I have not seen polls in a while so I am going to start with this one.
Which person are you? An optimistic or a pessimistic.

Optimistic - Hopeful and confident about the future.
Pessimistic - Tending to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen.

Take a vote and make a post if you want, describe which one you associate with.

EDIT: Well that sucks, the poll is no where to be seen. FML!

Yeah, it seems the poll feature isn't working. 

I certainly try to be balanced in how I think, but consider myself an optimist. In fact, I don't feel worry, ever. And I fell very little stress. Why? It's all because of how I choose to interpret my world. I accept things not as being good or bad, but with a sense of indifference. 

Many people, I can predict, will say that they are in the "middle", and that they see reality. But remember, saying the glass is half full or half empty are both real. It's how you see the reality that defines if you are an optimist or pessimist. 

I am normally optimistic, though sometimes my shyness steps in stating that nothing good will come out of certain things.

While I'm not confident about the future because anything can happen, I am hopeful that what I try to do will happen. I don't get depressed when things don't go as expected, because I admit I sometimes hope for impossible things but you won't know the end result unless you try. I like and actually look forward to where my experiences can lead me to, which makes me gradually wanting to open up more and improve as a person.

I admit that I can be pessimistic at times as well, even if sometimes I want to mask it as being prepared for the worst. There are very few fields in which I'm more pessimistic than optimistic, and I'm trying to shrink the list even further so I can get rid of my negativity, but it can probably take me a long while to progress.

Optimistic, to be sure, though not totally so. Things always get better, but often not until things get worse first. But if we weren't tested, we couldn't "bodybuild", right? To have a ripped bod, you gotta put in work that hurts and burns. But when you see those abs? Nothing like that feeling.

I am pessimistic. EVERYTHING is wrong kinda person, even if things are right, I find myself trying to think of what is wrong in things. I should also note that I suffer from major depressive disorder so that leans in the way of pessimism almost all the time.

Now sure I can be optimistic but when I am it is usually unrealistic in nature. By that I mean I tend to set goals or have ideas that are too out of reach to achieve.

The good thing about being pessimistic is when things do fail, you are use to that failure so it really is not that big of a problem when it happens. When you are optimistic and something blindsides you and hits you hard, you will fall harder because you are not familiar with it.

Example: Boy or girl breaks up with you. You can either cry or move on. The one moving on right away is the pessimistic who has identified a problem and is not hopeful for the future of said relationship. The one doing the crying is the optimist who is hopeful and believes things can ultimately be fixed between the two. This example is very strange because crying is not usually an emotion associated with someone who is optimistic.

I'm very pessimistic most of the time. My childhood was nothing but a bunch of bullies and messed up teachers that consistently mistreated me. I used to be an optimistic toddler but then seeing how everyone always treats me like garbage, I had no hope in anyone outside my family. 

My parents meant to bring me to an Islamic elementary/middle/high school for me to stay true to my religion. But all of the people there are screwed up. Nearly all of them are bullies except one other old friend I knew who was also bullied with me. We were both of a certain ethnicity while everyone else were all in another ethnic group. (I don't know if I want to go into more details than this)

I'm NOT saying Islam/Muslims are bad. Heck, I'm a Muslim myself. It's the people themselves that are messed up, not the religion/ethnicity/etc.

Things got a little better in high school after my growth spurt where I suddenly became taller than most of the people in my class. I didn't get physically harmed any more, but I was still isolated and made fun of.

I know I could have told my parents but they never really listened to me as a child. They just thought I was some kind of troublesome kid. I still love my parents though, they raised me and still pampered me at home.

Of course, I got affected by depression, but I was still hopeful about a diverse college community despite my pessimism about everything else. College is where things got waaayyy better. No bullies and made a few real friends. But I'm still pessimistic about most things, my distrust of everyone is still implanted in me from my first 17 years of my life. I think as I grow older I'll get over my past more.

I'd have to say I'm a pessimistic type of person. I don't look for the bad in things or in people, but I have a hard time seeing the good in life. I try to stay optimistic about things, but it's hard. I guess it has to do with my environment, and the relationship I have with my family. Especially, being around my dad so much. It feels like he has always been negative about everything and can never see the good in anybody. I inherited this attitude from him, and now I'm trying to unlearn this way of thinking. My mom can be very negative as well but not as bad. I've spent my whole life thinking negative but desire to change. 

Seems like everytime I make progress, something happens that changes my attitude back the other way. I hope in the future, I can be more optimistic about things. This negative attitude has really held me back, and it still does.  

I'm certainly more on the pessimistic side. I try to cover that up by calling myself a realist,
but in reality I just use my pessimism to control my life which turns into reality for me. So my pessimism has turned my life sour.
Interesting that I can see this as an issue and acknowledge it, but never change that aspect about me and my life.

