optimism essay

Bipolar Disorder
Therapy Center
When To See a Therapist
Types of Therapy
Best Online Therapy
Best Couples Therapy
Best Family Therapy
Managing Stress
Sleep and Dreaming
Understanding Emotions
Self-Improvement
Healthy Relationships
Student Resources
Personality Types
Guided Meditations
Verywell Mind Insights
2023 Verywell Mind 25
Mental Health in the Classroom
Editorial Process
Meet Our Review Board
Crisis Support

What Is Optimism?

How Optimism Affects Your Physical and Mental Health

Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

Tim Robberts / Getty Images

Signs of Optimism

Causes of optimism.

How to Practice

Impact of Optimism

Potential pitfalls.

Optimism is a mental attitude characterized by hope and confidence in success and a positive future. Optimists tend to view hardships as learning experiences or temporary setbacks. Even the most miserable day holds the promise for them that "tomorrow will probably be better."

Optimists expect good things to happen, whereas pessimists instead predict unfavorable outcomes. Optimistic attitudes are linked to several benefits, including better coping skills, lower stress levels, better physical health, and higher persistence when pursuing goals.

If you always see the brighter side of things, you may experience more positive events in your life than others, find yourself less stressed, and even enjoy more significant health benefits.

There are many key characteristics that optimists tend to share. Some signs that you tend to be optimistic:

You feel that good things will happen in the future.
You expect things to work out for the best.
You feel like you will succeed in the face of life's challenges.
You feel that the future looks bright.
You think that even good things can come from adverse events.
You see challenges or obstacles as opportunities to learn.
You feel gratitude for the good things in your life.
You are always looking for ways to make the most of opportunities.
You have a positive attitude about yourself and others.
You accept responsibility for mistakes but don't dwell on them.
You don't let one bad experience muddy your expectations for the future.

An example of optimism is believing that there will always be opportunities to make things better tomorrow, even if you are experiencing challenges today.

Test Your Mindset

Take our fast and free quiz to find out if you are more of an optimist or pessimist.

The exact causes of optimism are not fully understood, but several factors likely play a role. Genetics, upbringing, culture, and other environmental influences can influence optimism.

According to one twin study, genetics account for around 25% of optimism. Another study found that age is an important determinant, with optimism increasing through young adulthood, leveling off between ages 55 and 70, and then declining in older adulthood.

Research has also shown that optimism and pessimism are influenced by neurophysiology. Optimistic attitudes are associated with activity in the lef-hemisphere of the brain, while pessimistic characteristics are connected to activity in the right hemisphere.

Explanatory Styles

Many factors influence optimism, but whether you tend to be more of an optimist or more of a pessimist can often be explained by how you explain the events of your life.

Explanatory style or attributional style refers to how people explain the events of their lives. There are three facets of how people can explain a situation. This can influence whether they lean toward being optimists or pessimists:

Stable vs. Unstable: Can time change things, or do things stay the same regardless of time?
Global vs. Local: Is a situation a reflection of just one part of your life, or your life as a whole?
Internal vs. External: Do you feel events are caused by you or by an outside force?

Realists see things relatively clearly, but most of us aren’t realists. Instead, we tend to attribute the events in our lives either optimistically or pessimistically.

Optimist Explanatory Style

Optimists explain positive events as having happened because of their own actions or characteristics (internal). They also see them as evidence that more positive things will happen in the future (stable) and in other areas of their lives (global).

Conversely, they see negative events as not being their fault (external). They also see them as being flukes (isolated) that have nothing to do with other areas of their lives or future events (local).

For example, if an optimist gets a promotion, they will likely believe it’s because they are good at their job and will receive more benefits and promotions in the future. If they are passed over for the promotion, it’s likely because they were having an bad month because of extenuating circumstances, but will do better in the future.

Pessimist Explanatory Style

Pessimists think in the opposite way. They believe that negative events are caused by their own mistakes or traits (internal). They believe that one mistake means more will come (stable), and mistakes in other areas of life are inevitable (global) because they are the cause. They see positive events as flukes (local) that are caused by things outside their control (external) and probably won’t happen again (unstable).

A pessimist would see a promotion as a lucky event that probably won’t happen again, and may even worry that they’ll now be under more scrutiny. Being passed over for a promotion would probably be explained as not being skilled enough. They would, therefore, expect to be passed over again.

