Just a few years ago I was incredibly pessimistic. I had really high expectations for how I needed to perform and I let a lot of the pressures, although few, get to me. It wasn’t a very enjoyable lifestyle because I never looked towards the possibilities that could make me feel better or make me more excited about the future, and instead always looked back on my past and reflected too much on my mistakes.
Nowadays I am a lot more optimistic. I don’t know what caused the switch, but I feel that it’s to do with the way I think of life as a whole. I’ve started to care a lot less about what I do, and that’s not to say that I don’t think about the consequences, it’s just that I judge myself a lot less for my imperfections. Whenever something happens that I would normally get upset about, I accept that there is nothing that can be done about it but to work on my mistakes to improve enough to do better by the time those opportunities come along.
I’ve started to notice a lot of benefits from being more optimistic. For one, I am definitely less stressed. Although in past years the workload has not been as large in quantity as it is now, I don’t find myself to be stressing too much. Whenever I see a bad result I don’t get stressed about the negative possibilities that it can have on my future because I know that it isn’t as big of a deal as I sometimes make it. One of the things that I was most worried about was my mental health. I always felt so drained because I felt that my life wasn’t going anywhere and that I wouldn’t have many opportunities in the future, but nowadays I have never felt so excited about what the future has to offer.
