Optimism is a tool with a certain clear set of benefits: it fights depression, it promotes achievement and produces better health.

Optimism generates hope...hope releases dreams...dreams set goals...enthusiasm follows

Optimism is a tool with a certain clear set of benefits: it fights depression, it promotes achievement and produces better health.

When well-being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity.

You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way.

The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe that bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe that defeat is just a temporary setback or a challenge, that its causes are just confined to this one case.

Some find that very optimistic people have benign illusions about themselves. These people may think they have more control, or more skill, than they actually do. Others have found that optimistic people have a good handle on reality. The jury is still out.