Optimism or pessimism: which is better for business? Pros and cons of being an optimist

In the famous parable about two frogs in a vat of milk, the one who floundered with all his might and managed to get out by churning butter from the milk is considered an optimist. After all, her positive attitude saved her - unlike her friend, who folded her paws and sank to the bottom. In this story, everything ended well for the positive frog. IN real life it's not that simple.

I give instructions

Usually the level of optimism or pessimism is determined using the famous aphorism about a half-filled glass of water. But this formula is too simple. Even psychology does not provide an exact definition of these two types of perception of life. Rather, as social psychologist Tatyana Kochetova believes, these concepts are the result of historically established everyday ideas that exist in everyday consciousness. At the same time, psychologists study the forms of positive or negative attitudes towards reality and their origins.

Psychologist, Gestalt therapist Ekaterina Khlomova suggests that the dichotomy “optimism - pessimism” to a certain extent depends on temperament, that is, on the type nervous system: “A sanguine person (fast, strong type of nervous system) is more likely to be optimistic than a melancholic person (slow and weak type),” she says.
In clinical psychology, extreme manifestations of these two views on life are associated with at different stages manic-depressive syndrome. But where we are not talking about painful manifestations, psychologists are not inclined to draw direct parallels between a negative perception of reality and, for example, depression. Existential analyst Irina Shelyshey believes that pessimism is only partially correlated with depressive symptoms, a lack of serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine and other hormones, although there is no special department in the human brain responsible for what approach to life we ​​choose - positive or negative.

Within the psychoanalytic tradition, pessimism is associated with a violation of the objective relationship between the child and mother. For example, the English psychologist Frida Goldman-Eisler put forward the following version: among optimists there are more those who in infancy for a long time were fed breast milk, and the formation of the views of their antipodes is largely due to the early transition to artificial feeding.
Ekaterina Khlomova also sees the origins of different approaches to life in early childhood, but primarily in the position of parents. The attitude for future optimists is: “Well done! Try it! Be wrong! And if anything happens, we will support you! It’s okay if you spilled (broke, dropped) - you’ll manage next time!” For the future pessimist, it’s the other way around: “I spilled it again!” Broke it again! Don't touch! I'll still do it better than you! This is dangerous - the chest of drawers will fall on you!” This is how parents of the second type demonstrate disapproval and suggest in advance that something will certainly happen to the child if he takes an active position in life. “And then what happens in psychoanalysis is called a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy,’” explains Ekaterina Khlomova. - Just like mom said: the chest of drawers falls. The child receives negative experiences over and over again in response to his actions. And over time, he “swallows” this position without chewing.” The child begins to perceive the externally imposed scheme of perception of the world as his own.

Indeed, most psychologists agree that the roots of an optimistic or pessimistic approach are in a person’s experience. Pessimism or optimism, according to Irina Shelyshey, is rather an attitude towards life, towards assessing future events. A person adjusts his perception, information, and his actions to it. For the sake of this imposed scheme, as well as under the influence of a not always conscious desire to be right, we are able to manipulate the facts regarding the initial forecast. But it is impossible to say for sure which way of approaching life is “better” - among optimists or their antipodes.

Mind or feelings

The founder of logotherapy and existential analysis, Viktor Frankl, believed that “we have become pessimists because we know what a person is capable of.” The days of universal praise for the American smile and the belief that everything will work out are over. Pessimists have become popular in the public consciousness (just remember the craze for Dr. House). In addition, it turned out that in the fight against troubles, people who constantly expect a trick from fate can sometimes be stronger than their eternally joyful opponents.

Several years ago, a group of scientists led by Professor Suzanne Segerstrom at the University of Kentucky conducted an experiment in which they tested the body's immune response when performing tasks under stressful situations, such as time pressure or rest. The results amazed even the scientists themselves. At first - and this was quite expected - with a light load, the optimists showed high level stress resistance. Maybe the rose-colored glasses hid the potential danger, but not only did their hands do the work, but their eyes weren’t afraid either. However, as soon as the restrictions were tightened and the workload increased, pessimists began to show better results, and the immune system of those who were inclined to look cheerfully and joyfully into the future began to fail. However, some guessed the results of these studies long before they were carried out: “You need to spend optimism in moderation - so that it will last until the end of the year,” warned the satirical writer and philosopher Stanislav Jerzy Lec.
The reason why optimists' immune systems were less resistant to stress, according to University of Massachusetts psychology professor Susan Whitburn, lies in the path they choose in a crisis situation - the path of reason or feelings. As you know, all of us, when faced with a problem, regardless of the degree of its importance (whether it is something global, such as the loss of a loved one, or a small thing, like a traffic jam), choose one of two strategies for solving it - emotional or rational. Optimists, according to Susan Whitburn, choose the path of reason. They analyze mistakes and miscalculations, draw up an action plan and believe that if they work hard, everything can be overcome. But as John Lennon sang, “life is what happens to us while we are making plans.” And often a rational approach leads to vain expectations and a waste of time and effort. Therefore, on the one hand,
You shouldn’t lose hope for the best “there, around the bend.” On the other hand, it makes sense to adjust your point of view and behavior if it turns out that you can’t reach the turn.

