Realistic or Unrealistic Positivity: How to Deal with Unexpected Changes

Sometimes we all need to take a moment and evaluate our experiences in life. Kobe Airport, January 2020.

This post is not about life in Japan this time, but instead about life wherever you are. A question came to my mind earlier this week: 

What does it mean to be a positive person? 

I’ve always thought of myself as positive, and maybe a bit idealistic. However, I generally keep my expectations low for a lot of things, and so I’m not very disappointed when things do not work as expected. At least, I recover and pick myself back up quickly. As stress builds up from the world being tossed into madness and the news getting worse every day with this new virus, I started examining my own view of positivity more closely. 

In the past couple weeks, I heard a few people voice the idea that the virus cases will probably go down when it starts getting warmer. The flu virus is seasonal, so why not other viruses? People are generally healthier in summer, so things will get better soon. But then I read an article with a different view. A Japanese medical researcher voiced the concern that we have no idea what will happen. New virus, new outcomes. So the people who believe it will disappear soon are being positive, but what will they think if they are wrong? Let’s call it unrealistic positivity. 

Is it possible to be both realistic and positive?

Now this idea goes into a language problem of what you view the definitions of these words to be. In my definition, I find being realistic and being positive as not contrary to each other. Actually, being realistic allows you to be positive for longer because you are less likely to crash and burn the same way as when you have unrealistic expectations and things do not turn out well. In the same way, being realistic is not necessarily being negative about life. It is an acceptance of life as it’s given, which does not stop you from making it better, of course. 

As I read that news article, I was reminded of a lesson from The Survivor Personality by Al Siebert. I read this book over a year ago when I asked my mom to send me one of her favorite books off her shelf for Christmas. In a chapter focusing on survivors of prisoners of war camps (POWs), Siebert points out that the “survivors I have interviewed have not talked about being sustained by hope” (225). What made them survivors was their holding onto life itself, because the “will to live is something different from hopefulness or optimism” (225). If you assume that you will be rescued soon from your situation, your hope will be shattered when it does not happen, and you may lose that will to live. 

His words reminded me of the problem with hope. I have heard the idea that having hope attracts your thoughts to the opposite side of it: fear. It is hard to hold only one side of these emotions at a time. If you are hopeful of something happening, that may mean you are fearing it not happening. But as we learn in Siebert’s book, the will to keep moving forward and living your life the best you can is stronger than either of these. I call it trust. For me, trust is something stronger than hope and fear: It is somehow knowing that life works out, and this trust keeps me going forward. 

As we move through this challenging month for the world, I want to focus on the idea of realistic positivity. I want to hold onto a positive view of life along with the trust that things will not necessarily get better quickly, but that I can rise to meet the challenges of reality and learn from them. I can accept what is not in my power and discover the small things that are within my power to do what I must do to survive this wild reality. 

Few of us will be in such extreme situations as the people documented in Siebert’s book, but we can still take the lessons from it for dealing with the big changes in our own lives. I recommend finding a copy of the book for yourself. Use it as a dose of motivation when life gets tough or you just want some more inspiration. 

Siebert, Al, Ph.D. The Survivor Personality. The Berkley Publishing Group, First Perigee Edition, 1996.