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“Never has there been a better time to be alive in human history. If you’re not feeling it, you must discover why.”
That first line is incontrovertible. I think the second is nothing less than a tragedy.
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Note: I am not a philosopher or psychologist nor any kind of expert in either field. But that doesn’t disqualify the following hypothesis as haphazard or necessarily invalid. I say simply that it corresponds with my experience, organizing without contradiction the successes and failures I’ve observed in other people and in my own life. Each aspect of my life improves to the extent I apply this framework, and it falters to the extent I stray from it.
In spite of all that, please consider the following a hypothesis and not a definitive proclamation. The method itself demands that I never cease to revise and reorganize my ideas into clearer and more precise concepts as I take on challenges from others (and myself) and as I live and learn. But I’ve been living and learning for a long while, and in this first “essay,” it is the most comprehensive formulation I can make to date.
Optimism’s got a bad rap. It is associated with ignorance, naivety, and immaturity. A Morgan Housel article does well to highlight a few reasons why pessimism is sexy, but John Stuart Mill in any case identified the tendency over 150 years ago:
“I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs while others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.”
An optimist is an adorable but pitiful child who expects the best in the world until such a sage elder (or harsh reality) snaps them out of their foolish, idealistic notions and expectations. The child is an adult now, properly cynical and “realistic.”
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Please see my article, “Don’t listen to me (or even experts): My blanket disclaimer” for a brief discussion of my goal in sharing ideas on health.
A key excerpt: “We all have different bodies, lifestyles, means, likes/dislikes, goals, and many other factors which make up the context in which we are making health decisions. So my attitude is always intended to be not, “This is the right way to eat/work out” or “You should try this.” But rather: “This is what is working for me in this way. How might it apply to you in achieving your goals?””
“I’m gonna get healthy.” What does that mean? I’ve often taken the answer for granted, holding vague images of a slimmer, trimmer, fresher self. Everyone knows what healthy is; it’s just hard to do. But when pressed to define exactly what I want to achieve, I’ve in the past been reduced to expressing narrow goals like “lose weight.” As I got thinking a little more precisely, I might have started to say “lose fat.” But health is not a single-faceted concept, nor even a combination of a few things. Health is an integrated concept comprised of multiple components requiring multiple interrelated actions.
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Mr. Bright Side 