Pessimists are more courageous than their antipodes, able to face the unpleasant truth. After all, they are always on guard and therefore better prepared for the blows of fate. By the way, “whiners” are also in the lead when it comes to seeking support in a crisis situation: they are simply supposed to look for and find support or a “vest.” For those who look cheerfully into the future, those around them often do not think of lending a shoulder - after all, an optimist, as is commonly believed, knows how to fight himself.

Who is stronger?

The reaction to an unpleasant situation depends largely on the degree of its complexity and the level of negative emotions. If an optimist, for example, is pushed into the subway, this does not make him angry. In simple everyday circumstances, if something happens, positive people, according to Tatyana Kochetova, are more stress-resistant. In catastrophic circumstances, on the contrary, the psyche of a pessimist is stronger: he, like a person always reflecting on the topic of future troubles, tries to avoid stressful situations and protect yourself in advance. Whereas its antipodes may have an element of underestimating the impending danger.

However, both of them can be equally active and productive, no matter how they perceive reality - cheerfully or with despondency. One of the most important differences between optimists and pessimists lies in the motivation of actions. According to research by a group of psychologists led by Abigail Hazlitt of Northwestern Illinois University, optimists are more concerned with personal growth and advancement, while pessimists are primarily concerned with safety. On the path to “everything will be fine,” attempts to achieve the planned result on the part of those who joyfully look at the world are inexhaustible. But those who are constantly on the lookout for trouble are just as active. They are only driven by the desire to protect themselves from the impending “everything is bad, but it will be even worse.” Whatever the motivation, it is important that it pushes both of them to action. “An optimist takes risks because he believes in the best,” explains Ekaterina Khlomova. “The pessimist maintains a minimum level of security.” Assuming that failures and blows of fate await at every step, he primarily cares about maintaining, even if fragile, in his opinion, balance in his world. “Weakness of the nervous system, attempts to defend ourselves, characteristic of pessimists, are also actions,” says Tatyana Kochetova. A passive defensive reaction, paradoxically, can also be active.

During one of the experiments conducted by Abigail Hazlitt's group, subjects were forced to solve anagrams. A group of people were allowed to inspire themselves with optimistic thoughts, while the other part was forced to think like pessimists. It turned out that those who acted in their usual mode solved problems faster and more correctly, while those who were forced to go against their “internal flow” made mistakes. The experiment showed that success does not depend on how you look at the world - joyfully or with distrust, but on how comfortable you are with thinking and acting. People with a negative attitude and those who acted on the wave of their positivity coped with the tasks equally successfully. Optimism and pessimism, psychologists say, are just equally useful strategies for overcoming crises and solving problems that unpredictable life throws at us every now and then. The main thing, as Irina Shelyshey believes, is to be in contact with reality, to perceive things as they are, without minimizing or exaggerating them positive qualities. Sometimes it’s good to be a skeptic, to have a critical attitude, that is, to be, in essence, a pessimist, but sometimes it’s better to cheer yourself up, give the future credit for good things, and tune in to the positive. It is important to be able and be able to be different, obeying your inner instinct and the requirements of the moment. First of all, a flexible change of attitudes, and, as it turned out, both optimists and pessimists are not short of activity.

All people can be divided into two categories: those who try to extract something useful and bright even from negative events, and those who are used to constantly complaining, blaming others for all failures.

Optimists and pessimists. Easy and clear.

Being an optimist is difficult, but honorable, but being known as a pessimist is not so pleasant. Therefore, the latter, when faced with such criticism, do not nod their heads in agreement, but declare that they are not pessimists at all, but realists. This leads to some confusion.

Pros and cons of pessimism

If you think about it, it becomes clear that there are no realists. The same phenomena can be perceived differently and treated differently. Everyone has their own reality, everyone sees the world as they are used to seeing it. It is easy to draw a conclusion about who is an optimist and who is a pessimist: just pay attention to a person’s behavior, because our actions echo our thinking.

