Choosing Optimism
It’s not just positive self-talk. That hip self-help term. Positivity and optimism are linked with living a longer life, so why not try them out if living forever is your thing.
Question for you. A man presents you with two lockets which will change your life forever based on what they say inside. One says “Everyone will love you” and the other says “You will love everyone”.
What would you choose?
Now imagine one locket is red and the other locket is blue. This is not “The Matrix” and I am not Morpheus. The question above is actually from the short story “Sylvie and Bruno” written by J.D. Salinger, of “Catcher in the Rye” fame. It was presented to Sylvie, a small child, and her choice may surprise you.
Sylvie chose to love everyone rather than guarantee love from others.
This is one way to think of positivity. Be positive about everyone, don’t hoarde it for yourself alone. It is one thing to be self-assured but how does maximized self-confidence look? It looks like a big asshole.
Timothy Leary broke down his 64 segment personality profile (now rebranded and popularized across businesses as many different techniques) into four main buckets:
Friendly Strength - “I’m okay, you’re okay”
Friendly Weakness - “I’m not okay, you’re okay”
Hostile Strength - “I’m okay, you’re not okay”
Hostile Weakness - “I’m not okay, you’re not okay”
Would love to get into the logistics of the above categories and the impressions that lead one a certain direction, but for our purposes today we can assume the person focused solely on self-positivity, in an extreme case, would be squarely posted in the Hostile Strength category.
Don’t know about you but Friendly Strength seems the smoothest ride.
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Don’t forget. All is maybe. But this might be a funner existence.