When it comes to how optimistic we are as a country, the glass is more than half full. According to a recent Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll, 56% of Americans feel optimistic about 2025, while 43% are pessimistic. You may feel like optimism and pessimism is an inborn personality trait, but which side you fall on is actually a choice.
While it sounds surprising, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, author of The Bright Side: How Optimists Change the World and How You Can Be One, consciously decided to be an optimist after the death of his first wife. It was initially black humor, he explains. I was saying, Things are really grim right now, but I’ve decided that they’re going to be better, and I’m going to act as though they’re going to be better.
Unknowingly, Paul-Choudhury started doing things that nurture and direct optimism, and it worked. It was moving me towards a brighter future than the one I had at the moment, he says. I realized I’d always been an optimist. I’d always tended to assume that things would work out well for me, but I thought of it as a personality trait that didn’t really mean anything. I came to the conclusion that optimism is quite powerful in the way that I was responding to my situation.
Why Optimism is Important
Humans as well as the animal kingdom are set by default to be optimistic. Paul-Choudhury says there are evolutionary arguments as to why optimism is important. The most compelling is because we don’t always have the information we need.
We need something to prompt us to act, he says. Doing nothing from an evolutionary sense is not usually a path to success. You’re more likely to find solutions to your problems or new opportunities if you act.
There are varying levels of optimism, though, and people who are more optimistic are likely to search for ideas that will change the world, says Paul-Choudhury. They are more likely to persevere in trying to realize those ideas, he says. Optimists tend to cope better with setbacks. They tend to be a bit more tenacious in pursuit of whatever the goal is.
Optimists also have social clout. Youre going to hang out with somebody who tells you that things are good or are going to get better, rather than someone who’s going to say the opposite, says Paul-Choudhury. That means that optimists can also accrue considerable social and economic power.
The combination of a readiness for new ideas, the drive to pursue them, and the ability to draw others to your cause adds up to a formula for creating change, says Paul-Choudhury.
How to Become More Optimistic
Optimism can be learned, says Paul-Choudhury. One step is looking at how you frame failure. An optimist, for example, explains away failure by citing temporary external factors unrelated to their own ability or personality and reasons that are not likely to be repeated. A pessimist, on the other hand, will point to their own aptitude and determine they have failed before they even began.
For example, Paul-Choudhury failed his driving test and chalked it up to a technicality and the persnickety personality of the inspector. A friend also failed her test, but she took a pessimistic stance, deciding that she was a bad driver.
Another way to cultivate optimism is to practice a best-possible-self exercise, invented by Laura King, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. Spend 15 minutes a day writing about the version of you in the future where everything has gone right. Then spend five minutes imagining the future.
Paul-Choudhury realized he had inadvertently stumbled upon this approach during his period of mourning. He wrote daily blog posts, describing a better future and attempting to explain what had happened. They were all informed by the desire to work out who I could be now that such a large part of my life had suddenly been rendered irrelevant, he says, adding that he continues to use this exercise when he feels hes at a crossroads and needs a reminder to be optimistic.
The downsides of optimism
Too much optimism, however, can backfire, and Paul-Choudhury offers some cautions. You can become overconfident about goals that are not achievable, for example. You can become very selective about your use of information. Overconfidence can also skew your judgment, because it’s strongly tied up with the human urge to pay attention to information that suits your worldview.
If things are not going right, you may not notice, because you’re too busy collecting the pieces of information that tell you that they’re going well, says Paul-Choudhury.
And being overly optimistic can prompt you to pick too many goals, because you see opportunity everywhere. Thats called goal conflict, says Paul-Choudhury. You don’t pick one thing to focus on and stick with, or you try to do too many things at once. That usually leads to an inability to manage all or any one of them.
A healthy level of optimism can better your life. Once you’re conscious that you are optimistic, direct it to the things that you want to change. Being able to always find the bright side can be a welcome safe harbor when life brings you a storm.