Pessimism is a disease, and there is no disease that is beneficial. Pessimism convinces us not to follow our dreams. Pessimism paralyzes our actions.

At the same time, successful investors, precisely because of pessimism, do not invest resources in potentially failed projects and thereby save their funds. And despite the fact that the tradition of our society has preserved the habit of praising optimism and glorifying optimistic people, alas, it was only because of excessive arrogance and faith in a successful outcome that the famous American businessman Bernard Madoff, who built the largest financial pyramid in history, ended up in jail.

Faith scale. On the left are the pessimists: stingy people, shrewd investors.
On the right are the optimists: gamblers, dreamers.

If you pay attention to the success stories of famous entrepreneurs and analyze the factors that led them to such a rise, you will notice that pessimism is the very condition that distinguishes successful people from... incredibly successful ones. And it is pessimism that can be called the key ingredient in the formula that can lead to innovation.

Third component

And yet, neither optimism nor pessimism are sufficient grounds for summing up the issue at hand. One more component is needed, and this component is gullibility.

The difference between the concepts of gullibility and optimism, skepticism and pessimism is difficult to distinguish, but in the context of the topic under consideration it is of fundamental importance. In our culture, gullibility is perceived as a virtue, and skepticism as stubbornness, however, here is how the dictionary defines them:

Gullibility - willingness to believe in something;

Skepticism is a critically distrustful attitude towards something, extreme doubt about something.

If you combine optimism and pessimism and gullibility and skepticism in one graph, you can get four combinations, each of which has its own probability of achieving success.

For example, a gambler who sincerely believes in his victory can be called a trusting optimist; most entrepreneurs also fall into this category.

A suspicious pessimist is a person with “persecution mania.” He sees everything around him and the people around him as a threat to his personality, without even hoping for a successful outcome.

People who believe in conspiracy theories are perhaps the worst thing that can happen: they willingly believe in all kinds of fairy tales, but at the same time they are pessimistic by nature.

Of course, people from the above categories also achieve success, but perhaps the most successful combination is a skeptical optimist. These are the people who have remarkable faith in own strength, into the opportunity to change the world for the better, but at the same time they soberly evaluate the projects under their control.

Gullible pessimists: conspirators, gossips, bad journalists.
Skeptical pessimists: victims of circumstances, stockbrokers, people suffering from depression.
Optimists-skeptics: good journalists, hackers, inventors.
Gullible optimists: victims of scammers, adventurers, entrepreneurs, monks.

As you can see, people who are optimistic but tend to test facts achieve much more than gullible optimists, although both of them can be called successful people.

Metaphorically, it can be expressed as follows: “While the latter are waiting for a fair wind to set their ship in motion, the skeptics will wonder whether they need sails at all.”

The Power of Skepticism

Unfortunately, modern world still underestimates the insight of skeptics. For example, (Steve Jobs), co-founder of the legendary Apple, is remembered by everyone as the world's greatest optimist. But along with this, he was also an incredible skeptic. He constantly did not like something in the prototypes of equipment being prepared, and he was very critical of the results of his team’s work. One of his favorite phrases is: “It’s not good enough.”

Jobs was not so easy to convince of anything. And yet, he believed in the advent of a perfect future - which he, in many ways, brought closer.

Harriet Tubman, a champion of African American rights during a dark period in American history, is also an example of great optimism. She was born into slavery, lived in harsh conditions and suffered a head injury that caused her to have seizures from time to time, and her husband married another woman altogether. And yet, after Harriet escaped her tormentors and fled to the North, she returned to the slave lands to save the people. She had faith in a better future, and she tried with all her might to bring it closer.

We easily call our acquaintances optimists or pessimists. But did you know precise definition these words? How does one’s view of the world affect the state of the body and a person’s performance? It is worth noting that it is difficult to give an exact formulation to the two concepts, so we will describe these terms using comparison.

Differences between an optimist and a pessimist

To understand the difference in concepts, it is worth considering the main differences between an optimist and a pessimist:

Positive people enjoy life.

Life is easier for such people because they notice the positive in every moment. They are happy about the new day, always in a pleasant mood, and attract people to them. An optimist shares his love of life with others.

Pessimists are known for constantly decreasing their own happiness. They believe that you cannot show joy because something negative will happen. For this reason, a pessimist believes that being happy is contraindicated. Dealing with such people is draining and exhausting. They are always dissatisfied with something: either their salary was lowered, or there is no work, or they are being laid off everywhere, etc.

