Oratory Speech: Being Optimistic From the beginning of our lives, all of us have experienced some form of embarrassment. And for me, I tend to drop a lot of things. A while back, I was at a party with a lot of people I knew. My parents, my friends, and their parents were all there. I had two slices of pizza on my plate. They were the last slices of pizza, and I was getting them for my friend. While I was walking, I didn’t realize that my plate was slightly tilted, and soon one of my slices fell off my plate. Almost everyone there witnessed this, and they all started laughing. I was really embarrassed. So I went to throw it away, and as I was doing that, the other slice fell off my plate, once again because I had been holding the plate at …show more content…
Today we know that the reason for this lies in our genetic makeup. Our ancestors were keenly aware of negative circumstances and consequences, like predators and other dangers, because it helped them survive. Now, in the modern era, we no longer have the need to run from predators, yet this evolutionary imprint of a negative bias still remains within us. This tells us that our brains are wired to automatically look for the negatives. And this is probably the reason why many of us have a negative attitude for everyday things, and why, when we suffer through a setback, we feel blocked from making further progress. Our minds unconsciously look into the negative aspect of things, because that’s what our ancestors did for generations. And many of us are so used to negative thinking, we’ve been doing it our entire lives, so much so that we’re often not even aware that we’re doing …show more content…
Soon, he had more than fifty malignant tumors in his lungs. At this time, he was only 22 years old. Fortunately for him, his sister dedicated her life to make the last months of his life the best they possibly could be for him. She filled it with happy and positive experiences for him. In May of 2014, Christopher passed away. And instead of the last year of his life being dreary and depressing, it was full of happy and meaningful experiences. My small embarrassing moments of dropping things are so insignificant when compared to what Christopher had to go through. I have a family and the rest of my life, something that Christopher lost. So many of us have so many blessings in our life that we take for granted. Psychologists call it hedonic adaptation. When we get something good in our lives, we often feel like we don’t have much, and we’ll still think about the things we don’t have. Like when a person gets a new phone, they’ll still be sad because they don’t have the latest laptop, or car, even when the laptop and car you have are still relatively new and functioning perfectly. Hedonic adaptation is our natural psychological tendency for us to dismiss what we have and take what we have everyday for granted. Looking at what we don’t have drags us down. There is still a large portion of the world that lives on less than $2.50 a
People are told to focus on the bright side, but that mindset has to be developed. People should figure
He thought he would of seen joy within this new horizon but all that was seen was his arrogance. Joy was expected in this journey but all that was seen was his mistakes and regrets. Christopher thought climbing the devil’s thumb would get him away from all the wrong that was happening in his life. Soon after, he has learned that starting over has changed almost nothing (Krakauer 155). This evidence shows how he was too self absorbed to realize reality and the consequences for his actions.
They are obsessed with the thought of everything is going to be fine in the end. This is not always the case, which people in everyday life should start to understand. Life is not a fairy tale that is always going to end up with everything going in a positive direction. Therefore, in life people ignore the aspect of situations getting worse, and only pay attention to the illusions they create to avoid it.
Certain events in life can affect people in many different ways, such as causing them to change their priorities. In Contents of a Dead Man’s pocket, written by Jack Finney, Tom’s priorities are set on work first and family later, but those soon begin to shift after a dramatic event takes place in his life. People’s priorities can be focused on something as simple as work like in Tom’s case, and sometimes they need a close to death situation to give them a wake up call. When people’s priorities are misaligned they tend to know but not accept the fact, they may even have a hot guilty conscience just like Tom. One 's life events can transform their priorities, it can cause them to look differently at the life they’re living.
In order to survive this world, people sometimes take risks to aid other people in a chaotic event. Sometimes, it won’t work out the way it did. People don’t really save everyone’s lives all the time, but that’s okay. In addition, people have to face horrible and painful events in their life that might be an effect on them forever. In the memoir “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, many Jews struggle to survive in Auschwitz during the holocaust, careless to save others.
passion. C. Wallace provides a depiction of how people view everyday situations from a pessimistic perspective: D. “But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this” (Wallace 20). E. Wallace’s description of the lady sounds plausible to the audience because one may have constructed similar thoughts about total strangers. By beginning his argument with the description of the lady, Wallace allows the audience to be emotionally connected to the situation, therefore, his argument becomes more applicable.
After I could see again, I jumped up and ran over to my duffel bag to grab my baseball clothes. I threw my clothes on rapidly because my stomach was rumbling and I wanted to go down to the lobby to get a bite to eat. When I got down to the lobby, I found some of my baseball team already eating, so I hustled over to the food area and grabbed a plate. When I sat down with my food, I asked my friend Charlie, “How is the food?”
Living long, healthy lives is a massive focus of many Americans today, while on the contrary, focusing on happiness does not truly bring happiness to one 's life. Experiencing other emotions such as sadness, fear, and anger are as important in life as happiness. In the article “Don’t Worry, Be Gloomy” author Susan David states, “While it is certainly not healthy to constantly stew in negative emotions, there are some positive things that sadness, anger, guilt or fear can do” (126). David gives five reasons bad news can be good news: Helps form arguments; Improves memory; Encourages perseverance; Ups generosity; and Boosts ability to reason.
Terminal illnesses can strip even the most advocate life loving people, rendering them a depressed shell and unwilling to continue any further into the deep pits of despair that life has allocated to themselves. The cruel and unusual punishment to such enthusiastic people leaves them, “…permanently incapable of functioning in any dignified human fashion” (Andre, Velasquez 2). In the case of Matthew Donnelly who had, “… lost his nose, his left hand, two fingers on his right hand, and part of his jaw” to cancer, hope of relief was nowhere to be found, high nor low (1). The extreme pain had stripped every bit of joy from Donnelly who typically, “loved life” (1). Donner suffered, “lying in bed with teeth clenched from the excruciating pain,
11. 27. 35. Those arbitrary numbers remained in my head for an entire week. They were questions I knew I missed on my last test.
Since I was so bored anything would appease me. I came upon my sister who was rummaging around under the covers. I, of course, did not think twice, and impulsively jumped right in. After a minute she jumped off, and I didn't realize. While under the covers I dropped off the bed not knowing, and landed right on my left arm, breaking it.
Christopher may not grow up with in age, but he grows with in his abilities and learns to cope with his mental
The following day Tommy and another officer goes to Chris’s house to give him his own kid motorcycle but to only find out that he was back in the hospital. Tommy explained that Chris 's smile that he gave to him for what he has done and made him have a good day was empowering. “He was only seven years, 269 days old when he died. But he taught me about being a man. Even though he was only a boy.
Optimism is hopefulness for the future, and, like me, most people get their optimism from their roots, or how they were brought up as a child. My parents would always remind me from a young age that being pessimistic will not help you achieve your goal, so you might as well be optimistic and try. They have always taught me from a young age, and never denied or doubted, that with optimism comes opportunity, and that optimism is, in fact, the key to success. Over the years, I’ve learned that the more optimistic you are, the more creative you can be. With optimistic attitude, one can generate new ideas and create possibilities to move forward faster and more efficiently than at normal times, due to an open mind.
The article’s purpose is to pinpoint specific cultural traits that cause problems in modern relationships. It dives into the history of marriage to illustrate that our modern views on marriage and love are new and specific to the twentieth century. Cultural shifts in our individualistic tendencies are responsible for some of the problems marriages face today. The article poses the underlying idea that perhaps society’s individualistic nature is too self-centered to the point that we push out other’s needs, feelings, and happiness. 4.