Monthly Archives: June 2009

Optimism and pessimism both tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you think a setback is permanent, why would you try to change it?

 Pessimistic explanations tend to make you feel defeated – making you less likely to take constructive action. Optimistic explanations, on the other hand, make you more likely to act. If you think the setback is only temporary, you’re apt to try to do something about it, and because you take action, you make it temporary.

Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist but the optimist weathers them better. The optimist bounces back from defeat and starts again. The pessimist falls into depression.

Because of the resilience an optimist achieves more at work, at school, and on the field. They have better health.

Pessimists are not necessarily grouchy and optimists are not necessarily cheerful. That’s a whole personality issue of a different kind. An optimist is not ultra cheerful, grinning from ear to ear, claiming that it’s not so bad, always promoting the bright side of things. The optimist does not blame others. Learning to be more optimistic is an inside job. It is about learning a new set of skills about how to talk to yourself when you suffer a setback.

This about core beliefs and how you explain your situations. A pessimist can quite cheerfully tell you it’s a beautiful day until it rains again as it always does. A shrug, a smile, but this is pessimism. A good state – the sun – is temporary, the rain – a negative – is permanent.

While an optimist may experience a terrible loss. Like my friends who lost a child last summer, but they believe they did everything they could, they will learn to move on somehow and it wasn’t their fault. They are by no means cheery right now – they are devastated, but they are optimistic about their future.

How you talk to yourself determines your explanatory style. The key here is what your habit it is. Become aware of your knee jerk reaction. When something surprising happens, things don’t go as planned, what is your habitual reaction?

This is where the change begins. When you find yourself thinking something permanent, negative, whatever it is, you must stop.

Sounds simple, right? Ok let’s try. Do not think about apple pie.

How’d that work out?

You have no capacity to refrain from thinking about the pie but what you can do is redirect your attention. Think about the pie again. Now, slam your hand against the wall hard and shout stop.

Let’s imagine that you actually did that. Now, I’m thinking your hands might sting. Thinking about that now, aren’t you. You’ve interrupted your habitually thinking pattern. This is a very effective way to change your thought processes. However it can be disruptive to the rest of the world too.

Another thing to try is to have an elastic band around your wrist and snap it every time you begin negative self talk. This is excellent to help you stop complaining and find out if you’re a closet pessimist.

Sometimes, the monkey chatter just comes right back. There are 2 things to do now. One, you can write it down. Sometimes this helps get it out of your head. Another, and this is especially helpful for my students, is to schedule time later to think about it. Your negative thoughts that go round and round don’t want to be forgotten so if you tell them they have their slot after dinner or on Saturday morning, that can help settle them down. This lessens their purpose and takes away their strength.

This requires practice. Once you begin noticing how you think you can being talking to yourself in a different way.

Choose the lens to look through that says, this is temporary, it’s this one thing, and it will get better.

Janet Bray Attwood, co-author of The Passion Test – The Effortless Path to Your Life’s Purpose, will be in Winnipeg to launch the Kids Passion Test program and while she is here, she will be leading two workshops in Winnipeg:

1. 1.       Take The Passion Test – Thursday, June 25^th.
2. 2.       Unravel Limiting Beliefs and Attract What you Desire – Saturday, June 27^th

For more information go to http://www.PassionPowerPurpose.ca  

Space is limited, especially for the Saturday workshop, so be sure to register early (early bird prices are in effect until June 21^st).

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?  

How you view your world, your life affects everything you do. From your health, to your success to your ultimate happiness. We all have elements of Pollyanna and scrooge but it’s the habit we are looking for. This is on a continuum. 

What is your tendency when something positive or negative happens to you. How do you think about the causes of misfortunes, small and large that befall you?

 When something bad happens, optimists think of it as temporary, limited in its effect, and not entirely their fault. Pessimists do the opposite. They consider the setback to be permanent, far-reaching and all their fault.

 There are varying degrees of this, of course; it’s not black or white. Most people fall somewhere between the two extremes. The main difference between optimists and pessimists is how they explain setbacks to themselves. Using these definitions, researchers find that optimism contributes to good health and pessimism contributes to illness.

 Scenarios:

 Pessimist – Permanent: You never talk to me.

