As Henry Ford noted, there are two kinds of people, those who are optimistic and confident and thrive on challenges, and those who are fearful and pessimistic and fear change. A surprisingly large proportion of people fit the second category, though of course they would describe themselves as cautious instead of fearful, “realistic” instead of pessimistic, and conservative instead of fearful of change.
Nonetheless, this is an important distinction, because few if any of the important advances in knowledge or human civilization have ever come from the pessimists in the crowd. Almost all of the things that have advanced human culture have come from those who dared to think that the impossible just might, with enough effort and work, be possible. Indeed, it is amazing that we have come as far as we have, carrying all the dead weight of all those people who were dead sure “it couldn’t or shouldn’t be done” and were prepared to explain to us in great detail just why our ideas wouldn’t work.
It’s a matter of personal choice which of these two groups we want to be in – but in the long run it’s much more satisfying to be among the optimists who make things happen than among the pessimists who sit on the sidelines and criticize.
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