Your outlook on life

We love people; we hate people. We get promoted; we lose $30,000 in the stock market. We want something because it will make us happy; we get it and are disappointed that it has not turned out as we'd hoped.

We all seek happiness and when we find it, it doesn't last long. We'll want more; something new. We crave change, but that inevitably brings pain and so we're stuck in an endless cycle that may bring temporary happiness, but we know we'll feel pain again. This either makes our good times even sweeter, or it spoils them. For me, it spoils them.

What's your outlook? I'm curious to see how many are mostly positive or negative.

my outlook on life? usually positive. of course, i have my moments, and i'm quite cynical (obviously), but i definately have my hopes up and i keep faith in everything.

Life is what we make it, we have good and bad times, but so does everyone. Learning to know whats the right thing for you is the key to happiness, this involves being honest with yourself and trusting your instincts.

As my name and presence on this forum would suggest i'm pretty cynical about things. I tend to take life as it comes and deal with it when it does, by not expecting stuff i rarely find my self disappointed, sad but true.

I also try to never take anything particularly seriously, i agree with the outlook of the character silk in the david eddings "Belgariad + Mallorean" series, "If I don't laugh at life, I'd probably end up crying".

My Outlook on life is neither positive or negative. Yes, I'm living, but I'm living to die. Is death a failure, or a successful climax to a life? Is love nothing more than a reproductive urge to ensure the survival of my genetic material, or is it something more? Success is success, failure is failure, one in the spotlight, one in the shadows, but are both not required to see the whole picture? These dualities tell my outlook on life not because I choose one, nor the other, not both, but neither. These complexities, which are perfectly clear to me but I do not understand in the slightest, make me get out of bed each morning to try and learn it all by figuring out that I know nothing.

In a bit less contradicting terms....

I just live for the questions, and sometimes seriously hope I never find the answers, but I keep on looking.

There is one quote that I live by, and this will never change.

"Dance like noones watching you, and love like you've never been hurt." Alexisonfire

recently I have had a personal revolation, i have found having a positive outlook makes positive things happen, its a miracle but it works. Once i lessnd the depression things have been better, sure there are outbreaks. Anyway, that is a good quote and it really dose help. A good vibe is the best thing you can have.

well.. since I have had it ingraved onto my body, I have a positive and hopeful outlook on life for the most part. I always have and always will have hope that there will always be something new to look forward to. So, even through the most depressing times of my life, I'll somehow manage to pull through and not do something I would later regret.

something that I am experiencing right now actually, and is working very well for me.

I think I live by looking on the brighter side of things, but perhaps you could say that in the very general sense of life, we all have pretty much the same experience whether we have a positive or negative outlook on things. Maybe we frown at everything that comes our way and curse what terrible luck we have, and maybe we look on the bright side of things and see how this can benefit us - in the long run we've all experienced happiness, sadness, laughter, crying, etc. And I think the people who tend to live with a negative outlook on life are the people who generalize it in their outlook on it. Maybe a stressed out law school student who's pessimistic because he/she knows as soon as their free time is up, it's back to work and more work and more work, but they have the idea that they're just gonna get through this task that is eternally horrible so they can get to the happy part, when they're a successful lawyer, etc. However, I think once you dedicate your mind to thinking in a certain situation,

"Alright, I'm just gonna haul ass through this whole thing. Every fiber of its being is gonna be a pain in my ass, but I'm just gonna bite my lip and move through it all,"

you forbid yourself from enjoying the smaller pleasures of life, and also, it becomes addicting. As you originally said. We look for happiness in one thing, find we don't have enough there, and we go on to something else. Well, if you're continuously searching for happiness and you maintain that mindset until you've found the indefinite source of it - in the crudest but most modern terminology - you're fucked for good. And so I think it's this fascination and obsession some people have with the idea of success and the search for a source of eternal happiness. However, I find that the source for eternal happiness is existence (happiness in small doses for more people than seems fun to admit, but happiness nonetheless).