I was hoping someone would find the article available without a subscription. Thanks Arney. when i posted this morning I was just hitting the headlines as I was getting to work and wanted to get it out there before I forgot about it.

You got the point of it, being realistic about the challenges being faced, and preparing for them, is much more helpful than unrealistic positive thinking. As I have always been taught "hope is not an action verb"; a better way to look at the concept of hope is just never giving up, never stop trying to fix things. Hope without action is useless.

Stress is a killer, but it need not be. If the stress is not physical, such as cold, heat, or sleep deprivation, then it is largely based on perception. The perception that the needs or challenges being faced are beyond your capabilities to handle. By thinking more realistically about the challenge, you remove a great deal of the stress. You can analyze the challenge by breaking it down into its component parts, take them on in manageable chunks and overcome the challenge. Unrealistic positive thinking about everything can result in nasty surprises as reality blind-sides you.

Unrealistically optimistic people tend to have an external locus of control, or the belief that they do not control things, "someone else" does. This can also be said about people who suffer from debilitating depression. The idea is to develop a realistic outlook, one that can handle the unexpected, and occasionally nasty, surprises and not be devastated by them. This applies to this community by encouraging a realistic attitude toward what you are preparing for, and as the article says, go out and practice the worst case scenario and learn to handle it. then the stress during one of those nasty events will be greatly reduced.

This "negative" attitude is not to see everything in a negative light, but to not be unrealistically optimistic. As stated in a favorite movie: "Always look on the bright side of life!"