Have you ever been told you’re pessimistic? The answer to that question is yes, but don’t you agree and have your arguments against it?So this article may be for you! Realism and pessimism are often confused, but these two personality characteristics are actually very different, even if they lead to so many misunderstandings. So what kind of person are you: realistic or pessimistic?
In the first place, it is important to know that the tendency to see the negative side of situations is normal in humans, this has an evolutionary and adaptive reason: to protect ourselves from what can potentially harm us, that is, it is more interesting for us to Our psychological protection system knows what can harm us and what can harm us than to identify the positive aspects that can be beneficial for us, when a person only sees the negative part of everything, however, he becomes pessimistic. function becomes a problem, an anchor that sinks the mood.
- Now.
- Can’t we fail to say that there is a middle ground between being pessimistic and being optimistic?See it all pink.
- This middle ground is precisely realism.
- To help you understand the differences between realism and pessimism.
- We’ll explain the following two concepts.
- See if you can find out what kind of person you are!.
If you want to know what kind of person you are, you need to observe yourself and deepen your knowledge.
When a person is pessimistic he has a cognitive-attentional bias that psychologist Aaron Beck called selective abstraction, that is, because there is this bias of perception, pessimistic people pay attention and retain only one type of information: negative. In the case of the pessimistic person, what happens is that he will only pay attention and remember the wrong information, which often happens without realizing it. The information is filtered and only the details of the negative part remain.
However, if you identify with this and pessimism, and you think you often make this kind of cognitive error: don’t despair, this problem has a solution!There are scientifically proven psychological strategies to modify these psychological automations for negative thinking. is cognitive restructuring, or cognitive fusion, that helps people distance the therself from certain types of thoughts and perceive them.
“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The realist helps the candles. -William George Ward-
To be sure what kind of person you are, you should keep in mind that pessimistic people, faced with a difficulty, anticipate the worst possible outcome, which is often not even the most likely. In other words, they put all their expectations in the worst option of all that are to come.
In this sense, being pessimistic is partly due to having a type of personality based on anxiety, we are talking about a person with a high level of anxiety as a trait of himself, so he ends up seeing life negatively. a person is pessimistic, tends to impose limits unconsciously. If the worst is to come, it’s important to be alert to uncertainty. It’s this thought: “If I hope for the worst, I’ll be better prepared. “
But also, there is another key aspect to keep in mind to know if someone is pessimistic, the pessimist automatically tends to see the negative aspects even in the events and positive situations of life, that is, do these people always say that it could have been?Better, or that it wasn’t really that good even at times when they did it after working hard to achieve a project or goal. If you’re pessimistic, then you’re a person who has a hard time taking advantage of your accomplishments because you end up losing focus by focusing only on aspects that could be improved.
“The real realism is to reveal the amazing things that the routine hides and thus prevents us from seeing them. -Jean Cocteau-
First, the most distinctive feature of realistic people is that they usually don’t make value judgments in advance, that is, they expect to see how things will unfold to feel what they’re going to feel. happens, and since there is already real data on the situation, they will make a value judgment. For example: “Yes, was it really bad?” Yes? Everything worked, how maximum!?In this way, realistic people maintain a neutral position in the moments leading up to the actual development of the facts, thus managing to keep their expectations in balance with what can really be expected of the reality in which you live. they live.
However, realistic people are still mentally preparing for what could go wrong, considering the real possibilities of what is happening, but they are also preparing to take advantage of what can work, that is, they are able to prepare for any situation. They know how to build on their achievements and are prepared for their failures, they do not prevent them from continuing to try their goals, nor do they become distractions in their path.
If you have understood everything so far, you have realized that realistic people are characterized by not being catastrophic, they are able to more appropriately weigh the positive and negative aspects of situations and problems, this ability to assess situations is one of the most distinctive characteristics of realistic people.
What if now you’ve found out you’re the pessimistic type?I want to tell you that you can change. You can do this with the help of a psychologist, it will guide you to change aspects of your personality that prevent you from seeing the facts of your life from a common ground, without catastrophism or selective abstraction of the information that comes to you. Seeking personal change to become a more realistic person can be a good goal for next year.