Pessimism: Is It a Good Thing?

Allow me to be clear. When I say pessimist, I don’t mean someone who will always see a glass half empty, at least not in the context I am trying to put across.

I mean someone who expects or at least prepares for things to turn out worse than necessarily preferred, instead of hoping for the best.

An optimist will expect something to turn out at its best. Everything will go according plan and it will great and perfect and we will all be happy, smiling people. But the reality is that this rarely happens, nothing goes perfectly according to plan as perfection is a conflicting concept. Some things may go well but every so often, something bad will happen and the optimists will be left saddened or angered or both, wondering what went wrong.

Of course, not many people are that optimistic (those with half a brain anyway) but a lot of people tend to have high expectations for things and sometimes they’re a little too high. A lot of people set themselves up to be heavily disappointed.

Pessimists, however, do not set themselves up like that. Those with a pessimistic attitude will usually expect things to go awry or in the very least prepare for it. If someone holds that attitude, things can only get better, most of the time. By holding such an approach, you are, to an extent, immune from being disappointed.

Another advantage to pessimism is skepticism. You are a lot less likely to fall for a trick or scam if you hold the stance that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. If you are too optimistic, you’ll be too trusting and a lot of strife can come from that. Suspecting things will make it a lot harder to be deceived.

Now of course, this can’t always work. Sometimes unpredictably bad things will happen no matter how low you set the bar. This is just another fact of life and it has to be dealt with. But for most things, lowering your expectations will generally make good things better and bad things not as impacting.

Now holding to a pessimistic attitude isn’t always that great, of course. Expecting everything to turn out poorly can be depressing sometimes. But the way around that is to work as hard as you can for a better goal. At least if you do get the worst case scenario, you saw it coming.

The other potential problem is that you may be too untrusting. People need to be trusted sometimes; otherwise they will feel unhelpful and useless about themselves. Of course you should never trust anyone just like that, but you need to be able trust in someone. The way around this is to have a set of standards for someone to reach. If they reach it, then most of the time, you can probably count on them. Of course no one is perfect, mistakes happen. So it is always good to be prepared whatever the case.

Whenever you are planning something, whether it is a party or a job or even something romantic at all, you just need to be prepared for when things just don’t go all too well. If something doesn’t go great, you’ll have a backup plan for it or it just won’t matter as much as it could have. And if it goes well, then great! It has gone better than expected and you’ll be all the happier.

A pessimist will predict things to turn out poorly, but they don’t always do. And when they do, they are prepared. I do believe that this is a good thing.