Optimism-Happy Go Lucky Bulls%*t, or Not?

If you are like me, the first time someone told you to be more optimistic you were probably having a hell of a day, that turned into a nightmarish week, which led to the month of doom. Then some over-energetic sap came along and told you that “you just have to be more positive,” as they skipped their way into their hot yoga class while sipping on a twenty-dollar, imported espresso, cashew fusion milk, latte. If those seven words did anything other than stoke the fires of fury already burning inside of you then you are a better person than I am.

You will understand my surprise when I then found that optimism came up time and again as a source of strength and resilience that has helped many people overcome challenging times in their lives. I set out to understand how the idea of “positive thinking” can have such a profoundly helpful effect. Below is a brief overview of what I found.

First, I want to address the idea that optimism or optimistic thinking is about focusing on the positive things in your life and ignoring the negative things. I would argue that it is almost the opposite. I want you to imagine that your life is an obstacle course. The beginning is where you are now, and the end is a current life goal that you want to see actualized. If you were to just focus on the end goal or the positive outcome then you wouldn’t be able to reach it because you would stumble on the obstacles in your path. Conversely, if you just focused on the obstacles you might become overwhelmed and lose sight of why you are running this particular gauntlet in the first place. This is where realistic optimism comes into play. Realistic optimism encourages you to see the path through the hurdles that will take you to the end goal. Only by acknowledging the challenges in your way can you formulate an appropriate strategy to get past them. Keep your end goal in your mind’s eye so that when you look upon the problems in your way you can see them as obstacles rather than walls.

So all that sounds nice on paper but how do you do that? How do keep seeing the challenges in your way as things that you can overcome when it feels like they stop you dead in your tracks.

The first step is understanding how our minds react to adverse events in the first place. Below are three factors that I want you to pay attention to next time life throws you a 90mph curveball.

When you hit a challenge does your mind view the source of the challenge as internal or external? This is to say do you see yourself as the cause of the event or the world around you as the cause of the event? For example, if you had a partner who broke up with you, you could view the cause in one of two ways. The first is that they broke up with you because you aren’t good enough and never will be (internal) and the second is that they broke up with you because they changed and wanted different things out of life than you did (external). Which do you think would contribute to a healthier mindset?

The next factor is whether you focus on the stable or unstable causes of the problem, or put more simply, do you focus on the things you have control over or the things that are out of your control? Several years ago the economy collapsed and many people were left without work. From what I have seen, those who were able to adapt quickest were those that focused on the circumstances in their life that they could control. The fact that the economy collapsed was not something they could help, it happened, nothing they could do about it. Rather than allow themselves to get frustrated by something out of their control they looked at areas in their life that they could change. They planned a conservative budget, considered how their skills might translate to a different industry that is still hiring, or moved to a less expensive home. Focusing on what you can control will help you focus on the options you have ahead of you whereas focusing on what you can’t control will make you feel frustrated and helpless.

Lastly, do you see problems as global or specific? When disaster strikes does your mind automatically assume that all the areas in your life will be affected or are you able to see the disaster being specific to one part of your life. Imagine you get let go from your job, if you start thinking:

"oh no, how am I going to pay rent? If I can’t pay rent I will have to live on the street…If I live on the street there’s is no way I will be able to face my friends and family. I will probably have to start begging for change and that’s when I will run into my ex with her new much better looking, more successful partner, and I’ll still have to ask them for change…being let go from this job will definitely and unquestionable lead to the most traumatic and humiliating experience of my life."

then you may be seeing your problems as global. Try to keep the challenges in your life specific to their respective fields.

By learning to identify the way your mind reacts to adverse events you can tailor it as needed to develop more optimistic reflexes. Realistic optimism isn’t about blocking out the traumatic and challenging events in our lives, it is about seeing those events as obstacles that can overcome.