Читать книгу Making Happy People: The nature of happiness and its origins in childhood - Paul Martin - Страница 29

A common (though not universal) characteristic of happy people is optimism – that is, a general tendency to expect that life will go well and future events will have favourable outcomes. Like self-esteem, optimism has become a voguish and somewhat overused concept in the self-help literature, where it is presented by some pundits as a form of panacea. Nonetheless, numerous scientific studies have found that optimists tend to be significantly happier, healthier, better able to cope with stress, longer-lived and more successful than pessimists, other things being equal.

You can have too much of a good thing, however. A mindlessly optimistic Pollyanna attitude that flies in the face of reality will create unrealistic expectations. (I have sympathy with the cynic who remarked that a permanently cheerful, optimistic attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.) A certain amount of ‘defensive pessimism’ can be a good thing if it helps to avoid unnecessary disappointment. We will return to this topic in chapter 7.