How to think more optimistically
Optimists and pessimists have equally been subject to not-so-great reputations over time - from the Debbie Downer or cynical New Yorker scrooging their way through life, to the Pollyanna type that gets into trouble for being unrealistic and naive.
But the truth is, when we dig a bit deeper into the actual differences between these two mindsets, the consequences of the choices we make in how we approach the world just may surprise you.
Optimistic and Pessimistic Thinking
The simple yet most significant difference between optimism and pessimism is that optimism is the expectation that good things will happen in one’s life, while pessimism is the expectation that bad things will happen, instead.
But why are some people more optimistic than others? While it is true that some people are innately more optimistic than others, optimistic thinking can be learned, and can change over time or depending on the circumstance. Thus, optimism is also often tied to our accumulated experiences.
Let’s take school for example: Isolating for other variables, kids who do well in school may tend to develop more optimistic outlooks on their futures, while those who do poorly become subject to more pessimistic thinking. As we all know, life’s a lot more complicated than just our performance K-12, and you can start to quickly see how things like trauma at home, access to tutors, or success and failure in sports early on can start to add up.
Our views of the future can also significantly be affected by major change - such as a death, divorce, or loss of a job.
Even perfectionism can pose a great challenge to optimism! When you set your standards too high to meet, you build up a perceived experience repertoire of “failure,” and start to develop doubt about your adequacy. Realistic and attainable goals (and influences across the board) are crucial to building our sense of positive outcomes and therefore positive future expectations.
How Does Optimism Affect Our Behavior?
In the 1960s, psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson conducted several experiments with dogs. While they used methods that would certainly be deemed unacceptable by today’s ethical standards, their research demonstrated a phenomenon that they would eventually come to call “learned helplessness.” The experimental group of dogs was first exposed to shocks that they couldn’t avoid or escape (i.e. over which they had no “control”). Later, when the same dogs were put in a situation in which they could actively perform a response to terminate the shock, they instead sat passively. They had “learned” helplessness and continued to assume their fate was out of their control. In contrast, dogs in the control group who had not previously been exposed to the unavoidable shock, quickly found the response to terminate it and successfully avoided the new one.
Can you think of a time in your life in which an undesirable outcome was completely outside of your control? Did it affect the way you responded to the situation going forward, perhaps even after circumstances may have changed? Some might argue this is one of the greatest detriments to growing up in disadvantaged or oppressed communities or societies. While in society we often attribute fault in these scenarios to things like lack of “effort,” psychologically, people in such circumstances can quickly become passive and hopeless. Lacking a sense of control or agency with which to change, it’s no wonder many choose simply instead to numb.
Another way optimism affects our behavior is in our response in the face of challenge. In therapy, we often categorize orientations to problems as approach or avoidant. Not surprisingly, more optimistic people tend to actively approach adversity, addressing challenges head on through problem-focused coping, and turn to more positive coping mechanisms such as acceptance, humor and reframing when it can’t be solved. On the other hand, more pessimistic people are more likely to avoid, deny, and become disengaged.
These different approaches to problem solving can be significant in their likelihood of leading to desirable or undesirable outcomes, of course only furthering the cycle of optimistic or pessimistic thinking.
How to Change Your Thinking
So, how can we cultivate a more positive and optimistic perspective on the future? Let’s delve into the research to explore strategies for reframing our outlook.
Decatastrophize your explanations
Expanding on the theory of learned helplessness, psychologists studied people’s “explanatory styles,” or ways of attributing or explaining uncontrollable events in their lives, and found three major differences in the following perceptions:
Permanence: How long the negative will last
Globality: How far the negative outcome expands into other areas
Locus of control: How much the negative is attributed to you or some outside force
The key word being: perception. One simple way to increase your optimism when you find yourself in the middle of challenging circumstances is to go through the following prompts and see if you can begin to move explanations from more pessimistic to more positive:
From permanent (“it’s never going to end”) to temporary (“this too shall pass”)
From global (“I’m a failure at everything”) to specific (“it was only one grade”)
From internal (“it’s all my fault”) to external (“it was out of my control”)
Identify alternative paths
Positive psychologist Charles R. Synder developed a theory that defined hope as one’s perceived ability to successfully find different paths in order to achieve goals.
