It’s not that bad!

I have always been a pessimistic person. It is something hard wired into my brain by both genetics and upbringing. My Dad was a very pessimistic person and he always looked at other human beings from the point of view that they were likely to be flawed in many ways. One of my favourite sweatshirts was bought for me by my son and the front reads ‘People Ruin Everything’!! These are traits I have inherited and I have worked on them since. ‘Ah, tis a ponderous chain’ as Jacob Marley might have said!

When something happens, or when I am thinking of doing something new, I tend to catastrophise, playing over in my head all the things that can go wrong, however far fetched they might be! I always assume the worst of both people and situations. I have a couple of pat responses to any comments regarding my approach. Either ‘A pessimist is never disappointed’ or ‘A pessimist is what an optomist calls a realist’. When I first started using these phrases as a teenager I thought I was so clever, but over time I stopped finding them a comfort, particularly when they became a personal cliche. At school, my nickname (one of the nicer ones) was Marvin. For anyone who doesn’t know, that reference comes from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a character who is a tremendously intelligent and deeply depressed Android who never expects anything good to happen!

So, what am I doing about it. Well, I have mentioned Calm in these daily prompts a few times and I find it incredibly useful in terms of starting to reset my brain. It’s a long process, and I don’t know if it is possible to reverse a lifetime of pessimism, but I do know that I can see signs of improvement. We are in December, a month that always sees my pessimism diminish somewhat, but in the New Year it just returns. Maybe 2026 will be the year that this return becomes much more muted. We can but hope!