[The Debate] Negativity vs Realist

It's September!!! Which means I'm sorta midway through the semester and I'm probably dying on the streets after long hours of lab. But in case you didn't know, most of my blogs, especially during the school term, are pre-written before and therefore, all I just need to do is to press the publish button and there it is. This is to prevent me from actually spending time to write during the school term.

However, the original September blog was scrapped due to the amazing lack of strong content there. So I decided to write a blog post about something else. And as you can see, I took till this time to find a bit of time to write it because the work is piling up and I just can't take it any more. :( But anyway, I'm glad I found a topic to write about, which is something that I really wanted to rant about, or rather explain this whole month. And I'll let you know in a while on why is that so. But first...

I've got some good news to share with you! I'll be posting a series of stories about my life across the next few years or so. It's gonna be a pretty long series because it pretty much documents my entire life all the way through, The tentative titles are written below:

1.  My Life's Journey: Tiger Years and Growing Up
2.  My Life's Journey: A Hundred and Ninety One
3.  My Life's Journey: Darker Years and Brighter Days
4.  My Life's Journey: The Final Push
5.  My Life's Journey: Wearing the Green and Entering The Rebellion
6.  My Life's Journey: When Love lost all its Trust
7.  My Life's Journey: When Trust Couldn't Trust Itself
8.  My Life's Journey: A New Face, A New Era
9.  My Life's Journey: Facing The New Reality

Of course, I am not gonna release all nine blogs consecutively. I do plan to vary the contents of my blogs across the release like school module blogs, 10 questions and perhaps even others. But I hope you guys do support these blog posts, especially for those who would really like to know me more on a personal level.

Now, back to the reason why I wanted to post this blog. So a few months back, my ex told me that I have a defeatist mindset, which hinges on the fact that I was being negative and such. And then a month back, my current lab partner, whom I absolutely ADORE because we have such good Chemistry together (yea, pun intended), said that I have a negative mindset for always saying that I can't do this or can't achieve that. So that got me thinking, about being negative and being something that I like to see myself as a realist.

Now I know you might be thinking that perhaps they might be on to something for saying that I am negative. Perhaps I am negative and I don't realize it yet. And I do give this a lot of thought at times, but it still boils down to one answer; I am a realist. So let me break it down for you and start this debate. 

I like to think that I'm a realist because I'm always true to myself. If I know I can be a doctor, I'll be like hell yeah I can. If I know I can pakour down the Singapore flyer, I would tell you I would. And that's the kind of guy I am; a realist. But if I know I can't, I would tell you that I can't do it. It's not because I'm negative, but because I know that the possibility of it happening is freaking low or damn close to impossible. And maybe, perhaps being a realist is being negative at times, but it's more about being true to oneself rather than always looking down on yourself. That is perhaps the key difference. So if I were to ask you "Are you going to be a millionaire by 25?", what will you tell me? I can be positive and be like "Sure! Of course, I can! If I strike a lottery tomorrow, pick up a one million dollar bill on the floor, win a lawsuit, or be like Imran/Dominic." I could. But what are the chances of happening? Am I negative than to say that I won't be a millionaire by 25? Or am I a realist? 

Now, let's give a more current example. Let's say you're doing a module and your friend were to tell you that you're gonna get an A+ for it. Knowing how the bell curve system works and knowing the competition you are facing (all dem smart people), what would your answer be, assuming you're just an average student? The truth is that you won't agree with your friend that you will get an A+, given the context of the situation. Does that make you negative? No, because you are just being real to yourself. 

I believe I hold a realist mindset because I KNOW WHERE I STAND IN LIFE. I KNOW WHAT I CAN DO AND WHAT I CAN'T DO and that does not make me a negative person. It just makes me self aware of what I can and can't do. So I give myself realistic targets and realistic potential final outcomes so I know that if I were to fall, I won't fall that far off from what I expect. It's just like the saying "Aim for the stars so that even if you fall, you will still manage to hit the clouds." That's me. I still aim high, but I will prepare myself for the clouds to fall on because that is where I know I would possibly land up. I won't cover myself with false hope just to be more positive. 

Now honey, let me address the elephant in the room, which is the defeatist mindset my ex was talking about. First and foremost, she was calling me defeatist on a basis that I assumed she wasn't gonna be free to meet up, in which, when she asked me why I don't initiate the meetups, I just simply told her that it was because she was always telling me she was busy. And then I was labelled a defeatist??????????? Really? I am a defeatist for assuming you're busy, but gurl you keep self-proclaiming that you busy here, you busy there, of course, I think you will be busy every day what right? Is that even the right word to use in the first place? I'll tell you what I am; confused...

But in all seriousness, I'm not secretly shading her or hating on her. It's just another example of all examples that I got. Okay, fine, the encounter with my lab partner was that he told me that I will do well for a particular module this semester and I was like "I will try my best as usual, but the results for that particular module has been average and it remained average for the past 3 years." Now based on statistics, the claims I made were facts. And he was like "Nooooo, you confirm this year do well for this module." And tadah, that's how I got labeled the negative mindset thing. And to be honest, yeah, I agree that there is a hint of a negative mindset inside, but I'm also being a realist as well because the statistics don't lie. 

So all I'm saying is that I have been a realist, and will always be a realist. I won't give people high hopes, nor will I tell myself that I will have a Ferrari while I know I'm heading in the BMW section. Those are dreams and goals.

And I know that I may come across to certain people as being negative, but I'm not. I speak from the heart and won't try to sugarcoat things that aren't supposed to be sugarcoated. I say it the way I think it is and that is final. So I'm glad this blog post is written as a debate because there is a fine line between negativity and realist that you can cross but essentially they are two different things altogether. It's pretty much the same as how being positive and being delusional is the same thing yet different altogether.

Anyways, what do you guys think? What's your stand towards all these and what do you see yourself as; a realist or something else? Let me know in the comments below and I shall see you in the next blog!