#4 Be Optomistic

Be Optomistic

In life, things don't always happen as we expect them to; and when they don't we automatically resort to a pessimistic train of thought. At least that's how we react at the beginning, after thinking about how we feel, some people would realize that they were acting ridiculous and start to look at the bright side of things but some would just decide to stay angry and pessimistic.

Throughout my experiences in life I have found that being optimistic has the best pay-out. In the moment, it may seem like letting the anger control you is the easiest thing to do but in the long run, being angry is a waste of time. When we are angry we aren't ourselves, things that we would normally see as extremely fun and entertaining become irrelevant and stupid to us because we are letting the anger control our lives. Being pessimistic could lead to missing some of the most important events in our lifes.

Like I said earlier, being pessimistic seems easier sometimes but in the end the best pay off will come from being optimistic and looking at the brighter side of things. When we look at the brighter side of things we take into consideration all of the things that we can improve on, we are simply happier because we see that we can improve and that things could have been ten thousand times worse.

Over the weekend I went to the Mad/Jazz Festival on the NAU campus in Flagstaff, AZ. At the festival, the jazz choir that I am involved in performed then after our performance a lady that is trained in vocal jazz came on stage and critiqued us. I was fine at this point; I mean I was a little disappointed with our performance. I felt like we didn’t do our best.

It wasn’t until we got our rating that I really was like, “Wow. We suck.” We got a Good, which is almost the worst rating that you can get. All I could think was, we are terrible. Then as I kept thinking I got more and more pissed because I thought about all of the new people that have no previous training in jazz. I was livid. I wanted to turn around and blame it all on the other people in the choir that I knew had not jazz training previous to this year.

 I continued to let the angry fire kindle in my heart and then I asked myself, “What the hell are you doing? You’re beating yourself and your group down. You will go nowhere with that mentality.” At that point I decided that I was acting like a total idiot. I needed to realize that we did what we could. I needed to realize that all of the people I felt were inferior in jazz training had nowhere to go but up.

On the way home we finally got a chance to listen to our recording as a group in the car and I was amazed. We sounded pretty damn good. Sure there were little things that needed to be fixed but they were just that, little things. I don’t believe that the clinician that we got gave us a fair rating. Instead of making me angry, this experience has just given me confidence to push further and help the others in my jazz group to go further as well.

My experience shows that being pessimistic will take us nowhere in life so therefore kids, we must choose to Be Optomistic.