Skip to content
Ponto de Ajuste
Mind

Are optimistic people happier? It all depends on which window you choose to look through

October 29, 2026 · 6 min read · Ponto de Ajuste Team

Two men sitting on opposite sides of a bus: one looks glumly at the dark window, the other smiles at the sunny landscape as a red car passes on the road
Share:

If you’ve ever wondered whether optimistic people are happier, the short answer is yes. And, as a bonus, they tend to live longer. But the reason is much less magical than it seems. Optimists don’t have lives without problems, they’ve just learned to pay attention to other parts of the landscape. In the end, it all starts with where we choose to put our eyes.

Maybe you know that cartoon that became a meme all over the world: two young men sitting on the same bus. One looks out the window on the rock side, dark and dull, with the saddest face in the world. The other looks out the window on the opposite side, where there’s sun, mountains and open sky. And he’s grinning from ear to ear.1

They both paid the same fare, they’re on the same road and they’ll get off at the same stop. The only thing that changes is the window.

The story of the red cars

Imagine two friends on a long road trip. One of them loves red cars, the kind of person who points out and comments on every one that shows up. The other never paid much attention to them. At the end of the day, someone asks how many red cars went by on the road. The first answers right away: “about seven, and one of them was gorgeous”. The second thinks and thinks, and can’t remember a single one.

The seven cars passed by both of them. The road was the same, and so was the speed. What changed was what each of them was looking for.

Our brain works like this all the time. It takes in far more information than it can handle, so it makes a selection. And the criterion for that selection is whatever we’ve grown used to considering important. What you look for often becomes what you see easily.

People who spend the day hunting for what could go wrong find proof of it everywhere. People who have trained their eyes on what goes right find that too, on the very same road.

Why do optimistic people live longer?

It sounds like a good-morning text message, but there’s serious research behind it. A large study followed tens of thousands of people for many years. The most optimistic ones lived, on average, 11% to 15% longer, and had a much better chance of making it past 85. And that held true even after accounting for things like health, income and habits.2

The explanation has nothing supernatural about it. People who believe things can get better tend to take better care of themselves, because they feel it’s worth it. They see a doctor before a problem grows and they move more. They also face difficulties instead of running from them, and they bounce back faster from setbacks.3 Optimism works like a small daily nudge to do what’s good for you.

And that’s exactly where happiness comes in. Optimists suffer, lose and get frustrated like anyone else. The difference is that they don’t keep their face glued to the dark window for the whole trip.

Optimism and pessimism: can you switch windows?

The good news is that optimism isn’t just a trait you’re born with. Part of it can be learned, the same way the red car friend learned to notice cars: by looking for them so often.

A simple experiment shows this well. Some people spent weeks writing down things they were grateful for, while others wrote down the day’s annoyances. Those who looked at the bright side ended up feeling better about their lives and more upbeat about the week ahead. As a bonus, they even started exercising more.4 Deep down, it’s counting red cars on purpose, until your brain starts doing it on its own.

Optimism with your feet on the ground

Now, an important caveat. Optimism isn’t pretending the rock on the other side doesn’t exist. People who ignore problems are more distracted than optimistic, and the bill usually comes later. Notice that the happy guy on the bus didn’t paint the dark window yellow. He knows it’s there, he just didn’t spend the whole trip staring at it.

Some days the dark window grabs more attention, and that’s okay. When your head is too full, as we explained in the article about the mind that creates problems that don’t exist, turning your head the other way takes more effort. That’s why optimism is more of a habit than a mood: we go back to the good view as many times as it takes.

There’s a line attributed to Marcel Proust that fits this trip perfectly:

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” (Marcel Proust)

Most of the time, we don’t need to change buses or roads. We just need to notice what’s already passing by the window.

So here’s a question to take with you over the next few days. If someone asked you, at the end of this week, how many red cars went by on your road, what would you be able to answer? And what, really, have you spent the trip looking for?

To keep riding on the sunny side of the bus, here are three more reads:

Editor’s note: We all have that friend who, on any bus, manages to sit on the rock side and spends the whole trip complaining about the view. Send this article their way. Maybe next time they’ll count at least one red car.

Footnotes

  1. Ronchi, G. (2013). Às vezes só depende de nós (“Sometimes it’s up to us”). Cartoon published on genildo.com; the author tells its story in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper A Gazeta (in Portuguese). The cover of this article is a new take on that illustration. ↩ source

  2. Lee, L. O. et al. (2019). Optimism is associated with exceptional longevity in 2 epidemiological cohorts of men and women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(37), 18357-18362. ↩ source

  3. Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F. & Segerstrom, S. C. (2010). Optimism. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 879-889. ↩ source

  4. Emmons, R. A. & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389. ↩ source

Liked it? Send it to someone:

Comments

    Keep reading