These are two opposing views on life. Some people are always unhappy with something, while others are happy about all the little things. And here it does not depend on how rich or successful a person is, but on how he relates to this.

An optimist is energetic and ready to work.

Optimistic people have many advantages: their energy is in full swing, they take initiative, are not so susceptible to depression, and the results of their work are more impressive. Pessimists, in turn, are quickly blown away by failure and fall into depression. Optimists are successful in work, study, and on the personal front.

Experts say that the expectation of negativity, which is characteristic of a pessimist, is stress, especially with a busy schedule. Every person encounters a situation when the work is too difficult and they give up. The future path depends on behavior in such a situation: to the ability to work or the inability to do something, to success or failure. Optimism provides support in work and increases the ability to overcome the feeling of emptiness.

Optimists have better professional success, which is reflected in professional aptitude tests.

Optimists take failures lightly.

Optimists attribute all their high achievements to themselves. That is, they believe that this is their merit, they take it for granted. And failures are attributed to coincidences: bad luck, it didn’t work out, it’s not my fault.

Pessimists do the opposite. Success for them is a coincidence of circumstances, luck, the will of chance. They are sure that they will not be so lucky again. They attribute failures to their own account: this is how it should be, it’s my fault. But pessimists often blame others for personal failures.

Health depends on your outlook on life.

Which improves health and increases life expectancy. A positive outlook and optimistic thinking even change the proportions of substances in the blood. Endorphin hormones, which are released in the brain, affect the immune system; they change the amount of cortisol, which increases resistance to diseases. It turns out that the immune system works with redoubled force.

And there is only constant pessimism. This causes excessively high production of adrenaline and cortisol. The first causes an increase in blood pressure and viscosity. The second creates fat deposits.

These conclusions of the researchers are confirmed by experiments. In 1997, a study of 700 patients with various heart problems took place in Denmark. Experiments show that negative people are 70% more likely to survive a heart attack, and the chance of early death exceeds that of optimists by 60%.

A study by doctors involving 1,250 volunteers who survived a myocardial infarction is also interesting. The researchers divided people into 3 groups: “moderately sad,” “extremely sad,” and “cheerful.” After 10 years, the following mortality data were found:

“too sad” - 50%;
“moderately sad” - 42%;
“cheerful” - 35%.

In addition, during an experiment in which 100 Harvard graduates participated for 35 years, it was found that negatively-minded individuals are distinguished by the fact that they do not give up bad habits so often and get sick more often. Optimists tend to take the future into their own hands.

A few words in defense of the pessimist

Be that as it may, it is worth saying a few words in defense of the pessimists. They can boast that they do not overestimate their own capabilities, and therefore are better at predicting their own successes and failures.

Positive people look at the future only through rose-colored glasses. They view life as evidence of their own progress and a list of successes. They do not pay attention to pressing issues, even if they are life-threatening.

Experiments have found that negatively minded people have better intelligence than optimistic people. They can more accurately assess the possibilities of their own control over the problem than optimists. Experts believe that pessimists are wiser.

Not long ago, psychologists found out that the fashion for positivity goes too far. Of course, optimistic views have many advantages, but there are also negative aspects. A one-sided view does not provide an adequate vision of the entire situation. People live one day at a time and don’t think about the future. Carelessness is the first fruit of foolish optimism. We all need a little bit of pessimism in order to have a sober understanding of life.

However, optimism is in many ways superior to pessimism, but it has disadvantages. Pessimists must learn to enjoy little things, and optimists must learn to adequately assess reality.

How to become an optimist

If you want to achieve success, but a pessimistic attitude stops you, then the question will be interesting to you. Pessimism usually doesn't help much in life.

As it became clear from the above, optimists can boast of better health and well-being. They live active life, are not susceptible to depression and bad habits. It is possible to develop such qualities in yourself, but not immediately. Set a goal and follow it. There are several options for dealing with a pessimistic attitude:

Stop complaining.

Shifting to optimism begins with noticing how you describe negative and positive things. The more often you express dissatisfaction with fate, the more it becomes a reality. Stop complaining tirelessly about low wages, about life, about politicians, about criminals, about the crisis, about failures. Build your life the way you want.

Positive thoughts and actions.

Start consciously doing what optimistic people do naturally. Think positively. It's not easy at first. Repeat it like this. As you practice, you will notice that your inner pessimist becomes smaller.

