind, so I now realize that at least some amount of it is needed for normal function.
"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst"... Perhaps I now just realize that you can do both at the same time, because "hoping" doesn't mean assuming "it and only, the best case, it will surely be the case".
Well, at the very least, some optimism is necessary for the person to have enough motivation to start.
You wouldn't want to fall into optimism bias - and not account for the potential of danger You also wouldn't want to fall into a lack of motivation, which can lead to depression or lack of productivity So it's a bit tricky! Realism is good. At least I know, doing something with 0% to success, even if effort is paid in, and 100% to success without effort paid in is worthless
Do somewhere in the middle. However, humans also psychologically feel hurt much more when something bad happens (about 2-5 times; sources contradict because it's hard for such things to be measured numerically)
Forced optimism brings about pessimism - because of lack of control. The
baseline state of a human is already quite optimistic. The overjustification effect will
strike if you try to force someone to feel specific emotions they
wouldn't naturally feel.
"You can
do it" - prime example (also axiomatically meaningless, if you use
the same logic as
"You can theoretically win the lottery.)
Inherent optimism usually gets ruined by failure or the education system - learned helplessness does not lead to
optimism; optimism correlates with feelings of control, i.e. freedom, i.e.
absence from coercion!
This is evolutionary, it might be that, factually,
babies are pretty much powerless; they can’t even walk, talk, or choose
what to eat. So if there was nothing else working for them, babies might
just choose not to breathe and die.
Children are born with a high optimism bias as a survival mechanism; alternatively, because
they have no agency, they are blissfully unaware of the adult world
too.
I was one of the few children to even doubt whether happiness and
friends are good, as I could see lots of pain in Chinese even when I was
in primary school.
On the other hand, I think this theory can also be learned helplessness
from school or
work, where agency is also suppressed; over time, the person becomes neutral and
obedient: subjectivity and "disruptions" not being
valued; most would end up that way.
I'm now more accepting of what I used to call unrealistic optimism.
This comes from the fact that reality is unpredictable! It's almost impossible to predict it exactly how it went (might be disproportionately shaped by the previous attempt:peakend bias)
I'm biased too! Useless to accuse! If comparing expectations to reality, inaccurate predictions would almost always exist, right? So it's fine. It's nature. I see it is nature.