What Do You See? A Glass Half Full Or Half Empty?

The weekend is when I try to connect back with some old classics I have not re-read for a long time. This Sunday, I enjoyed going back to the Book, The Art Of Possibility by Rosamund Zander and Ben Zander. I think I read this Book more than a decade ago.

The Art of Possibility is an uplifting little book about thinking practices. It makes a case for us to liberate ourselves from the limitations of our reality and delve into the world of possibility. The Book is full of examples telling us that life works better for us when we have a positive mental outlook.

There is one nugget from the Book that I had annotated many years back.

“Are you a glass half full or glass half empty kind of person?”

The glass-half-empty folks may pride themselves as practical realists not prone to the delusional optimism of the half glass full folks. The glass-half-empty brigade believes their cynicism stems from their deeper appreciation of the reality that the optimists always ignore.

The authors say that the people who see the “glass half empty” are the ones wedded to fiction and not reality.

The concept of the emptiness in the “half empty” glass is an abstraction of the cynical mind, whereas the “half full” is a measure of the physical reality of the liquid being there.

Therefore, optimism always comes from a place of reality. The water in the glass is tangible and real. The half glass full person sees the possibility based on tangible evidence.

The cynics focus on something that is not there, and therefore they come from a place of limiting beliefs.

I am an unapologetic Half Glass Full optimist who sees possibility and hope in everything. I hope you are too !!