Create a program for yourself. No one is better at convincing you than yourself. Don't remember the past, don't regret what you've done. Do everything with self-confidence, even when you don’t feel confident in your abilities. Changing behavior will change your attitude and views, and strengthen your self-confidence.

Practice positive thinking.

Almost everyone knows what affirmations and visualizations are. The use of such techniques helps to get rid of pessimism.

Change your attitude towards failure and success.

Learn to withstand the blows of fate. Pessimists are always looking for someone to blame for their own failures; they either blame everyone or themselves. Optimists accept failure as a given. Failures happen, there is nothing terrible about it. It is better to solve problems rather than cry over them. Change your own attitude towards failure.

Live for life.

Pessimistic people justify their own unsuccessful lives by a lack of goals. , a busy person will not find time for boredom and blues. In addition, learn how to properly plan your own time.

Find something you enjoy: a new job or hobby. Work takes away 1/3 of people's lives, therefore it should bring pleasure and satisfaction. Remember to rest. This is a great option to gain positive impressions.

Choose positive friends.

Communicate with optimists, reduce communication with pessimists to a minimum. Our view of the world adapts to the views of others. And if you only communicate with whiners, then where do you get a good mood?

Do breathing exercises.

Scientists have found that optimists even breathe differently. Breathing through the nose is carried out according to the law of polarization. Thus, when you inhale, positively charged ions enter the lungs through the right nostril. And negatively charged ones are mostly through the left. Throughout the day, close the nostril on the right side a couple of times, breathe only with the left for a minute. This will help you model a positive person.

And a couple more tricks. To maintain a positive mood, take care of yourself. Sport is an excellent factor that has a positive effect on the ability to work and mood. , even to yourself.

Meditation will help you regain your strength and get into a positive mood. It is important to relax properly, only in this case meditation is beneficial. Another option for getting rid of a negative mood: remember a pleasant event, relive it in your thoughts. We all have happy memories.

Listen to the classics more. Researchers have found that classical music has a positive effect on mood, develops memory and social skills. Get rid of negativity before going to bed, because otherwise unpleasant thoughts will live in your head all night. And this will cause a negative mood in the morning.

And remember that a pessimistic view of the world is just a habit that you can easily get rid of if you change yourself. But this is accessible to those who truly change, forgetting about pessimism.

The aggressive promotion of a positive outlook seems to be giving way to doubt and skepticism. Rose-colored glasses revealed serious shortcomings, the dark ones have their own advantages. Psychologists think and experiment, comparing different views on life, and ultimately come to unexpected conclusions.

In recent years, all kinds of positive thinking trainings have become extremely popular all over the world, designed to instill in people a more optimistic outlook on life and thereby promote success in all endeavors. The ideologists of this new direction - positive psychology - proceed from the obvious: pessimists, with their preoccupation with possible troubles, simply attract them.

What happens to a person is what he sets himself up for. A pessimistic outlook narrows life prospects and inhibits professional and personal growth. The conclusion is obvious: an optimistic position is clearly preferable, so its formation must be promoted in every possible way.

However, as with everything, you also need to know when to stop – too much optimism is not good for a person. This conclusion was reached by American scientists M. Purie and D. Robinson, who studied this problem. The results of their work confirmed the hypothesis about the benefits of an optimistic position.

Compared to pessimists, optimists devote more time and effort to work, count on an early increase in their income and make certain efforts to achieve this. Optimists save or invest a significant portion of the money they earn and pay off debts on time. In other words, in economic terms they behave prudently and perspicaciously, which allows them to stand firmly on their feet and count on increased well-being.

This wonderful picture was greatly spoiled by extreme optimists. They, as it turned out, try to devote a minimum amount of time to work, save a smaller part of the money they earn, and the money that they invest is often invested in dubious and extremely risky projects. In addition, most of them have serious debts, because they easily take out loans and are never in a hurry to pay off their debts, allowing them to grow exorbitantly. As you can see, in economic terms, the behavior of pessimists is absolutely frivolous.

In the conclusion of their work, the American researchers wrote: “These days, many doctors believe that a glass of red wine may even be good for health, but not a single doctor will advise you to drink liters of wine. The same thing seems to happen with optimism - in moderate doses it is useful, in excessive doses it can be destructive. People who take positions of extreme optimism do not objectively assess reality and, because of this, behave insufficiently intelligently, sometimes simply stupidly.”

IS NEGATIVISM GOOD?

