This Is How You Can Learn To Be More Optimistic
Do you want to learn how to be more optimistic? If so, this is the article for you.
We tend to believe that our happiness depends on what happens to us. We are happy if things work out well for us and unhappy if they don’t — there’s not much we can do about it. However, this is simply not the case. In fact, you only have to look at people in your own life to know this isn’t true — we all know somebody who is happy despite suffering terrible tragedy and someone who is miserable even when they seem to have everything.
What happens to us does not make us happy or sad, it is how we think about the things that happen to us that makes feel a certain way. It is not events that cause our emotional reactions, it is our thoughts about those events.
I recently read a book called Learned Optimism by renowned positive psychologist, Martin Seligman. Seligman has spent much of his life studying the causes of depression and what can be done to relieve it. One of the most important things he discovered is that depression is closely linked to pessimism. People who have negative patterns of thinking are much more likely to be unhappy and become depressed.
Having established this link between negative thinking and depression, Seligman spent many years devising a method to help people change their patterns of thinking. He believed that, if people could learn to frame their thoughts in a more positive way, they would become more optimistic and less prone to depression.
The method set out in Learned Optimism has helped thousands of people to change their negative thought patterns, become more optimistic and live happier lives. It has certainly helped me develop more positive ways of thinking. Why not give it a go and see if it can help you?
The Characteristics of Pessimism
Seligman found that there are three defining characteristics of pessimists:
Permanence — pessimists believe bad events will last a long time.
Pervasiveness — pessimists believe that one bad thing undermines everything they do — a failure in one area will permeate their whole life.
Personal — pessimists believe that bad events are their own fault, not the result of bad luck or other people.
Optimists think about misfortune in the opposite way — they tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case and that defeat is not their fault. If an optimist fails to get a job he wanted, he will tell himself that he’ll get another job soon, that the rest of his life is going well and that he is still a strong candidate. If a pessimist experiences the same failure, he will tell himself that he’ll never get another job, that his whole life is a mess and he must be totally useless.
When it comes to good events, optimists and pessimists also see things in different ways. An optimist believes that good events are permanent, pervasive and personal (they’ll last a long time, will influence his whole life and are his own doing), whereas a pessimist believes the opposite.
If you want to find out where you are on the optimism/pessimism scale, you can take Seligman’s test here. The results will give you an insight into how you think about good and bad events in your life. Very few of us are fully optimistic or pessimistic — we are a complicated tangle of both. For example, my test results revealed that I am quite optimistic when it comes to bad events, but am much less optimistic about good events. While this seems counter-intuitive, it does actually make sense when I consider my own life. I tend to be quite pragmatic when bad things happen — my natural reaction is to look for the positive, to keep trying — but, when good things happen, I am suspicious and find it difficult to celebrate them.
Understanding your natural pessimistic tendencies can be immensely helpful when it comes to changing your negative thinking.
The ABCDE Method
To start changing your negative thought patterns, you need to employ Seligman’s “ABCDE” method.
The “ABC” stands for adversity, beliefs and consequences. The first step is to see the connection between these three elements in your own life. We all encounter adversity in our daily lives, whether it be something minor like getting a parking ticket or something major like a bereavement. We react to adversity by thinking about it and our thoughts quickly become our beliefs about the situation. Our reactions to the situation (how we feel about it and how we act) are the direct consequences of our beliefs. It is our beliefs about adversity that cause us to feel and act a certain way, not the adversity itself.
When I was applying for my first job as a trainee lawyer, I was rejected by dozens of firms before I finally received an offer. As I mentioned above, I tend to be fairly optimistic about negative events, but I still found it very demoralising to receive constant rejections. I started to believe that I would never get an offer, that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a lawyer, and these negative beliefs made me feel pretty miserable and start thinking about giving up. It wasn’t the rejections themselves that made me feel bad, but my beliefs about those rejections. Had I known about Learned Optimism in those days, I could have used Seligman’s method to think more positively during that time and stop those negative beliefs from growing.
Try thinking about some adverse situations you have experienced in your own life. Consider the beliefs you held about those situations and how the beliefs influenced the way you felt and acted.
Disputation
The “D” in the “ABCDE” method stands for Disputation, which is a technique of challenging your beliefs. It is essential to realise that our beliefs are not necessarily hard facts — they are just explanations we come up with based on our own unique genetics and experiences. We need to learn to distance ourselves from our pessimistic beliefs long enough to check their accuracy.
There are four elements of disputation:
Evidence:
The best way to dispute a negative belief is to show that it is factually incorrect. Try looking for evidence that shows the inaccuracies in your negative explanations. For example, if you fail to get a promotion, you might believe it’s because you’re no good at your job. You could challenge that belief by looking for contradicting evidence, such as praise from a boss or a previous good review.
Alternatives:
Most events have many causes, but pessimists tend to latch on to the most negative. Ask yourself if there are any other, less negative, explanations. For example, if a friend doesn’t call you back, you might start to believe that they don’t value your friendship. Challenge this belief by thinking of alternative explanations, like the fact they have been especially busy at work.
Implications:
In some cases, the negative belief you hold may be factually correct. However, the implications are generally not as catastrophic as you might believe. Ask yourself to calmly consider the likely implications of the adversity. For example, if you fail your driving test for the third time (as I did!) it might really be because you are not yet a good enough driver to be let loose on the roads! However, this is not the end of the world — you can keep practising until you are.
Usefulness:
Sometimes it is worthwhile asking yourself how useful it is to dwell on certain beliefs. If you are about to take a test, how useful is it to start thinking to yourself that you haven’t done enough revision and probably won’t pass? In this type of situation, it is much better to distract yourself from the negative beliefs (ie by getting on with taking the test!) rather than to dispute the beliefs.
Energisation
The “E” in the “ABCDE” method stands for Energisation. If you effectively dispute your negative beliefs about adversity then you will feel more energised — that is, more positive and more able to deal with difficult situations.
Nearly all of us can benefit from learning to be more optimistic. Optimism makes us more likely to perform better, remain healthy and, above all, feel happy. Over the next few days, I encourage you to watch your thoughts and look out for negative beliefs about any adverse situations you experience. Instead of allowing those beliefs to determine your emotions and actions, try the disputation techniques above. Learn to control your beliefs, so that they don’t control you.
I’d love to hear what you think. Do you struggle with negative thinking? Has the disputation method helped you challenge your negative beliefs?
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Originally published at ontheroadtohappiness.org on July 5, 2018.
