Great topic and post - I enjoyed reading your words and clarity on a topic that doesn't involve databases 😁
I've written an unpublished book that touches on these topics and done a lot of work exploring them, but without writing an entire essay here...
I have been optimistic in the past and then hit hard by being very incorrect about things that mattered to me. I've also had shorter periods of pessimism when I didn't know how to respond or overcome challenges. Generally though I have an angle now which is an expanded realism.
Essentially, we are always free to influence and guide our own destiny and we do that to a large extent through our own internal state of being - which includes thoughts, beliefs, emotions and the knowledge held. The reason I say 'expanded' is because the way we perceive reality/self and therefore the way we shape our lives comes down largely to the definitions we are holding. If we are willing to very carefully examine our definitions and change them to be more accurate or more expansive, we can really open new doors - perhaps that no-one has ever opened before. The definition we hold of 'reality' itself is key.
Someone who chooses to be a realist could use a very different definition for the idea of reality (and therefore also of 'realist') to someone else and so they can be quite different in their outlooks and internal process. E.g. Some people might define that 'reality' is 'the tangible and measurable phenomena that we agree on'.. However, there are wildly different understandings of what reality actually is that deviate greatly from this commonly held 'reality'. ;)
The short version is that I know that we all have our own subjective realities and that this is actually a source of great power that most people aren't fully tapping in to.
Instead of viewing that there is an objective reality that I can't really deviate much from and therefore limiting my options in life to what the consensus has agreed is possible - I start from completely the opposite position - that there are infinite parallel/possible realities and my ability to experience most of them requires me to shift my own beliefs/thoughts/emotions sufficiently to do so. Generally, this means deviating a lot from what consensus reality claims to be true. This doesn't mean I just believe whatever I want, without reason or checking or experimenting - it means that I don't discount any possibility at all and I allow the possibility that my own innate creative capacity could be far greater than most people assume, allowing for what seems impossible to become possible.
I don't just do this because it sounds like it is fun - I do it because I've studied the topic for decades and have had a lot of success with it over the years. In fact, I have no doubt that it is an essential part of expanding creative capacity and even speeding up my own evolutionary process.
Realism delivers the necessary accuracy and precision for powerful creation, without wandering into the challenges posed by pessimism and optimism - but we need to have experimented sufficiently with an open mind and heart to have expanded our own reality before realism is optimal. 'Expanded Realism' goes beyond the benefits we think optimism/pessimism can deliver by both allowing for exciting new opportunities while also delivering a deeper understanding about things that allow us to be more effective at keeping ourselves safe, without closing off possibilities and building the emotional and psychological armour around ourselves that keeps so many people limited and essentially in a state of fear.
Yes, I think that is one of the potential pitfalls of too much optimism. Pessimists even have a saying for it: "Don't get your hopes up and you'll never be disappointed".
I feel ultimately, that pessimism and optimism are seen as separate to realism specifically because they are detached from reality and are thus always to some extent incorrect. It's no way to sale a ship :)