If someone around you is having pessimistic, defeatist thoughts (or maybe yourself), ask: “Could it be worse?”

If they are honest, they will probably give an affirmative answer to this. Then ask them how it is not worse than it is, and how they made that happen. “How is not worse than it could be? What are you doing/ what have you done so that it is not worse?”

In that answer may lie some unexpected inner strengths or solutions to address the adverse circumstance.