If the glass is half-empty, let’s make it half-full.
Are you an optimist or a pessimist or somewhere in between? If you think you’re an optimist, how do you know you are? Are you just calling yourself an optimist because you think that it’s better than calling yourself a pessimist? Sometimes we think we’re optimistic but we still harbour a sizable percentage of negative or pessimistic thoughts.
Optimists and pessimists come in all guises and it’s often not easy to categorise people unless we know them very well. There are, however, two main tendencies that pessimists and optimists have. When faced with a problem or difficult situation:
An optimist considers it a one off, whereas a pessimist thinks the setback is part of a more enduring problem. For example, if you apply and then fail to get a new job, you might think, ‘I never get the jobs I really want.’ By using the word ‘never’, you make the setback permanent and you might give up. An optimist, however, will interpret the same outcome as an isolated event: ‘I didn’t get this job, but I’ll soon get another one.’
An optimist thinks outside factors caused the issue, whereas pessimists blame themselves. For example, if a pessimist loses a tennis match, they’ll think ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I made too many errors’. An optimist, on the other hand, will externalise the defeat and put it down to superior play from their opponent.
Depending on their life experiences, some people become pessimists, thinking they have little control over their destiny, and some people become optimists, feeling a strong sense of self-empowerment over what lies ahead. Most of us find a place somewhere in between.
Our thinking habits are learned during childhood, mainly from parents, caregivers, schoolteachers and friends. Children usually imitate their parents’ behaviour, so if a parent tends to explain events optimistically, their child will be more likely to develop a similar habit. However, because our internal dialogue is learned, we can relearn and change the way we ‘talk’ to ourselves. Therefore, if you’ve acquired a pessimistic outlook in childhood, you’re not predestined to have it forever. This is good news because there are many reasons why it’s preferable to be an optimist.
Reasons to be optimistic:
Optimistic people set more difficult goals and put in more effort to attain those goals than their pessimistic counterparts. Optimists are generally healthier, they have a stronger immune system, they’re more likely to take good care of themselves and they feel they have fewer negative life events than pessimists, resulting in lower levels of stress. Optimistic people find it easier to make friends and keep friends.
Given identical levels of talent, optimists are more likely to win at sports competitions. This is mainly down to increased levels of confidence, as pessimists are rarely confident of their abilities, especially after a prior defeat.
Children with an optimistic outlook do better in the classroom than their pessimistic peers and optimistic college students generally achieve better grades. Optimists tend to thrive in most work environments too, especially in jobs that involve a lot of risk and rejection, such as sales and telemarketing.
Life is often about confronting and solving problems. When a pessimist encounters a major challenge, they’re likely to resign themselves to failure and admit defeat at the first sign of trouble. Optimists see setbacks as a challenge, and instead of giving up, they try harder and attempt to rise above even the most hopeless situations. In a similar way pessimism, unfortunately, promotes depression. While loss, defeat and failure are major causes of depression, this will be magnified if a person believes that they can do nothing to change the situation – they believe their actions will be pointless.
Your happiness largely depends on how you interpret the world around you. How you feel isn’t directly caused by events in your life, it’s the product of your evaluation of those events. Successful people tend to search for possibilities and positive outcomes in any given situation. Even when faced with numerous setbacks, they cut through the doom and gloom and plough on, always thinking in terms of opportunities.
If you’re an optimist, that’s great, but if you’re a pessimist or somewhere in the middle, the good news is that you can train your brain to become much more optimistic.
Challenge your thinking:
Most of our self-talk is unconscious and so begin by observing your inner dialogue, especially in the midst of negative events. Specifically, look out for these pessimistic tendencies:
Are you interpreting that single setback as a sign of complete failure?
How quickly do you give up on a task?
Are you overgeneralising in a negative way? Does this ‘always’ happen to you, are you ‘always’ unlucky?
Keep on the lookout for clues and analyse your thought processes, especially if these are pessimistic. It’s impossible to do this 100 per cent of the time, but keep trying nevertheless, as some feedback is better than none.
Also, pay attention to other people’s comments and patterns of behaviour. Spotting optimists and pessimists around you will give further clues about how you can become more optimistic.
Begin to question your thought processes and belief systems. Focus on the specifics of each scenario as it arises and try to avoid generalising in a negative way. If your train of thought is pessimistic, challenge it!
If, like many people, you find it difficult to challenge your own opinions, get a close friend to do the exercise with you. Ask them to attack your negative beliefs about yourself or the situation you’re in.
Three positive things:
To direct your focus towards optimism, each morning write down three positive things that happened the day before. These can be simple things like a funny incident, a small job well done or a positive connection with someone.
This might be hard to do every day at first, but keep going. This little exercise will train your mind to be on the lookout for positive experiences, which will increase the quality of your day and hopefully the quality of your life.
Look for the good:
In life, we find what we want to find. If you seek out unpleasantness in the world, you’ll easily find it. If you want to find mistakes that people make, you’ll undoubtedly be able to find them. Instead, proactively seek positive events and experiences because the more positivity your brain is exposed to, the more optimistic you’ll become. Limit your exposure to ‘bad’ news and current affairs and instead seek out success stories wherever and whenever you can.
Observe positive people. There is a lightness about them. They’ve learned not to take themselves too seriously and they’re a joy to be around. Look out for solid, positive people and include these people more and more in your life. Observe the wider world and search for the minor miracles of daily life – a beautiful sunset, a magnificent tree or a friendly smile.
Words have power:
Adopt an optimist’s vocabulary. The words and phrases that we attach to our experiences can become our experiences, so by changing the way we describe it, we can change the intensity of an experience. For example, if you describe a wonderful experience as being ‘all right’, the intensity of it will be diminished by your choice of words. Listen to what you’re saying out loud and try whenever possible to raise the intensity a notch or two. For example, change ‘good’ to ‘excellent’, or ‘like’ to ‘love’, or ‘nice’ to ‘fantastic’. In a similar vein, try to lower the intensity of your negative words, so ‘livid’ or ‘angry’ become ‘disappointed’ or ‘surprised’, and ‘I hate’ becomes ‘I prefer’. Experiment with some new words and expressions until you find a few that you feel comfortable with.
Also, try to take the edge off your irritation by using rare or funny words. You could even try to make yourself and those around you smile. For example, when you’re particularly angry, you could say, ‘I must say I feel quite miffed!’
Ignore your negative chatterbox:
Negative self-talk is one of the most destructive aspects of the human psyche. We’re always going to have negative thoughts, but we do have a choice about how we process them. We can either let them upset us or we can learn to not take them so seriously.
Tune in to your inner dialogue regularly and try to establish whether it’s positive or negative. Is it helping you or hindering you? Is it making you happy or unhappy? When your inner dialogues veer toward the negative, maybe it’s time to challenge them, or even dismiss them completely, freeing up more mind space for positivity.
Distance yourself from negative thoughts:
One common thinking trap is ‘black or white’ thinking, which involves classifying events into extremes or blowing them out of proportion. For example, a situation doesn’t have to be either ‘perfect’ or ‘messed up’; it can be many things in between. Your thoughts craft and design your experiences, so use them wisely. Try to be optimistic. Learn from your mistakes, don’t wallow in them. Strive to search for the positives and strive even harder to search for solutions.
Remember…. Raw talent isn’t that useful unless it’s matched with optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful, happy and popular, and they’re resilient in adapting to failures and hardship. Optimists take risks, make changes and get things done. Super-optimists are the creative trailblazers and leaders of all aspects of our society. Their confidence in positive outcomes helps them get resources from others. It raises the morale of everyone around them and maximises their prospects of success. When action is required, optimism is most definitely a good thing!