This might be a slightly new way of looking at hope, as hope is often used interchangeably with the idea of “faith” - that something is out of your control but will work out regardless, or even simply the idea of “positive thinking” and intention (“I hope…”)
Instead, this definition clearly puts the power of hope in the hands of the doer. While it’s more helpful to attribute uncontrollable negative events to external forces, here understanding that positive outcomes are - to an extent - within our control can be exponentially more motivating than simply “hoping” that something will work out well (but ultimately feeling like it’s 50/50).
If you’re coming from a more pessimistic viewpoint, it may be harder to imagine that you actually can and will succeed in this effort. This is because Snyder’s theory relies firstly on the concept of agency - or sense of personal control and the belief not only that you can, but you will be able to perform successfully in certain scenarios.
However Snyder’s theory also relies on the idea of pathways thinking, which is the understanding that there are multiple routes to success. While it can be easy to slip into all-or-nothing thinking, we have to constantly remind ourselves that things aren’t black and white, and that we can’t internalize individual bumps in the road. When one route doesn’t work out, there is almost always another, and our belief in such thus creates hope.
So ask yourself, when you hit a wall, does it look like the guy on the left? Or can you zoom out and find a way to get around it?
Image Source: Wellful Therapy
The best part? As you can see, finding alternative routes to success often asks you to grow more than you would had you never met that bump in the road. Take them as beautiful opportunities stretch, jump higher, and learn.
Find a Therapist & Train Your Brain
Of course, practice makes perfect. When you catch yourself thinking pessimistically, take a step back and see if you can challenge and change the thought. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a popular form of therapy that actively helps change negative thoughts and distortions, and has been shown to help individuals explain events more optimistically.
In fact, even just starting therapy can often produce positive change - regardless of treatment - as psychologist Lori Irving suggests that simply fostering the newfound belief that one can get better can provide an increase in agency thinking.
At the end of the day, optimistic thinking greatly increases your chances of actively pursuing and achieving your goals. And, as we’ve discussed in previous posts, a huge source of our happiness is the journey. Negative emotions arise from perceived stagnation and setback. However positive emotions stem from perceived progress toward our goals. Optimism, growth, and positive emotions continue to send us on an upward spiral toward more optimism, growth and positive emotion.
Of course, it’s true that too much optimism can also be a bad thing - especially when it causes us to overestimate our abilities, avoid difficult feelings, or neglect reality. Likewise, a healthy dose of skepticism or pessimism has the potential to serve you if kept in check and used well.
For example, social psychologist Nancy Candor describes “defensive pessimism” as a strategy to effectively manage anxiety by both managing expectations and envisioning possible negative outcomes in order to prepare for or avoid them. Some companies use a similar technique through the practice of “pre-mortems,” where teams go through everything that could go wrong in order to set themselves up for better success.
As always, understanding how to apply what combination of thinking and where is a matter of balance you’ll learn for yourself both over time and through actually doing the work.
Additional Techniques
First is the idea of being intentional with the media that we consume. It’s no great secret that there is a natural bias toward the negative in most news media, and the focus on … can skews our understanding of the actual state of the world. However, the consequences seem even more considerable when looked at through the lens of learned helplessness.
Participate in “future thinking.” Not the kind that causes anxiety, rumination, worry and that ever-nagging feeling that we “should” be doing something. However, thinking about the future can be highly inspiring, as optimistic thinking will show you. Whether it’s visualizing success, new opportunities, or your best life, thinking about the future as a blank page pregnant with possibilities can be (for some) a beautiful way to cultivate happiness and positivity.
Psychologist Dr. Stephanie Peabody puts it: “Dwell in the possibilities.”