“Real optimists don’t believe that everything will be great. That’s complacency. Optimism is a belief that the odds of a good outcome are in your favor over time, even when there will be setbacks along the way. The simple idea that most people wake up in the morning trying to make things a little better and more productive than wake up looking to cause trouble is the foundation of optimism. It’s not complicated. It’s not guaranteed, either. It’s just the most reasonable bet for most people, most of the time. The late statistician Hans Rosling put it differently: “I am not an optimist. I am a very serious possibilist.”

乐观主义：自己长期的行为能够让天平为自己倾斜一点。

“Tell someone that everything will be great and they’re likely to either shrug you off or offer a skeptical eye. Tell someone they’re in danger and you have their undivided attention.” “When directly compared or weighted against each other, losses loom larger than gains. This asymmetry between the power of positive and negative expectations or experiences has an evolutionary history. Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce.” “progress happens too slowly to notice, but setbacks happen too quickly to ignore.” “Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time. Destruction is driven by single points of failure, which can happen in seconds, and loss of confidence, which can happen in an instant.”

人的本性总是生存是第一位的。好事需要长期的积累，坏事往往只要全局中有一点坏了，就会牵连整个局势。

“Expecting things to be great means a best-case scenario that feels flat. Pessimism reduces expectations, narrowing the gap between possible outcomes and outcomes you feel great about.

Maybe that’s why it’s so seductive. Expecting things to be bad is the best way to be pleasantly surprised when they’re not.

Which, ironically, is something to be optimistic about.”

降低自己的预期，当结果非常好的时候就会成为惊喜。这何尝不是一种乐观的精神。