Attribute positive events to internal causes

Attribute negative events to external causes

Believe that good things will happen in the future

Tend to view bad things as mistakes or random flukes

Attribute positive events to external causes

Attribute negative events to internal causes

Believe that bad things will happen in the future

Tend to see good things as mistakes or flukes

How to Practice Optimism

Understandably, if you’re an optimist, this bodes well for your future. Negative events are more likely to roll off of your back while positive events affirm your belief in yourself, your ability to make good things happen now and in the future, and in the goodness of life.

Research suggests that genetics determine about 25% of your optimism levels and environmental variables out of your control—such as your socioeconomic status—also play an important role. But this doesn't mean that you can't actively improve your attitude.

While you might tend to have either an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style, there are things that you can do the help cultivate a more optimistic attitude. These include:

Become more mindful : Mindfulness is a focus on being engaged, attentive, and present in the here and now. It can be a useful technique to help you focus on what matters in the present and avoid worrying about future events and things that are outside of your control. If you are living fully in the moment, you are much less likely to ruminate over negative past experiences or worry about upcoming events. This allows you to feel more appreciative of what you have now and less consumed with regrets and anxieties.
Practice gratitude : Gratitude can be defined as an appreciation for what is important in life. One study found that participants who were assigned to write in a gratitude journal showed increased optimism and resilience . If you are trying to develop a more optimistic attitude, set aside a few minutes each day to jot down some of the things for which you are grateful.
Write down your positive emotions : Research has shown that something as simple as writing down positive thoughts can help improve your optimism. One study found that expressive writing focused on positive emotions was linked to decreased mental distress and improved mental well-being.

It is also possible to develop learned optimism . Pessimists can essentially learn to be optimists by thinking about their reactions to adversity in a new way and consciously challenge negative self-talk.

Cognitive Restructuring

Using a practice called cognitive restructuring , you can help yourself and others become more optimistic by consciously challenging negative, self-limiting thinking and replacing it with more optimistic thought patterns.

The process of cognitive restructuring involves a few different steps:

Identify the situations that are triggering negative thoughts or moods.
Assess how you are feeling in the moment.
Identify the negative thoughts that you are having in response to the situation.
Look at the evidence to either support or refute your negative thoughts.
Focus on the objective facts, and replace automatic negative thoughts with more positive, realistic ones.

Optimism is important because it can have such a significant impact on your mental and physical well-being. Research has shown that an optimistic worldview carries certain advantages, such as better health, greater achievement, less stress, and greater longevity.

Better Health

Studies regularly show that optimists are more likely to maintain better physical health than pessimists, including a 50% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and greater survival rates when fighting cancer. Some studies have also linked a pessimistic explanatory style with higher rates of infectious disease, poor health, and earlier mortality.

Greater Achievement

Psychologist Martin Seligman, the founding father of positive psychology , analyzed sports teams and found that the more optimistic teams created more positive synergy and performed better than the pessimistic ones .

Another study showed that pessimistic swimmers who were led to believe they’d done worse than they had were prone to future poor performance. Optimistic swimmers didn’t have this vulnerability.

Persistence

Optimists don’t give up as easily as pessimists, and they are more likely to achieve success because of it. People with optimistic attitudes are more likely to continue working toward their goals, even in the face of obstacles, challenges, and setbacks. Such persistence ultimately means that they are more likely to accomplish their goals.

Emotional Health

Research suggests that cognitive therapy (which involves reframing a person's thought processes) can be as effective or more effective than antidepressant medications in the treatment of clinical depression .

Such improvements also tend to be long-lasting, suggesting that they are more than a temporary fix. People with this optimism training appear to be better able to handle future setbacks effectively.

Increased Longevity

In a retrospective study of 34 healthy Hall of Fame baseball players who played between 1900 and 1950, optimists lived significantly longer. Other studies have shown that optimistic breast cancer patients had a better quality of life than pessimistic and hopeless patients.

Less Stress

Optimists also tend to experience less stress than pessimists or realists. Because they believe in themselves and their abilities, they expect good things to happen. They see negative events as minor setbacks to be easily overcome and view positive events as evidence of further good things to come. Believing in themselves, they also take more risks and create more positive events in their lives.

