(Forwarded on from a friend)
‘Delusional optimism’ is a habitual failure to accept reality, unless it matches the positive outcome you want. Like Positive Thinking, it’s a way of trying to fool your mind into seeing something ‘good’ instead of whatever is actually there. It’s imposing your own standards of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ on events, which have no such qualities: they are what they are. As William Shakespeare wrote: “It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” In this case, our own thinking, which may be confused, poorly informed or simply wishful.
Delusional optimism causes people to either ignore or down-play risk, and so becomes an additional risk factor in its own right. Russell Ackoff, in Management in Small Doses wrote : “The cost of preparing for critical events that do not occur is generally very small in comparison to the cost of being unprepared for those that do.”
Like the nonsense peddled as the ‘Law of Attraction’, delusional optimism works by persuading people that wishing for something hard enough will magically cause it to happen; or that staying positive will, equally magically, prevent bad things coming along.
It would be nice to be able to work magic, but the only kind that exists in our world is the kind you see on the stage; and that takes hard work, years of practice and is based on deluding the audience into seeing what you tell them to see, not what is actually happening.
Refusing to give up
Another element in delusional optimism is a dogged refusal to give up. This also seems more revered in the USA than elsewhere in the world. It too causes unnecessary pain and loss as people go on pouring time, effort and resources into projects that ‘died’ long ago.
Why it’s better to expect failure before you begin—then keep trying just the same
Failure is a part of everyday reality. You try things and sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. It’s extremely unlikely that you will succeed in everything you do, and equally unlikely that you will fail. Life is a mixture. Sometimes up, sometimes down.
If you expect some failure before you begin, you can plan for it. It won’t take you by surprise. You don’t, of course, expect to fail at everything—that is as irrational as expecting to succeed all the time—but you do expect that some things won’t turn out as you want them to.
“Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play.” ~ Thomas Hardy
Creating realistic expectations
Many people have pointed out that a good deal of the trouble we have all gone through in the past few months has been caused by organizations and bosses setting up completely unrealistic expectations. By claiming to be able to deliver endless growth in profits, they produced no profits at all.
We do exactly the same to ourselves. Puffed up with delusional optimism, we fill our minds with expectations we will never be able to fulfill. If we had been realistic, the goals we set ourselves would, for the most part, have been fulfilled. Our failures would have been offset by our successes.
Instead, we set ourselves up for continual failure, not because of lack of ability, but because our expectations allowed for no failure at all. By being determined to have it all, we spoiled our pleasure in what we did have. By avoiding the extreme of delusional optimism with an occasional touch of pessimism, you’ll find realism—the middle ground. That never hurt anyone.
Pessimists make back-ups. Optimists believe they’ll never lose their data.
