A bottle fell off on the ground, and the wine inside spilt out. Seeing this event, two men in the picture react in completely different ways. One is sighing for the loss of the spilt half of wine and cried in desperation that “everything screwed up!”. The other, in contrast, is smiling over the rest half of the wine and is thankful for his good luck.

   “Is the glass half empty or half full?” is a common expression used rhetorically to determine whether people perceive events and objects in an optimistic way or a pessimistic way. While an optimistic person always looks on the bright side of life, the pessimistic person always focuses on the negative side and exaggerates the worst situation. The way you perceive the world will determine your way to cope with it. In face of difficulties, the optimistic type, who bears hope in mind, will never flinch and will summon up courage to find the way to conquer the obstacles. The pessimistic type, on the contrary, tends to give up quickly and then brood over their own loss or failure, which in turn will throw their life in the vicious circle.

    It is quite obvious that if you want to succeed in a highly competitive society, all of us should try to develop an optimistic perception toward our life no matter how mean it is. To be optimistic is not only a matter of personality, more importantly, it is matter crucial to the future of your life. （251）