Optimism “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.” — JAMES BRANCH CABELL, 1926 Chapter 17 DEFINITION: . , The ability to look at the brighter side of life and to main- tain a positive attitude, even in the face of adversity. Optimism assumes a measure of hope in one’s approach to life. It is a positive approach to daily living. Optimism is the opposite of pessimism, which is a common symptom of depression.’ Reuben Rodriguez is a vice-president of human resources at Group IMSA, a $1.6-billion manufacturer that, with 2,600 employees, is among the largest 25 firms in Mexico. About 10 years ago, in his posi- tion as an export sales manager, he was having trouble closing a deal with a major client, who looked as if he might be ready to take his business elsewhere. Reuben was perplexed and upset; he grew more worried by the day. He couldn’t focus on his work, and his personal life began to suffer. Defeatist thoughts threatened to overwhelm him for the first time in his career. Then a seemingly trifling incident droveChapter 17: Optimism | 231 “home to him the positive power of optimism and the negative effects of dwelling on the downside. One Saturday morning, in the midst of Reuben’s most stressful _ period, a traveling vendor came to his door with an order of fresh ; strawberries for Reuben’s wife. The vendor was accompanied by * another shabbily dressed man, carrying a tray of fruit candies whose ». virtues he kept pitching whenever the conversation lagged. Reuben . fended him off at first, but when the man persisted, Reuben lost his }. temper. “Don’t you understand?” he shouted. “Can’t you hear? I don’t ' want any candies. Go away and stop bothering me. Learn to get the L message; no means no!” With that, Reuben took possession of the }. strawberries and slammed the door behind him.’ But he’d slammed it so hard it popped open, and he had to go back } and close it again. This time, he overheard the two men as they walked '. away. The strawberry vendor was trying to cheer his friend, but the candy vendor didn’t need cheering. “No problem,” he said. “This guy is going to be my customer next week, Just wait and see. He’s in a bad mood today, but sooner or later he’ll buy.” ' Reuben stood on the doorstep, as a mental light bulb came on. There he was, the highly trained professional with a college education, receiving a lesson in salesmanship 101 from an unexpected source. The peddler had showed persistence, optimism and generosity of spirit. On a day when everything went wrong, he saw future opportu- nity. In fact, the opportunity materialized at once. Reuben called the f man back, bought some candies and tipped him lavishly. “You have no idea how helpful you’ve been,” he said. So the vendor made his sale—but did Reuben? In fact, he didn’t, but he accepted this setback and went on to achieve greater success. He’d learned a lesson that stayed with him—one that he applies to this day while training his employees. Optimism has nothing to do with how rich or poor you may be. It’s an inner resource: the ability to believe that times may be rough but that, with renewed effort, they'll improve, that failure and success are to a great degree states of mind.232 | Part 6: The General Mood Realm Turn the Three Ps Around Like assertiveness, optimism is very often misunderstood. It’s not a tendency to believe that things are going to turn out for the best no matter what. That inclination reflects a weakness in our reality testin : It is also abdicating our part in the equation—risky behavior that can :} blind us to the real challenges that must be faced and overcome. Ni . 4 is it the capacity to indulge in a perpetual pep talk, to keep repeating positive things about yourself. This too can lead you up a blind alley, Rather, it’s the ability to stop thinking or saying destructive things about yourself and the world around you, especially when you’re suf- fering personal setbacks. True optimism is a comprehensive and hope- ful but realistic approach to daily living. , The psychologist Martin Seligman has discovered three major att tudes that distinguish optimists from pessimists.? First, they view downturns in their lives as temporary blips in the graph. The bad times won’t last forever; the situation will turn around. They don’t feel doomed to walking through an unfolding disaster movie of sadness, disappointment and underachievement. Basically, they see troubles and difficulties as delayed success, rather than outright and conclusive 4 defeat. Second, they tend to view the misfortune as situational and 4 specific, not as yet another manifestation of a long-standing and inescapable doom. That way, even a really bad experience can be ; examined and dealt with individually—it’s not the last straw. Third, optimists don’t immediately shoulder all the blame. If their examina- J tion turns up external causes, they take these into consideration. ‘4 This is in contrast to the three Ps of pessimism: Permanence, - Pervasiveness and Personalizing. Pessimists will tend to experience each and every setback as just the latest in a long line of past and : (quite probably) future failures that they’re fated to suffer. Any lapse \ will be seen as yet another example of how they screw up everything all tht time. Why do bad things keep happening? Because pessimists decide that their own incompetence or ineffectiveness is to blame.Chapter 17: Optimism | 233 f The optimist turns those three Ps around, not by some so-called ! power of positive thinking, but by disputing inappropriate self-blame and feelings of helplessness. Consider Jerome, who lost a good job | opportunity after getting caught in a traffic jam that made him late for Ha crucial interview. If he were a die-hard pessimist, his responses might be: It figures. Nothing ever goes right for me (Permanence). No a wonder this happened; things always go wrong (Pervasiveness). I’m fF an idiot for starting so late and taking that route (Personalization). In contrast, if Jerome took an optimistic view, he might respond like this: Geez, what a downer. But I’ve got another interview next week. : (The outcome, while undeniably unpleasant, isn’t the end of the world.) - Bad luck, but I’ve missed appointments before, and I’m not on the F breadline yet. (The present situation is unique, not a reflection of how things “always” turn to ashes, and needn’t be repeated.) It wouldn’t have. made any difference which route I took; the whole city’s