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Episode 191: Optimism vs. Hopelessness
Psychology Has It Backwards
Psychology Has It Backwards
Episode 191: Optimism vs. Hopelessness
May 03, 2025
Episode 191
Christine Heath and Judy Sedgeman
Optimism is looking for the best in people and looking for the beauty in life, and trusting we'll see solutions when faced with challenge. Hopelessness is insecurity about whether people will accept or like us, seeing risk or danger in life, and focusing on analyzing what is wrong when faced with challenge. Those opposite states are not the result of life; they are the result of how we are using our thinking to describe life. Hopelessness and Optimism are both habits of thought that we adopt without intent. Understanding how we think and generate our own unique experience gives us the opportunity to accept that ups and down are part of life, and the assurance that we can always change.