Positive thinking

This reminded me of the argument that optimists are often disappointed while pessimists are often happily surprised. From "Don't Worry, Be Unhappy":

In the years since Sigmund Freud discovered the couch, Americans got the strange idea that happiness is the natural human condition. Unhappiness, they decided, is a psychological problem. “Unhappiness is both a political state and a mental health crisis,” wrote Tara D. Sonenshine in The Hill in 2024. In a Guardian piece last month, therapists described patients who became “depressed” by political stress.

Despite the narrative that it’s a disease to be treated, unhappiness is totally normal.

Humans aren’t designed to be happy all the time. ....

In recent decades, there’s been an obsession with improving “mental health.” But the concept of “mental health” has so many vague definitions that anyone the least bit unhappy is presumably “mentally unwell.” Therapy culture has taught us to attend closely to our emotions because anything negative supposedly might be the early sign of something serious and merit professional intervention. ....

A purely positive attitude, meanwhile, isn’t always a cognitive asset. Research on goal achievement finds that total optimists who fantasize about success often underperform those who realistically imagine obstacles. College graduates who fantasized about getting a job, for example, got fewer offers and earned less two years later than graduates who were filled with more doubt and worry. .... (more)

Carolyn D. Gorman, "Don't Worry, Be Unhappy," The Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2026.