grid- e’ locked. (An external force played its part.) f Note that it would have been a mistake for Jerome to try to blame e all his woes on heavy traffic. That would have been looking for excuses, an abdication of all responsibility for how things turn out. I: The traffic was a factor, to be sure, but he could have gotten up at the (crack of dawn and played it extra-safe. Perhaps he will the next time F around. Pinning all the blame on external factors is just as bad as pin- F ning it all on ourselves. The healthy approach lies somewhere in : between the two extremes. L Flexible Optimism versus Blind Optimism ; Another danger is the tendency to put on rose-colored glasses. If our ; attitude is too positive, it may lead us into uncritical assessments ofa given situation. That’s why optimism is tied to reality testing, our abil- 4 ity to read our surroundings accurately. Seligman uses the term “flex- ible optimism” for this grounded-in-the-real-world hopefulness, and distinguishes it from “blind optimism’”—an essentially pie-in-the-sky234 | Part 6: The General Mood Realm and un-self-critical approach. Blind optimists are the Polyannas_ among us. They’re in denial: for them, no problems exist, and success can be obtained against impossible odds and in the face of logic. They also overlook or skate around the cost of failure. q As an extreme example, if you spend large sums of money buying lottery tickets, you marginally increase your chances of winning, but the odds remain stacked against you and the price of losing increases, | because you’ ve devoted even more of your income to a fool’s errand, Sometimes a child.can see what the blind optimist cannot; it’s time to back away and take another approach. Generally, these are times when. the potential cost of a particular decision is enormously high, even if the risk involved may appear to be somewhat low. Given these distinctions, how can we increase our sense of realis- tic or flexible optimism? Adversity and disappointment strike us all, but our responses vary. An optimistic approach is vital for enhancing resilience—the capacity to bounce back from frustration or failure. Why do optimists experience life’s inevitable downturns so differ- ently from the way pessimists do? Both, over the long haul, probably encounter the same number of defeats (although pessimists, because they expect the worst, are perhaps looking for trouble, and find it more often). One answer is that the difference lies in what optimists say to and about themselves following an adverse event-—the self-talk iden- tified in our ABC model. As noted earlier, everyone responds to various events with spe- cific thoughts, which drive feelings and behaviors. Pessimists tend to follow a particular cycle. Their thoughts are angry or hopeless—they want something, can’t get it and are convinced that they never will. Not surprisingly, the resulting feelings and behaviors are sadness, guilt, helplessness, passivity, inaction or (worse) destructive action. The optimist guards against these feelings and behaviors by breaking tht cycle of destructive signals that get passed down the line when misfortune strikes, and replacing them with more appropriate ones. Think of this as recording over an existing tape. The result nowChapter 17: Optimism | 235 or alternative efforts will succeed, creative planning, goal-oriented activity and healthy living. Give Yourself a Break Remember that it’s always advisable to look for plausible alternatives. Pessimists head straight for the worst-case scenario and, as explained earlier, take it personally. For example, consider the luckless handy- man who tries but fails to fix a leaky faucet. What does he do next? He loses his temper, throws what few tools he has against the wall and decides to shoulder the blame by means of poor-me self-talk. He’s all thumbs, there’s something the matter with him, he’l] never learn and. so forth. To appreciate how counterproductive these thoughts are, imagine someone else saying them to him, They’d be considered offensive and inaccurate, and the handyman would leap to his own defense, Well—in his defense—maybe the lighting is poor, the tools aren’t right, the washer is the wrong size. Maybe, given everything else he’s done that day, it’s a mistake to get bogged down in fiddly stuff. Maybe it’s just time to stop. So he should focus on what’s temporary and changeable (washer size, lighting and time of day); specific rather than all-encompassing (this is a hard job and there’ve been other jobs that didn’t defeat him); and above all non-personal (all of the above, which means it isn’t entirely his fault). Alternatively, he could just call the plumber, or a friend who is handier than he is. This is called the “so what” technique, and isn’t to be scored or sneezed at. You got the worst mark in class? You got turned down for a promotion or by someone you had asked out on a date? Well, so what? Just let it go. Recognize your legitimate feclings of disappointment, but don’t let them debilitate you. Use the setback - to spur yourself on. Take another class, perhaps one more suited to your skills and interests, and you'll score higher. Another firm, or another department, may recognize your talents; another application236 | Part 6: The General Mood Realm will yield the result you seek. As for your love life, even a host of 4 rejections doesn’t mean that there’s no one who’s tight for you; Romance is a mysterious endeavor at the best of times; you never know when Mr. or Ms. Right will come around the corner, and you'll 4 be better prepared if your head isn’t buried in a pessimistic sand pile, q Even if some of the negative thoughts that crowd your mind have Q some degree of validity at the moment, you can move on, taking steps a that will enable you to handle similar situations better in the future: Don’t repeat your mistakes. It’s surprising how many people—espe. 4 cially those with pessimistic tendencies—continue to bang their heads a against the wall, perhaps as a way of punishing themselves for not ; being able to attain success in one particular task. This leads nowhere, | We aren’t counseling you to give up in the face of adversity. We are 3 saying, “Take a time-out, step back, look at yourself objectively, and don’t force yourself to do something over and over if you know that a it’s not one of your strengths.” That realistic self-examination is a! strength in itself, and will lead to brighter days. ‘