Not long ago, a symposium of American psychologists was held in Washington under the motto “The Unnoticed Advantages of Negativism.” Its purpose was, as one of the symposium participants put it, to speak out against “the tyranny of positive thinking and the dominance of optimism.” Modern psychologists come to the conclusion that the obsession with positivity and optimism has gone too far. Of course, optimism has its advantages, but there are also many disadvantages.

A one-sided view of the world and oneself does not give a person a real picture of what is happening. Such a person, willy-nilly, lives only for today, without thinking about the consequences of his own and others’ actions. Carelessness and selfishness are the main characteristics of thoughtless optimism, according to participants in the Washington symposium. Unforeseen collapse of hopes, severe disappointment - all these are the fruits of optimism. Every person needs a dose of pessimism in life so as not to delude themselves too much and look at things soberly.

But we shouldn’t forget that the glass can be not only half full, but also half empty. Specialist in social psychology from Massachusetts, Julia Norem studied the so-called defensive pessimism - a behavioral strategy when a person strives to mentally replay the upcoming situation, but always taking into account minor obstacles in achieving the goal. According to research, defensive pessimism is no worse than strategic optimism, which forces a person to carefully avoid thinking about bad things.

In some ways, being pessimistic is even better. Thinking about obstacles allows you to more fully embrace the subject, see all its sides, and thus force you to think and find the right solution. It's worse when pessimists try to imagine themselves as invincible champions, and even worse when, like strategic optimists, they try not to think about anything at all. Optimists, as the study showed, on the contrary, achieve best results after a mindless “vacation on the beach” and the worst - after that they imagine themselves as pessimists and begin to think about possible obstacles and difficulties in completing the task.

The main conclusion of the study: optimism and pessimism become second nature to everyone, rooted both in upbringing and, apparently, in innate predisposition. And the important thing is that when solving certain problems, similar in structure to the tasks in the experiment, defensive pessimism, if it is natural for a person, turned out to be no worse than strategic optimism.

THE MEANING OF SUFFERING

The common belief that a pessimistic outlook on things has an adverse effect on health and that smiling is healthier than frowning turned out to be not entirely true. Psychologists have found that even nervous people, burdened with various worries and misfortunes, always inclined to complain about fate and pain in all parts of the body, visit doctors no more often than their cheerful peers, and die no earlier than optimists. In other words, even deep pessimism - not behavioral, not defensive, not constructive, but deep and all-encompassing pessimism - does not harm health at all.

The German philosopher Schopenhauer was a pessimist, who, not without reason, believed that suffering is a source of great things, because it increases strength tenfold and forces one to be inventive. Everyone knows the phrase Napoleon said when he was asked what main secret his strategy: “We must get involved in battle without hesitation, and then we’ll see.” This principle is professed by most strategic optimists.

Probably, you should not thoughtlessly drive away any fears and anxieties, because often they serve not so much as obstacles and restrictions, but as warnings. And constant cheerfulness is an unattainable utopia. Everyone needs to learn to appreciate any of their mental states (especially since the predominance of one or another depends only on the individual psychophysical constitution) and extract the maximum benefit from it. This is confirmed by book ratings. The book of the English psychologist Adam Philips, “Becoming Sane,” suddenly burst into the top ranks in the USA and Great Britain, filled with the deepest skepticism about the newfangled psychology of happiness. In it, the author, contrary to the prevailing trend, does not talk about a happy person at all, but about a reasonable, sober, sane and balanced person, which does not necessarily provide for personal happiness, and sometimes even, on the contrary, excludes it.

According to Phillips, the countless guides to finding happiness do not so much provide solutions to a problem as they constitute a serious problem themselves. Happiness cannot be a goal achieved through certain techniques. It only sometimes visits a person as a result of his full, healthy and meaningful life in one way or another emerging reality. And this reality is sometimes such that it would be more than strange to rejoice at it. And a sane person is fully aware of this, experiencing a variety of feelings in connection with the events and phenomena of the world around him.

A negative reaction to negative events is normal and natural, and it speaks of the difference between a sane person and a blissful idiot who is not aware of what is happening around him. The authors of “positive” guides wean people away from an adequate perception of the world, offering instead a caramel-strewn path to an emotional impasse. If, having believed them, you consider your sadness, anxiety or fear to be abnormal states and strive in every possible way to change them into optimistic delight, this will not end well! The idea that the world is beautiful is touching, but completely unrealistic - everything is bizarrely mixed in it, good and bad. Only the person who correctly understands this and feels it adequately, who knows how to rejoice and grieve, worry and be blissful, is truly mentally healthy.