[spacelamb]

You can also stay realistic, while being neither too negative nor too positive.

You can step back and identify the negatives and the positives of a circumstance or plan, weigh them (quite literally in a table for anything complex, it really helps), and set a course of action based on that. Then you price in the risks of negative consequences, while aiming for potential positive outcomes in the future.

Otherwise, being super negative and not trying to change one's situation sounds like distress, and seeing only the positives to a potential course of action sounds like folly and risky planning.

I also think that this can be trained. There were times when I was really negative about everything, but I developed a habit to notice when I was experiencing this negativity, and try to identify positives too, to balance things out. It did give me a lot more agency.

[hvasilev]

"Realistic" is not a middle point between "Negative" and "Positive". If you want to have a model of reality that is as close to truth, it would fall significantly closer to "Negative". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism)

However there are strategies that both ways of thinking can adopt to improve their experience / performance in the real world.

Optimistic people can try to see "both side of the coins" and not miss underwater rocks.

Pessimistic people can adopt a defensive strategy where they minimize risk to the point that they are willing to take it.

Two side notes: You can be smart about it in both situations. Also in both cases you should take out the emotional toll.

[spacelamb]

I agree with your side notes, though I would add that depressive realism is a hypothesis in psychology that is challenged by other academics, rather than a settled fact.

From your link, "Depressive realism is the hypothesis [...] that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals [...] [Critics of depressive realism argue that] depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs."

The critics would say that depressed people have unrealistic world views, which causes depressive symptoms. This matches with my own personal experience (e.g. when I felt convinced I could never be happy for a while after I got dismissed at my job, which was convincing at the time but turned out to be totally wrong).

However, I do think you can be pessimistic without the emotional toll as you say; but that doesn't sound like a depressed person, if this person can still excel at motivation and doing hard things.

My bottom line is: I just don't believe in the depressive realism hypothesis just to focus on the first bit, but I agree with the take on pessimistic realism.