Question of the Day: Is optimism always a good thing?

Taking a more adventurous, risky life path is tough, and optimism is an unbelievably important asset for anyone facing challenges. It allows us to take our initial steps into the unknown and helps us face any obstacles that crop up. But when does optimism become a liability rather than an asset? Can optimism lead to complacency and then failure? Read on for some interesting perspectives on how optimism can help or hinders us as we take risks and try new things.
In “Optimism and Positivity: The Leader’s Edge in Tough Times,” Eileen M. Rogers, CEO & Managing Director of LeadershipSigma, points out that the Chinese character for “crisis” interestingly combines the two characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” Maybe true leaders NEED to be intensely optimistic and see opportunities where everyone else sees danger.
Then again, optimism has a pile of downsides, according to entrepreneur Santiago Bilinkis, who always keeps his optimism in check while doing business. A blindly optimistic entrepreneur may fail to plan for risks, he says in a blog post earlier this year, dooming even potentially good ideas.
This same question is currently being debated on a global economic scale, as well. Without optimism, investment freezes up. But in a recent article, The Economist lays out why too much optimism could be equally bad for world economic recovery.
While the consequences for error are vastly different in the financial world, an overdose of optimism can—and has—contributed to more than one disaster in the realm of physical adventure, too. A lengthy paper on “Risk management for Australian commercial adventure tourism operations” offers some useful thoughts on how and why adventure guides and their clients may be overly optimistic about risk and danger. The author uses a 1999 canyoning disaster in Interlaken, Switzerland (in which 21 people died) as an example.
For an even more cautionary tale of how lethal too much optimism in the physical adventure world can be, check out this Christian Science Monitor review of Foolish Optimism Kills Explorers, a book about Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s disastrous 1921 expedition to Wrangel Island. The title kind of says it all.
No wonder, then, that some people turn a skeptical eye toward the optimists of the world. Professor Julia Norem of Wellsley College (and the author of The Positive Power of Negative Thinking) argues in a 2002 University of Chicago Magazine article entitiled “The Worst of All Possible Worlds” that “defensive pessimism,” as she calls it, is just as valid and effective an approach to life as “strategic optimism.”
And for those who REVEL in pessimism, defensive or otherwise, there’s always Depair, Inc. No kidding. Its offerings include terrifically cheerful items like a poster that says: “Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others,” and a mug with a scored line next to the slogan, “This glass is now half empty.”