5 Ways Your Pessimism Is Destroying Your Happiness, Your Career, And Your Relationships

1. You assume you aren’t going to succeed, so you set yourself up for disappointment. Instead of asking out someone cute, you assume they would never want to date you and ignore them. Instead of applying for your dream position, you assume you would never get hired and count yourself out of the running without even competing. Your pessimism, your insecurities, and your distrust with the world have convinced you to step back instead of taking steps forward. You never even give yourself the chance to see what you’re capable of achieving because you give up too soon.

2. You focus on the negatives in others and overlook their beauty. You’re terrified of getting hurt, so you’re always on the lookout for red flags. The second someone makes a mistake, you walk away from them and never look back. You don’t give out second chances. You barely give out first chances. Instead of trying to see the world from someone else’s point of view, instead of trying to see the good in others, you zone in on the worst. You tell yourself you’re doing this to protect your heart, but really, you could accidentally be pushing away people who would actually be good for you.

3. You’re stressing yourself out over situations that haven’t even happened yet (and might never happen at all). You should try your best to live in the moment. Enjoy the beauty in your life instead of worrying about when your happiness is going to get taken away from you. If you spend your whole life worrying about what might happen tomorrow, you miss out on the chance to enjoy today. It’s good to have a plan in place for the future, but you shouldn’t spend every waking moment thinking that far down the line. If something goes wrong next week, you can handle it then. Today, you should be focused on what’s in front of you.

4. You can come across as a downer in social situations. You should feel comfortable talking to your family and friends about your fears and your problems. However, you don’t want every single word out of your mouth to be a complaint. You don’t want every single conversation to be a rant. You don’t want to be known as the negative one. Otherwise, people might not feel comfortable coming to you with their good news. They need to know you’ll be supportive. They need to know they can count on you to cheer them up when they’re down.

5. You psych yourself out and end up dreading events that you should be thrilled about attending. You’re allowed to look forward to something written on your calendar. You’re allowed to get excited. You shouldn’t overthink things to the point where you make yourself sick. You shouldn’t assume a situation is too good to be true and expect something horrible to happen to balance out your luck. You’re allowed to enjoy it when good things happen to you. You’re allowed to be an optimist for a change.