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.
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