Albert Einstein noted:
I’d rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.
I know I am also an extremely optimistic person. The notion of having a Smaller Cup and being satisfied is helpful to me. It is a tool to aid me to view my life through a promising, hopeful lens.
Some people are perfectionists - things can always be better and they are forever striving for the ideal. Others are optimalists - setting high standards and goals but letting go of ‘perfection’. Do you only want the very best or are you satisfied with BETTER, and prepared to let go of BEST?
An optimal optimist lets go of the perfect and is pleased to get a sunny day with a few clouds. A perfection optimist would be fooled into believing this was not good enough. A perfection pessimist would speculate when the heavy rains would start, tomorrow or next week, and rain on their own parade.
Occasionally my hopes are disappointed, but by not setting my goals too high I find that by and large things go okay or even well! How often are the pessimist’s predictions realized? I suspect their forecasts are generally too negative, and they spend much of the time realizing that their worries have come to nothing. In the meantime, they have spent their day absorbed in negative emotions.
At the end of the day, is it about looking foolish, or being in a state of well-being? It very much depends on how you do your own spin doctoring of your present and future moments. Look at Tal Ben-Shahar’s definitions of perfectionists and optimalists:
Perfectionists pay an extremely high emotional price for rejecting reality. Their rejection of real-world limits and constraints leads them to set unreasonable and unattainable standards for success, and because they can rarely meet these standards, they are constantly plagued by feelings of frustration and inadequacy.
Optimalists, on the other hand, derive great emotional benefit, and are able to lead rich and fulfilling lives, by accepting reality. Because they accept failure as natural—even if naturally they do not enjoy failing—they experience less performance anxiety and derive more enjoyment from their activities. "*
Which would you rather be? Being an optimalist that sets limits on their optimism is the best of all worlds, occasionally a fool, but generally in a joyful state of nature.
Reflection Source: www.Smallercup.org
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*: “Even Happier: A Gratitude Journal for Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment" by Tal Ben-Shahar