When I was a child my family would often talk about other family members in terms of them being optimists or pessimists. According to my family, being an optimist was better than being a pessimist. The idea was that pessimists were unnecessarily negative, expecting the worst, and not enjoying life. Optimists made the best of things, worked hard and found ways to be happy with their lot in life.
Eventually, I grew up, and as usually happens when folks grow up, I began to question these ideas. It began to make less and less sense to box people into one category or the other, and both seemed to have obvious pros and cons to me. So when I stumbled across this cute cartoon, I knew I just had to share it with you:
I like this because it stretches us beyond the optimist/pessimist dichotomy, and anything that stretches us beyond rigid binary thinking is a good thing.
Do you have any rigid beliefs that could use a little gentle stretching?