論處事態度：樂觀或悲觀？
海外大學教師謝振禮原創范文

Essay Topic

>To be successful in life, people take different attitudes when dealing with with difficulties and opportunities. Some people tend to be more optimistic while others tend to be more pessimistic. What do you think is the better attitude?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Example Writing
By Jeenn Lee Hsieh


Success is achieved by those who try and keep trying with a positive mental attitude because nothing on earth can help those with a negative mental attitude. In general, successful persons are opportunity-minded rather than difficulty-minded. That is to say, the pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.

Any fact facing us is often not as important as our attitude toward it, for that can determine our success or failure. The pessimist would visualize penalties of failure whereas the optimist would visualize the rewards of success. It might be true sometimes that people tried hard half-way and failed miserably, from which a lesson is learned that they should not have tried at all in the first place. Thus, after one failure, they are disappointed and discouraged, refusing to believe that the road to success is under construction. Since pessimists are afraid to fail, they are not likely to experience the joys of success. More often than not, this wrong mental attitude, or rather the fear of striking out, may hold them back.

It is certainly not the optimist's attitude toward success--always being ready as an opportunity comes. People with the right mental attitude are never scared by going too far, and they are convinced that success lies just beyond. True enough, it is not that optimists become winners without encountering real problems, but that they are willing to do do what losers are not willing to do. In other words, optimists choose to step forward, as if it were impossible to fail; but pessimists are always in the same place. Therefore, both attitudes tell a success and a failure apart. In all likelihood, success is like the child of optimism.

It pays to assume that opportunity may be in the middle of difficulty, or at least this is what the optimist is inclined to believe. Indeed, success of life depends upon keeping one's mind open to opportunity and seizing it when it comes. After all, optimists are right in believing what they can do and succeed; so are pessimists who think they would fail anyway.