Amanda the... optimist?

Apparently. I picked up a copy of Psychology Today because it had a headline article that was supposed to help you retrain your brain into being what you want to be. One of the main focuses of the article was changing your thoughts to be more optimistic. While I would normally NOT consider myself to be an optimist, reading the article I discovered I have one major optimist quality... making things better and figuring things out instead of giving up. If I don't have the money to do something, I figure out a way to raise it. If I get sent the wrong pieces to a Pottery Barn Playhouse and don't find out until Christmas eve, I still find a way to put it together. (Not without an hour of frustration and throwing things, but we did it) I'm always scheming, dreaming, and planing. I'll work on a problem until I get it. I am not always calm, cool and collected while doing so and am actually quite the opposite, but I do it. I loved figuring out loans (as stressful as it was) because it was a problem in which I could manipulate variables to make it work. I rarely take no for an answer, and I realize there is not much that I want for. I'm not talking material things, but life experiences in general. There are times when I have seen dreams and desires fly out the window and I "say" I'm letting it go, but I never do. There is always some part of me that holds on to every aspiration I've ever had because I know someday I'll make it happen. Reading this article was actually good for me. It shed some much-needed positive light on my self-schema. (oh yeah, learned that one in Social Psych and used it in real life!)