Research shows that optimists are more proactive with stress management . They tend to favor approaches that reduce or eliminate stressors and their emotional consequences. Because optimists work harder at stress management, they are less stressed.

Optimism is generally a positive characteristic that confers a number of physical and mental health benefits. But this does not mean that is doesn't have a few potential pitfalls. Some ways that optimism can be detrimental include:

Optimism bias : Sometimes excessive optimism can lead people to overestimate the likelihood that they can experience good things while avoiding bad things. The optimism bias suggests that people often underestimate their risk of experiencing negative outcomes. This can sometimes lead people to engage in risky behaviors that actually increase their chances of having a bad outcome.
Poor risk assessment : When people are overly optimistic about something, they may be less likely to think about all of the potential risks and take steps to mitigate those issues. This can ultimately make it more likely that their efforts might fail, or at least run into major problems along the way.
Toxic positivity : Sometimes people tend to overvalue positive feelings while ignoring or even repressing negative ones. It can also cause people to invalidate the emotional experiences of people who are going through difficult times.

Optimists can avoid some of these pitfalls by focusing on maintaining a healthy, realistic approach to positivity. Rather than focusing only on "staying positive" and ignoring other emotions, the goal should be to try to look on the bright side while still acknowledging the difficulties of the situation.

Carver CS, Scheier MF, Segerstrom SC. Optimism . Clin Psychol Rev . 2010;30(7):879-889. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2010.01.006

Plomin R, Scheier MF, Bergeman CS, Pedersen NL, Nesselroade JR, McClearn GE. Optimism, pessimism and mental health: A twin/adoption analysis . Personality and Individual Differences . 1992;13(8):921-930. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(92)90009-E

Chopik WJ, Oh J, Kim ES, et al. Changes in optimism and pessimism in response to life events: Evidence from three large panel studies . Journal of Research in Personality . 2020;88:103985. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2020.103985

Hecht D. The neural basis of optimism and pessimism . Exp Neurobiol . 2013;22(3):173-199. doi:10.5607/en.2013.22.3.173

Carver CS, Scheier MF. Dispositional optimism . Trends Cogn Sci . 2014;18(6):293-299. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.02.003

Wells T, Albright L, Keown K, et al. Expressive writing: Improving optimism, purpose, and resilience writing and gratitude . Innov Aging . 2018;2(Suppl 1):241. doi:10.1093/geroni/igy023.900

Smyth JM, Johnson JA, Auer BJ, Lehman E, Talamo G, Sciamanna CN. Online positive affect journaling in the improvement of mental distress and well-being in general medical patients with elevated anxiety symptoms: A preliminary randomized controlled trial . JMIR Ment Health . 2018;5(4):e11290. doi:10.2196/11290

Conversano C, Rotondo A, Lensi E, Della vista O, Arpone F, Reda MA. Optimism and its impact on mental and physical well-being. Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health . 2010;6:25-9. doi:10.2174%2F1745017901006010025

Stanula A, Maszczyk A, Roczniok R, et al. The development and prediction of athletic performance in freestyle swimming . J Hum Kinet . 2012;32:97-107. doi:10.2478/v10078-012-0027-3

Driessen E, Hollon SD. Cognitive behavioral therapy for mood disorders: Efficacy, moderators and mediators. Psychiatr Clin North Am . 2010;33(3):537-555. doi:10.1016/j.psc.2010.04.005

Applebaum AJ, Stein EM, Lord-Bessen J, Pessin H, Rosenfeld B, Breitbart W. Optimism, social support, and mental health outcomes in patients with advanced cancer . Psychooncology . 2014;23(3):299-306. doi:10.1002/pon.3418

By Elizabeth Scott, PhD Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

climate change

How ‘Urgent Optimism’ Can Save the World

I used to think optimists were naive and pessimists were smart. Pessimism seemed like an essential feature of being a scientist: the basis of science is to challenge every result, to pick theories apart to see which ones stand up. I thought cynicism was one of its founding principles. Maybe there is some truth to that. But science is inherently optimistic too. How else would we describe the willingness to try experiments over and over, often with slim odds of success?

Scientific progress can be frustratingly slow: the best minds can dedicate their entire lives to a single question and come away with nothing. They do so with the hope that a breakthrough might be round the corner. It’s unlikely they will be the person to discover it, but there’s a chance. Those odds drop to zero if they give up.

