What is Optimism? Is Your Cup Half Empty or Half Full?

Change your thinking and change your life.

Merriam-Webster defines optimism the following way:
1: a doctrine that this world is the best possible world
2: an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome

What do you think? –
Is it better to be an optimist or a pessimist?

That’s the same question a farmer boy asked his father.
"Well, John," replied his father, "you know I can't give ye the dictionary meanin' of that word any more 'n I can of a great many others. But I've got a kind of an idea what it means. Probably you don't remember your Uncle Henry; but I guess if there ever was an optimist, he was one. Things was always comin' out right with Henry, and especially anything hard that he had to do; it wa' n't a-goin' to be hard,—'t was jest kind of solid-pleasant.

"Take hoein' corn, now. If anything ever tuckered me out, 'twas hoein' corn in the hot sun. But in the field, 'long about the time I begun to lag back a little, Henry he'd look up an' say:—
"'Good, Jim! When we get these two rows hoed, an' eighteen more, the piece'll be half done.' An' he'd say it in such a kind of a cheerful way that I couldn't 'a' been any more tickled if the piece had been all done,—an' the rest would go light enough.

"But the worst thing we had to do—hoein corn was a picnic to it—was pickin' stones. There was no end to that on our old farm, if we wanted to raise anything. When we wa'n't hurried and pressed with somethin' else, there was always pickin' stones to do; and there wa'n't a plowin' but what brought up a fresh crop, an' seems as if the pickin' had all to be done over again.

"Well, you'd' a' thought, to hear Henry, that there wa'n't any fun in the world like pickin' stones. He looked at it in a different way from anybody I ever see. Once, when the corn was all hoed, and the grass wa'n't fit to cut yet, an' I'd got all laid out to go fishin', and father he up and set us to pickin' stones up on the west piece, an' I was about ready to cry, Henry he says:— "'Come on, Jim. I know where there's lots of nuggets.' "An' what do you s'pose, now? That boy had a kind of a game that that their field was what he called a passer mining field; and he got me into it, and I could 'a' sworn I was in California all day,—I had such a good time. "'Only,' says Henry, after we'd got through the day's work, 'the way you get rich with these nuggets is to get rid of 'me, instead of to get 'em.' "That somehow didn't strike my fancy, but we'd had play instead of work, anyway, an' a great lot of stones had been rooted out of that field. "An', as I said before, I can't give ye any dictionary definition of optimism; but if your Uncle Henry wa'n't an optimist, I don't know what one is." Anonymous Wise Farmer

The older slang wording of that passage may have been a bit difficult to understand but the message wasn’t. When I came across it I was going to re-write it in more modern language but felt it strongly enforced a point. When we have a cheerful attitude, it rubs off on others and one is remembered well.

Henry was the type of person everyone wants to be around. Are you? Ones life and reputation can be changed by simply becoming and optimist. How will you proceed after reading this – it’s totally up to you. You are the only one who can make the change.

Alane Brown, Life Style Mentor and Successful Entrepreneur, is helping many become the next success story.