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One day, when I was desperately lamenting my bad memory, a wise friend told me, “Find a side benefit in this.” When the first surprise has passed – how can such an inconvenient disadvantage give any benefit, albeit a side one? I began to think.
Indeed, I managed to come up with a whole list of advantages that this inconvenience brought me: I had to write everything down (because words eluded me), invent a lot (when I could not quote accurately), constantly change (because I could not rely on learned) and be calmer (I quickly forget about adversity). Of course, this list only matters to me. But I learned my lesson. Now, when I observe actions that seem reprehensible to a person, I tend to look for indirect advantages in them. I don’t always manage to find them, but that doesn’t matter. But every time I can see the problem in a new light.
One can, for example, recall the results of a survey conducted in 53 countries and devoted to “economic prospects” (1). According to this poll, the French remain the most hardened pessimists, leaving far behind the Afghans and Bangladeshis, who live, as everyone knows, in the promised land. You can also think that the opinion of 61% of the French about the economic difficulties that await them is due solely to a sober outlook on life. But the fact that the people of France were in 4th place out of 53 on a scale of pessimistic attitude towards “prospects for themselves” is less understandable. In addition, we are also informed that France remains the most visited country in the world by tourists, so living there should not be so bad, right?
Read more:
- Depressive personality type: who sees life in black?
Pessimism is indeed a negative feeling, and I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that optimists have a longer life expectancy than everyone else. However, I told myself, a feeling as unpleasant as pessimism must also have indirect benefits. What? I see two: predilection for tactics of least resistance and self-image as more sane than the rest. A pessimist can only succumb to his gloomy mood, while optimism requires energy to correct the planned plan, to regularly reevaluate himself, his decisions and his position – all this just makes life good enough to be able to continue to be an optimist, that is, to assume that it will remain so good. The second indirect advantage is that the pessimist often comes across as more intelligent than the optimist. You can’t fool him, he understood everything perfectly, and, “trust me, my dear, life’s path is not strewn with rose petals.” He hastens to accuse the optimists of lack of foresight, even of a certain naivete. He does not know that optimism must be earned, worked on, improved upon. Optimism is like happiness: you have to fight for it.
1. Voice of the People survey conducted by BVA-Gallup International from October 11 to December 13, 2010 for Le Parisien magazine (January 3, 2011).
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- Are you an optimist or a pessimist?