Optimist

          Optimist

credit : Kevin Johnsrudesoftware developer, musician, artist, model, polymath, Buddhist ; Lila Mili; UDAAN

Kevin Johnsrude : I went from being a pessimist to an optimist in 2010. And I'm never going back.

I prefer the scientific definition of optimism.

Martin Seligman et al. have conducted research on optimism and pessimism as explanatory styles:

If you are an optimist you believe that good events are:

·         Personal - because of you

·         Permanent - always or mostly happen

·         Pervasive - happen in everything in your life

If you are an optimist you believe that bad events are:

·         Not Personal - not your fault

·         Not Permanent - temporary

·         Not Pervasive - happened because of special circumstances

If you are a pessimist you believe that good events are:

·         Not Personal

·         Not Permanent

·         Not Pervasive

If you are a pessimist you believe that bad events are:

·         Personal (you)

·         Permanent (always)

·         Pervasive (everywhere/everything)

Optimistic explanatory styles can be taught and are the basis of the Penn Resiliency Program for middle school children and of the US Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in combat soldiers.

Developing an optimistic explanatory style is explained in "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman, Chair of the Department of Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.  But in summary:

To learn an optimistic explanatory style you dispute your pessimistic explanatory style, summarized by the acronym ABCDE:

·         Adversity: The bad event

·         Belief: The pessimistic belief

·         Consequences: of the belief

·         Disputation or Distraction: Use a disputation or distraction technique. See below.

·        Energization

Typically, you would keep an ABCDE journal of the adversities in your life in order to develop and refine your optimism.

Disputation:

Evidence: Show how belief is wrong

Alternatives: Develop other causes for the adversity.  These other causes need to be changeable, specific and external.  In other words "Not always, not everywhere and not me".

Implications: De-catastrophize or use indexing.

Usefulness: Does the belief work?

Distraction:

Mentally say: "Stop!"

"Later at X pm, I'll look at this again."

Write down the adversity.

Rather than explain all these steps in detail, I'll give an example.

Adversity: I flunk my calculus mid-terms

Belief: "I'm no good at math. I'm going to flunk out of school.  I'll never be an engineer."

Consequences: Sick to my stomach, I can't concentrate, I want to drop the math course.  I worry that I'm wasting my time and my parents' money.

Disputation:

 "I've gotten good grades in math classes before. This is only the only class I've had trouble with so far.  This instructor doesn't teach very well.  I didn't expect that calculus would be this hard.  I should have hit the books last weekend instead of going out and partying. And I should have checked out the study groups.

Energization:

 I feel disappointed but determined.  I'm going to fight this. No more slacking. I'm going to go to the instructor's office hours and have him explain to me the problems that I missed.  I'm also going to ask him if I can do make up work.  I'm going to have to study harder and start going to see the tutors daily with my calculus homework.

photos : google and wikipedia