I heard this story today on Morgan Housel’s podcast:
A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom & gloom pessimist.
Just to see what would happen, on the twins’ birthday their father loaded the pessimist’s room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist’s room he loaded with horse manure.
That night the father passed by the pessimist’s room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly.
“Why are you crying?” the father asked.
“Because my friends will be jealous, I’ll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I’ll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken,” answered the pessimist twin.
Passing the optimist twin’s room, the father found him joyfully digging into the pile of manure. “What are you so happy about?” he asked.
To which his optimist twin replied, “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”
Optimists and pessimists don’t respond to the information that they see as much as they do an interpretation of what they WANT to see.