Optimist

How to be optimist?
Some people might think my question a bit awkward, but people who knew me might understand why I'm asking this question.

I'm a realistic person, even tend to be pessimist and cynical on several occasion (wait, what am I thinking? I always sarcastic and cynical). It wasn't something that happen to me on purpose. It's what life teach me, and what life shaped me into. I'm not the self-help material, I never interested in reading Chicken Soup, I like stories with different point of view, I tend to like sidekick like Ron Weasley in Harry Potter or Merry and Pippin in LOTR instead the main characters, I always look for something behind the surfaces, I'm not easily trust people, and I hate angelic-protagonist character.

Why I'm discussing this? because few days ago I watch Oprah and the show is about The Secret. I never read the book or watch the DVD, because as I wrote earlier, I'm not the self-help material, and the secret seems to be like one. But I'm curious about few things they say and I try to make my own vision board. Vision board is where you put your vision, the things you desire in your life (not the silly things like new jeans or BMW, but the things you really wanted in your life, like for me, traveling abroad).
I understand the purpose of the board. The point of making the board is that it makes you concentrate on what you want, you'll see the board everyday and it will makes you think about it and find a way to make it reality.
They also say that if believe that and (as I quoted) you concentrate on what you want, without pushing it too much, the universe will open the way for you to achieve what you want.
Okay, now that's the difficult part for me to except. Because it takes an optimist to believe in that, and I don't have that in my molecules.

As far as I know, life's doesn't work that way. Life's not fair like my friend said, Life messy, Life sucks, Life's full of things we cannot control and predict. It's not that I hate life, life can be fun and happy and enjoyable. But from what I know it doesn't always that way, and the things that you want doesn't always comes true.

So is it possible, the universe works the way The Secret's experts said?
Or it just they way I already know it?