Taking a harder look at optimism
We all go through setbacks and depressing situations in our personal and professional lives that put our families, friends, jobs and businesses in a precarious situation or serious challenge. As a result, we undergo persistent psychological stress, our hope becomes depleted and our will to move on gets hampered. Take the recent Basilan clash between Moro rebels and the Philippine Army’s special forces in which 19 soldiers were killed, the series of crimes involving family members, the increasing number of suicides among Filipinos, the political bickering that gets more heated by the day, the endless traffic experiments, potholes, detours and roadblocks, poverty, the inefficiencies in government and deteriorating family relationships. These are just a few of the things that make us feel bad and suck our optimism.
We shouldn’t allow pessimism to get the better of us, and Price Pritchett’s book Hard Optimism comes in handy to provide direction. It connects us to unyielding hopefulness as it presents guidelines on how to manage our minds to advantage. Pritchett brought science to the whole concept of optimism using a research-based set of mental practices from the new field of behavioral science called “positive psychology.” He said, “Positive thinking is important, but non-negative thinking is the essence of hard optimism. The secret is to manage the way we explain situations to ourselves, especially when we experience failure, difficulties, uncertainty, or loss, but also as we encounter opportunity and success.” The tome is peppered with generous servings of passages and helpful insights.
• The mind is everything. It’s all about the mind. (Donald Trump) An outlook of positive anticipation invigorates us and calls out our potential. It amplifies our responsiveness to opportunities. There is a science to optimism. It can be learned. With practice we can develop it, much like any other skill. Optimism is a huge asset. And as such, optimists get paid more, are healthier, win more competitions, live longer and are better at dealing with doubt and change.
• Attitudes are more important than facts. (Dr. Karl Menninger) Which is more important, what’s happening to us at a given moment, or how we’re handling and responding to the situation? We can’t always have power over what the world brings our way, but we’re free to direct our ideas and dispositions. This gives us the opportunity to rise above trials and tribulations. We live with a shifting assortment of experiences, things that run from good to bad to uncertain. But regardless of how life treats us, optimism is the psychological trump card that helps us win.
• What the caterpillar calls a tragedy, the master calls a butterfly. (Richard Bach) That’s the power of a positive perspective in play, and we’re urged to develop (and adapt) to the descriptive fashion of optimists, who view bad events as transitory occurrences that are sure to be trailed by better times. Instead of getting swamped in the marshland, optimists leave the negatives behind and march forward. For good events like success in the workplace, optimists take personal credit for causing favorable outcomes, saying, “We succeeded because of our traits or special abilities.” Pessimists, on the other hand, declare, “We just got a lucky break.”
• Bad news chases good news away. (An old saying in the newspaper business) US News & World Report reported, “People today are 10 times as likely to suffer from depression as those born two generations ago.” Likewise, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently pronounced that depression is, at present, the world’s fourth most debilitating condition behind heart disease, cancer, and traffic accidents, and is predicted to become the second most debilitating condition worldwide by the year 2020. Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power. Pessimism can only survive on a diet of unhappy and unenthusiastic thoughts. Stop feeding our mind with dark elements, and witness how our lives immediately brighten.
• The door to hell is locked from the inside. (Kurt Vonnegut) Pessimism creeps up on us in 4Cs: concern, complaining, commiserating or criticizing. When we’re in any of these four modes of thought, we’re mentally filtering our experiences to dwell on the negative. If we have concerns, change our inner voice from “problem talk” to “solution talk.” If we’re slapped with the urge to gripe or complain, put it on hold until we’ve scanned for a “good news” side to our situation. Defy the inclination to commiserate with others. Partaking in other people’s off-putting outlooks just siphons off all the optimism around us. We will be more helpful if we turn their attention toward more productive activities. Or help fix the warps in their thinking. Or maybe just modify the topic.
• No sense being pessimistic. Wouldn’t work anyway. (Seen on a bumper sticker) Adversity is part of life. When it hits, our innate response is to focus on the 3Ds: the dangers, difficulties and downside. Nothing wrong with that per se, but as the initial shock wears off, we need to give equal time to the upside. Shift the spotlight away from what’s troubling about the situation, and search intensely for what’s potentially good. Use positive reappraisal to handle problems and disappointments. With it, we are able to create space for optimism and nurture hope, as we become more resilient and less vulnerable to the cruel realities of the moment.
• Hope helps move us in the direction of our goals and ambitions. (Dr. Charles R. Snyder, University of Kansas) Make hope a habit. It is an emotional force that points the imagination toward the positive. It is an energizing and mobilizing power towards action. Hope springs eternal, but we cannot count on it to “just happen.” We can deliberately develop hope through mental focus. Practice it like a professional athlete would, armed with a relentless discipline and a fierce determination to improve.
• Defensive pessimism channels the anxiety into troubleshooting efforts. (Dr. Julie Norem) Studies show that, in some situations, pessimism helps us see things more accurately. Some of us cope with anxiety by using an approach that Dr. Norem, a research psychologist at Wellesley College, labeled “defensive pessimism.” It involves a three-step process: setting low expectations, presuming things might turn out poorly, reviewing worst-case scenarios, and mentally rehearsing how to handle the problems. The process enables us to get actual mileage out of our worry, but it can also get on other people’s nerves and give the impression that we lack confidence or ability.
• It is astonishing how short a time it takes for very wonderful things to happen. (Frances Hodgson Burnett) Life always gives us a choice. We can focus on what’s wrong or what’s right. Whichever one we feed our attention to will grow. The one we tend to ignore will wither, weaken and die. We can choose to occupy our minds with anger, or we can forgive other people, situations, and even ourselves. We can empty our minds of these emotional poisons with a grateful attention to things that are wonderfully right. Practice gratitude and forgiveness. And optimism will follow.
• Anything we’re good at contributes to happiness. (Bertrand Russell) Try to shape our work such that every day brings out our best potential. We’ll get a lot more benefits out of recognizing and utilizing strengths than we can from trying to overcome weaknesses. As authors Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton of Now, Discover Your Strengths explained, “We must remember that casting a critical eye on our weaknesses and working hard to manage them, while something necessary, will only help us prevent failure. It will not help us reach excellence. We will reach excellence only by understanding and cultivating our strengths.”
• Now … here … this. (Dr. Richard Keefe) We can use this three-word sequence to help us calm ourselves, to concentrate and bring everything within our being to bear on the task at hand. Golfers have a way of embracing the importance of such an idea flow. When they play they have to be with the present shot, not the previous one or the one coming up. Then they need to shut out the noise and distractions, quiet the mind and direct their attention purely on what needs to be done and what they want to see happen. When we lose ourselves in what we’re doing, negative thinking disappears. Pessimism gets crowded out because we’re mentally consumed with what we are happy doing.
• Optimism is the attitude of champions. (Julia Cameron) We can’t change history but we can change our thinking. And recently scientists have proven that our mind can literally change our brain. William James, dubbed the father of modern psychology, said, “If you want quality, act as if you already had it.” Behave the way we want to feel, and our overall experience gravitates toward alignment with our visible actions. We become what we pretend to be. It is not becoming a fake. It means taking care of ourselves.
Life is an unending journey of hurdles, but of fruitful completions, too. We get better and better, as we fail (and fail fast), learn from the failure, pick up the pieces of brokenness, succeed (and succeed some more). Of course, we’ve had moments of tears and joy, triumphs and defeats, but no one can rob us of the free will to avoid sadness, dread and negativity, and lead our lives to happiness, passion, and hard optimism.
* * *
E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.
