Are you a "glass half-full" or a "glass half-empty" kind of person?

 

 

Yesterday I found an article on the web called "This Personality Type Is Linked to Success and Happiness" By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | LiveScience.com. It's a cool article and everyone should read the entire thing. Below are excerpts from the article that I have embellished with my own thoughts.  

 

 

Are you a "glass half-full" or a "glass half-empty" kind of person? As it turns out, some people can be both. So-called realistic optimists combine the positive outlook of optimists with the clear-eyed perspective of pessimists, new research has found.

These realistic optimists may get the best of both worlds, using their realism to perform better at work and elsewhere, but aren't getting bogged down by unhappiness, said Sophia Chou, an organizational psychology researcher at National Taiwan University, who presented her findings at a meeting of the American Psychological Association in Honolulu, Hawaii.


 

Optimists and pessimists

Past research has shown that optimists' value thoughts that make them feel good about themselves, whereas pessimists prize a more truthful vision of themselves. But a clear-eyed view can be bad for pessimists' well-being, as they tend to be more prone to depression. In my years of knowing, working with and managing people, I agree with Chou's statement. Optimists sometimes can be a little out there and not realistic, but even if they live in a fantasy word some of the time; they at least don't allow themselves to fall into the trap of a downward spiral. 


Being too optimistic might get them to make bad business or life decisions, but because they're optimistic they believe even in failure they will recover and survive. A pessimist's vision of the truth might get them to make better decisions, but should any one of them go bad, they believe they will never recover. That attitude leads to depression and stops them from taking action to make things right.


Optimists tend to live longer and be healthier overall. After several years working in business, Chou noticed there were some people who were both optimistic and realistic, and that they tended to be very successful. She wondered whether realism and optimism were really diametrically opposed.



So Chou administered a battery of personality surveys to about 200 college and graduate students in Taiwan. The surveys tested how many "positive illusions" the students held, as well as whether they were more motivated by self-enhancement or reality.



Realistic views

The optimists sorted into two camps: the realists and the idealists. "Realistic optimists tend to choose accuracy over self-enhancement; the unrealistic optimists tend to choose self-enhancement." Interestingly, the realistic optimists also got better grades, on average, than their less grounded peers probably because they didn't delude themselves into thinking they would do well without studying or working hard.

Traditionally, a more realistic outlook is paired with poorer well-being and greater depression, yet the realistic optimists managed to be happy. To understand why, she dug deeper into the personality assessments.


 

Self-control key

She found that realistic optimists believed they had more self-control and control over their interpersonal relationships. "Every time they face an issue or a challenge or a problem, they won't say 'I have no choice and this is the only thing I can do.' They will be creative; they will have a plan A, plan B and plan C."


That allows them to stay cheery and upbeat about the future, even if they recognize the challenges of the present. Being a realistic optimist does have one downside, however: They are more prone to anxiety than their completely unrealistic peers. That's likely because they recognize the possibility of failure, whereas their counterparts use positive illusions to ease their anxiety.


The findings suggest that realistic and unrealistic optimists may actually be very different personality types. In order to cultivate a rosy-but-realistic outlook, people should maintain a clear-eyed view of reality, but emphasize what they can control in most situations.


This article states in more technical terms what I've been telling all of you in my blogs. That is; YOU HAVE MORE CONTROL OF YOUR HAPPINESS THAN YOU THINK. A pure pessimist never believes he has control of his happiness. A pure optimist doesn't think she needs control of her happiness. It's the realistic optimist that understands what they can control and what they can't. The realistic optimist then figures out how to find happiness from only the things they can control.


What I have also found in my many years of observation is that people can be optimistic about some things and pessimistic about other things. For example, people tend to be pessimistic about all the bad stuff that's going on in the world yet optimistic about America. A realistic optimist knows how to ignore the world's problems and focus on the good stuff that's going on around them today.


Sooo, which one are you? The one whose glass is always empty, the one whose glass is always full or the one who believes they can take a half empty glass and find a way to get more good stuff into it? If you're the former, you need to read my blogs and books and maybe talk to a mentor. If you're the glass full person, you need to take a step back and try to see what is real around you.

If you're the realistic optimist (like me), then you're currently having a happy and positive energy life because you finally figured out that you deserve it.