There is no such thing as the future because the future is now.

People can be optimistic for the wrong kind of reasons that may not seem wrong in the first place. People, such as myself, feel optimistic because we believe there is an endless opportunity in the world. And for that reason, we feel that we can keep our head held high. This mood can help some people, but it’s destructive toward many.

“As a rule, you’ll get the advice that it’s better to be optimistic,” Dan Moore, a professor at the Berkeley Haas School of Business said. “But the truth is that it makes no difference. Sometimes it’s even worse.”

Overly optimistic people can sometimes have a destructive life. It’s not that being an optimist is bad per se, but it can give you the wrong idea which can be very poor for your moral.

It’s a gift to feel optimistic, but with great confidence comes the great need of coordination. Being optimistic in itself is a driving force. You feel like you can aim for the stars and go where you want to be. But being too optimistic can be detrimental because it blinds you from what you need to do.

Being coordinated means to be informed about how to do things. It’s not that overtly optimistic people have self-destructive lives, but it can become this way if the only thing you see is the potential positive outcomes.

Although feeling this way is good, life doesn’t just allow it. Over optimism takes up too much of your time and sometimes you find yourself too late. While looking forward to the future, you seem to forget the future is now.

For example, I’ve always thought that I had enough time to find the right major for myself. But as soon as I saw my peers transferring out of community college, I felt like I was taking too long to make up my mind.

It’s not that going back to school will fix your problems, but knowing what it can do for you sets you on the right track. And that goes for anything if you have a set goal at hand.

“Often when people fantasize about achieving their goals they may not exert enough effort to actually achieve them,” Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of Psychology at New York University said.

Of course there are times when you need to slow down and do nothing, but it becomes destructive if its long-term. If you don’t have the skills to get to where you want to be, your goals should not be oriented around sitting down and hoping for a better tomorrow. You should use that same driving force you have to find out what you do not know.

I’m not trying to be frank or rude, but that’s how reality works. And although time feels unlimited, you just can’t assume you have all the time you need.

But don’t be intimidated just yet, this doesn’t mean to get rid of your optimistic attitude. It just means you need to do what you haven’t been doing; finding out what that is.

Although optimism can be destructive, we can learn a lot from it. But we can’t be led by a blind eye and think we can get somewhere without doing anything.