The Last Word

By Jackson Boyd | Posted: Monday March 3, 2025

A pessimist is a person who tends to see the worst aspect of things.

As young men, when something happens to us, it is often easy for us to immediately look at the negatives of a situation. However, often the negatives outweigh the positives, a quick switch in mentality to an optimistic mindset can be a hard switch. 

Just over a month ago I was in Auckland trialling for the New Zealand Under 18 Touch team. Three weeks later I got an email. After two tournaments and one broken arm I found out I was not selected for the team. In that moment I could have easily dipped into a pessimistic mindset and taken all the negatives from my experience. But instead, I chose to look at the positives. I had experienced a trial at a national level, as well as participating in tournaments playing against some of the best players in the world. Now I could apply this experience to my new role with the school touch team as one of the coaches. 

It's easy to just say don’t have this negative mindset, but being able to have a positive mindset is a lot harder than it seems. One way I personally like to get into a positive mindset about any situation is to always try and find the positive aspect. Thinking back to when I broke my arm at the Touch Nationals, the first question I asked the physio when I came off and started walking to the medical tent was if I'd be able to get the 'green whistle'. Although this was just a simple comment, it gave me a mental blocker to the pessimistic thoughts. I have personally found this to be the best way for me to stay optimistic through things like that, where it is so easy to instantly go negative and make a bad situation worse. 

The power of simply having a positive mindset can also lead to improved performance on the sports field. Being able to flush mistakes on the field as well as in the classroom, and having a positive switched-on attitude, can lead to personal improvement, and it can influence your peers and their attitudes as well. 

In traditional OB’s fashion, I will end with a quote: “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”

Winston Churchill.