A life motto I had for long time is: Always expect the worst and that way you're never disappointed.
Sounds good on paper but it's such a sad way to live.

I really couldn't tell you which applies more to me. I have people telling me I'm extremely negative and pessimistic, yet I'm also one of the first to respond to someone who's down with more than sympathy and offer a perspective of endurance. One of the first to respond to a situation or negative development with some sort of proactive approach.

On one hand, I don't expect anything good to happen on any sizable scale. I don't have faith in much, and I don't really believe hope is a good thing, being that, as I see it, it's best described as preemptive denial. What I do believe is that you should always be two plans ahead, and that each of those plans should have wide margins for error so you can most effectively correct for problems if and when they come.

I guess you could sum it up as trying to have the most realistic expectations, if not a more negative forecast, and unrelentingly forging ahead the best you can with what you have.

As to whether that's pessimism or optimism, you tell me.

I'm not sure because I tend to be always optimistic, but I have been Pessimistic for a while now.

I'm apathetic and nihilistic at my core but I'm mostly optimistic about it, I don't really care how things turn out, I'm mostly about letting the chips fall where they may and dealing with the consequences of it. kinda gets you a decent mix of good and bad and it's an overall balanced world view since it let's you focus on the really important stuff without having to worry about the stuff you can't really change. pretty chill and rad lifestyle

I would have to say I'm more optimistic when it comes to most things, though for some things I might be a pessimist about. But so far I'm 80-90% optimist.

I think of myself as a realist but if I had to choose between the two, pessimistic I guess.

I never want to look at things from a glorified angle because I hate disappointment more than anything. I hate disappointing others and I hate disappointing myself. Even just recently I'm already regretting some decisions I've made both online and IRL because I rushed into them thinking it'll work out in the end. Or that I would get a second shot at them. I'm not the type of guy that gets haunted by regret but I do have a hard time getting completely over it.

I say I'm more pessimistic not because I actually am pessimistic but because I hate being optimistic. 

I'm generally more pessimistic than optimistic, but it depends on the situation. I'd say that I'm pessimistic by default, but if things are going well, I'm usually more optimistic. For example, the Islanders are playing really well right now, and I'm optimistic that they will go really far in the playoffs. At the beginning of the season though, I just assumed they would suck, because they always do.

There is a similar test here (since the original link was broken):
http://www.seemypersonality.com/personality.asp?p=Optimism-Test


I would like to know my personality (either Optimistic of or Pessimistic)

I personally feel very optimistic a lot of the time, potentially to the point of annoying those around me. I think it's better to be optimistic, because it allows yourself to be proactive about situations, as opposed to just being a pessimist where you just have no expectations, and by extension aren't let down. I think that we need to feel let down so that when something goes right, it'll feel that much better. Sure, it's a trade-off, but that's just my personal philosophy.

"Hope for the best but prepare for the worst."

That pretty much sums up how I've always tried to live and I do consider myself to be an optimist. Personally, I think being optimistic isn't the same as being unrealistic, and I'm also not indifferent to what happens as a result of my attitude towards everything.

Ever since I realized how short our lives really are, I've chosen to spend my days smiling and happy rather than always be worried and depressed. We only have 24 hours in a day and I will always choose to spend those hours with happiness and joy whenever I can. Of course, there are times when things happen that bring us down but we can always choose the attitude with which we would like to face the world.

To me, we always have a choice, even if our choice is to die for someone else. We are all flames burning brightly, and whether we realize it or not, we have the ability to light up others and help them to shine.

I am optimistic. Yuna has pretty much explained what I would have said since me and her have similar personality. We know in life its not all sunshine and rainbows. I can only hope for the best in the future of mine and for other people as well. Words I would normally use is hope and faith because not everything will always go the way you expect it too. There will be downfalls but then I always remind myself of those words its easy to feel depressed over certain problems which I can understand hence why everyone is different in their own unique way.

I've been stuck with a pessimistic mindset for a long time. I don't think I was born with it, but I instilled it in myself while I was a teenager and was generally really down about everything in my life. At the moment, I'm trying to get rid of as much of it as I can get away with and replace it with an optimistic mindset simply because I want to have hope. I don't want to bring people down around me. I'm entirely aware that the worst can happen - my goal is not to remove my common sense and be blindly optimistic about everything. My goal is just to be more positive and optimistic in general.

I have depression, so I tend to be somewhat of a pessimist. However I feel in some cases that it is strategic pessimism. If I set the bar low, then I am pleasantly surprised when the worst doesn't happen.