Optimist -Temporary: You haven’t talked to me lately

Pessimist -Pervasive: books are useless

Optimist -Limited: THIS book is useless

Pessimist -Internal – all their fault: I’m worthless

Optimist -External – not entirely their fault: I’m having a bad day

Of course for positive events, it is the opposite for both categories.

Optimist – Permanent: I’m talented.

Pessimist – Temporary: It’s my lucky day

Optimist -Universal: I’m smart

Pessimist -Specific: I’m smart at math

Optimist -Internal: MY skill

Pessimist -External: my team-mates skill

In several large-scale, long-term, carefully controlled experiments, Seligman discovered that optimists are more successful than pessimists

 IN ALL AREAS OF LIFE –

 optimistic politicians win more elections,

 optimistic students get better grades,

 optimistic athletes win more contests,

 optimistic salespeople make more money.

 Why would this be so?

The Relay for Life for The Canadian Cancer Society was this past weekend. This was my second year participating. Last year our mom’s group went in support of wee baby Harry, who at the time, was still in chemo for a rare form of liver cancer. Last year was very very cold and wet. It poured rain, sideways, due to the gale force wind and we were all quite miserable. Baby Harry made an appearance that night, along with his mum, dad, and big sister. It was gloomy at best and there was this tiny boy with a feeding tube in his nose, clad from head to foot in blue rain gear, with bright sunshine yellow crocs. It was a sight to behold. We all cried buckets when Harry, safely tucked in his Mummy’s arms, did a lap around the track with the survivors.

I said I wouldn’t do it this year. It was simply too hard to contemplate. Harry died last August. We walked last year with hope, slim slivers of hope, but hope none the less. Without that small beacon of light – those yellow crocs! – I couldn’t face it. However, the universe had other plans for me and there we were.

Cynthia and Henry and Lydia, Harry’s family, were asked to cut the ribbon to begin the relay. Cynthia asked me to come. As if I would decline a request like that…

And how do I paint a picture for you of what this was like? Tragic, hilarious, peaceful, heart wrenching, sad, and barrels of fun. And although I cried, sobbing crying, the ugly cry, on camera, and thought my heart would shatter yet again, I had a fantastic time.

It was a tragic reason to be at the Goldeyes Park, not just the loss of Harry but the loss of so many others, dramatically illustrated in the lit luminaries around the track. Hilarious because while it didn’t rain and was actually a lovely sunny evening, a sudden and severe windstorm blew through the park right when we were setting up the tents. Picture us frantically grabbing flapping tarps and nylon screening and finally flattening ourselves on the tents to hold them down, all the while laughing uncontrollably. Peaceful, to have the time together, not just our team but everyone at the relay to think about how lucky we are, to walk slowly and calmly around a track on a beautiful May evening. Heartwrenching to listen to Cynthia give a tribute to her son and claim that she did indeed get her miracle because Harry was expected to die that first weekend of diagnosis and instead lived for 5 and half more glorious months. Sad to look at the large photo they brought of him with this huge grin on his face and a feeding tube in his nose. And so much fun…to be together, and laugh and talk and catch up with people we hadn’t seen for awhile, meet new friends, to share stories of children and spouses and simply have a good time on a Friday night surrounded by a bunch of other people who understood.

What I’d like you to understand is that happiness isn’t about always being outwardly smiley and cheerful. It’s not the absence of sadness. Deeply and consistently, and truly happy people are not immune to the daily annoyances of life nor the tragedies that befall all of us at some point. Happy people can be grumpy, sad, irritated (and irritating!). They cry, yell, fume, dwell, possibly even throw things. And yet, they bounce back more quickly, can more easily move on to better things. Why is that so?

The happiest people have a particular way of looking at the world that allows them to see the pain as temporary – this is a core principle of optimism – the way you see the world. How do you explain the things that happen to you? When something rotten, frustrating, maddening, hurtful happens to you, what is your gut response? That’s key. It’s your habits that matter. Do you always or never…fill in the blank. Using words like that tell you a lot about your explanations of the world. The flip side matters too. How do you explain good stuff to yourself?

Cynthia embodies the true spirit of optimism. I’ll spend some time this week telling you more about it from an academic side – if you want to read a beautiful illustration of what optimism is from a practical side, see Harry’s blog www.hendriksjourney.blogspot.com

Until next time.