Nevertheless, pessimism still sounds intelligent and optimism dumb. I often feel embarrassed to admit that I’m an optimist. I imagine it knocks me down a peg or two in people’s estimations. But the world desperately needs more optimism. The problem is that people mistake optimism for “blind optimism,” the unfounded faith that things will just get better. Blind optimism really is dumb. And dangerous. If we sit back and do nothing, things will not turn out fine. That’s not the kind of optimism that I’m talking about.

Optimism is seeing challenges as opportunities to make progress; it’s having the confidence that there are things we can do to make a diﬀerence. We can shape the future, and we can build a great one if we want to. The economist Paul Romer makes this distinction nicely. He separates “complacent optimism” from “conditional optimism.” “Complacent optimism is the feeling of a child waiting for presents,” Romer wrote. “Conditional optimism is the feeling of a child who is thinking about building a treehouse. ‘If I get some wood and nails and persuade some other kids to help do the work, we can end up with something really cool.’”

I’ve heard various other terms for this “conditional” or eﬀective optimism: “urgent optimism,” “pragmatic optimism,” “realistic optimism,” “impatient optimism.” All these terms are grounded in inspiration and action.

Read More: 13 Ways the World Got Better in 2023

The reason pessimists often sound smart is that they can avoid being “wrong” by moving the goalposts. When a doomer predicts that the world will end in five years, and it doesn’t, they just move the date. The American biologist Paul R. Ehrlich—author of the 1968 book The Population Bomb —has been doing this for decades. In 1970 he said that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come. And by ‘the end” I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.” Of course, that was woefully wrong. He had another go: he said that “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Wrong again. Ehrlich will keep pushing this deadline back. A pessimistic stance is a safe one.

Don’t mistake criticism for pessimism. Criticism is essential for an eﬀective optimist. We need to work through ideas to find the most promising ones. Most innovators that have changed the world have been optimists, even if they didn’t identify as one. But they were also fiercely critical: no one picks apart the ideas of Thomas Edison, Alexander Fleming, Marie Curie, or Norman Borlaug more than they did themselves.

In particular, if we want to get serious about tackling the world’s environmental problems, we need to be more optimistic. We need to believe that it is possible to tackle them. And if we do, we can be the first generation to achieve a sustainable world.

More From TIME

The Last Generation is an activist group in Germany, the name implying that our unsustainability will push us to extinction. To force their government into action, some of the group went on a month-long hunger strike in August 2021. It wasn’t a half-hearted eﬀort: several ended up in hospital. They’re not the only ones who feel this way. The global environmental group Extinction Rebellion is also founded on this principle. And the studies show that the notion of us being the ‘last generation’ isn’t far from the minds of many young people.

But I’d like to take the opposite framing. I don’t think we’re going to be the last generation. The evidence points to the opposite. I think we could be the first generation. We have the opportunity to be the first generation that leaves the environment in a better state than we found it. The first generation in human history to achieve sustainability.

Read more: We Need Climate Action Everywhere, All at Once

Yes, that seems hard to believe. I’ll explain why. Here I’m using the term “generation” loosely. I am from a generation that will be defined by our environmental problems. I was a child when climate change really came on the radar. Most of my adulthood will be spent in the midst of the major energy transition. I will see countries move from being almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels to being free of them. I will be 57 when governments hit the “2050 deadline” of reaching net-zero carbon emissions that so many have promised.

But, of course, there will be several generations involved in this project. There are a couple above me—my parents and grandparents—and a couple below me, my future children (and perhaps grandchildren). Generations are often pitted against each other: older generations are blamed for ruining the planet; younger generations are framed as hysterical and indignant. When it comes down to it, though, most of us want to build a better world, where our children and grandchildren can thrive. And we all need to work together to achieve that. All of us will be involved in this transformation.

Urgent optimism isn’t about looking away from the climate crisis that faces us. It’s about facing up to it, not from a place of ‘damage limitation’ but with a clear vision of the future we can build. One that not only stops warming in its tracks but builds a better world for us – all of us – and the species that we share the planet with.

That’s not going to happen on its own. It’s something we need to fight for.

Excerpted from NOT THE END OF THE WORLD by Hannah Ritchie. Copyright © 2024 by Hannah Ritchie. Used with permission by Little, Brown Spark, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. All Rights Reserved.