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When Optimism Is No Longer An Asset
No self-respecting positive psychologist will tell you that optimism can hold you hostage. But it can, and often times, it will.
This is most apparent in careers and marriages. We hold out hope that one day things will spontaneously improve, accepting mediocrity in the short-run (in ourselves and others).
If you were to follow this hope all the way to its source, you’d find that all that’s left is: fear. Fear often disguises itself as optimism.
Our minds have tricked us into believing it’s better to hope than invest.
The most profound example of this whole ‘fear disguised as optimism’ phenomenon in my life has a fatal end.
One I’m not proud of but feel obliged to share.
My mom was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (stage 4) for the second time in 2011. The doctors found ‘spots’ of cancer all over her lymph nodes and a tumor in her lung.
There was a degree of shock that paralyzed me, but I drove through it with positive psychology principles, even yelling at my own mom to “suck it up” and “be more positive.”
