2020 ~ YUP Training Solutions..

“There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — William Shakespeare

Optimism and Pessimism – Two sides of the same coin

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? You are forced to choose a side. Depending on your view people will like you or reject you. I am sure that you will answer that you are an optimist. It’s quite natural for all human beings to think like that. Because we all need social acceptance and socially favoured ideology is optimism. Our society worship Optimists while describe pessimism as disgraceful. Optimism and pessimism are not antagonist concepts but rather the two sides of the same coin — we need both to live a more balanced life.

Psychologist like Sigmund Freud considered optimism as "illusory denial". Optimistic thinking was considered unrealistic and simplistic. After 1960 growing research correlated positivity to being successful. Positivity became king and people its servants. Many psychological studies claim that 60 - 80 percentage of population are inclined to optimism. So most of us think that it’s ok only to be an optimist. How do you look at life? What is your perception? What about a pessimistic approach? Is it bad? Then what about Realistic thinking? We have learnt that pessimist sees the glass as half empty while optimists see it as half full. Does it over simplify life? Research correlate optimism with increased life expectancy, better health, success in studies, work and sports. Is thinking positive makes people healthy or health makes people think positive?

How do you know whether you are an optimist or a pessimist? Humans are motivated to assign causes to their actions and behaviours. In social psychology, attribution is the process by which individuals explain the causes of behaviour and events. From the explanatory style you can recognise your optimistic or pessimistic thinking.

Psychology of Optimism, Pessimism and Realism

When we look at a half filled glass, we either have a ‘gain’ or a ‘loss’ frame; we see the upside or the downside in things. Even worse, our mind gets stuck in the negative more than in the positive.

Life is not static. Both optimism and pessimism are needed depending on the situation. As a realist you can drink the water and then refill the glass.

An optimist sees the “Vada”, pessimist see the hole in the “Vada” and a Realist enjoy the “Vada”. What you do with "Vada" is more important than whether you look at “Vada” or hole.

Social Psychologist Alison Ledgerwood and her colleague studied people’s reaction to a surgical procedure by testing both a bright and dark side approach. Participants who were told the surgery had a 70% success rate, reacted positively to the prospects of going through it. Conversely, those who were told the procedure had a failure rate of 30%, reacted negatively.

To challenge the initial reaction, the first group was later presented with the 30% failure rate and the second one with the 70% success rate. Surprisingly, the ones who originally reacted positively now had a negative view and the others didn’t change theirs; they continued to see the procedure as negative.

This exercise proved not only that positivity can be affected by negative information but, also, that our mind can get stuck in an initial pessimistic view. According to Ledgerwood, we tend to tilt towards the negative, we need to work harder to recover from negative views; to see the glass half-full requires an extra effort.

So, who’s right? Are we mostly optimistic? Or do we lean towards negativity? Maybe both.

The explanatory Styles of an optimist and a pessimist

"Explanatory style" or "attributional style" refers to how people explain the events of their lives. Researchers often use either the Attributional Style Questionnaire or the Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations method to evaluate optimism based on explanatory style.

There are three aspects of how people can explain a situation. This can influence whether they lean toward being optimists or pessimists:

Time can change things, or things stay the same regardless of time - Unstable vs. Stable.
A situation is a reflection of just one part of your life, or your life as a whole – Local Vs Global .
You feel events are caused by you or by an outside force - Internal vs. External.

Realists see things relatively clearly, but most of us aren’t realists. Most of us, to a degree, explain the events in our lives optimistically or pessimistically. The pattern looks like this:

Optimist Explanatory Style

Optimists explain positive events happened because of them (internal). They also see them as evidence to more positive things that will happen in the future (stable) and in other areas of their lives (global). Conversely, they see negative events as not being their fault (external). They also see them as being mere coincidence (isolated) that have nothing to do with other areas of their lives or future events (local).

For example, if an optimist gets a promotion, s/he will likely believe it’s because s/he’s good at her job and will receive more benefits and promotion in the future. If s/he doesn’t get the promotion, it’s likely because s/he was having an off-month which s/he could have avoided, but will do better in the future.

Pessimist Explanatory Style

Pessimists likely think in the opposite manner. They believe that negative events are caused by them (internal). They believe that one mistake means more will come (stable), and mistakes in other areas of life are inevitable (global), because they are the cause. They see positive events as mere coincidence (local) that are caused by things outside their control (external) and probably won’t happen again (unstable).

A pessimist would see a promotion as a lucky event that probably won’t happen again, and may even worry that s/he’ll now be under more pressure. Being missed a promotion would probably be explained as not being skilled enough. S/he'd, therefore, expect to miss promotions again.

In short, explanatory style is based on how a person explains good or bad news. The pessimist assumes blame for bad news ("It's me"), assumes the situation is stable ("It will last forever"), and has a global impact ("It will affect everything I do"). The optimist, on the other hand, does not assume blame for negative events. Instead, s/he tends to give herself credit for good news, assume good things will last, and be confident that positive developments will spill over into many areas of her life.

What does this Mean?

This means if you are realist or an optimist it is good for your future. Negative events are less likely to affect you, but positive events affirm your belief in the goodness of life, in yourself and your ability to make good things happen.

Fortunately, even for a hard-core pessimist, these patterns of thinking can be learned to a degree (though we tend to be mostly predisposed to our patterns of thinking.) Using a practice called cognitive restructuring, you can help yourself and others become more optimistic by consciously challenging negative, self-limiting thinking and replacing it with more optimistic thought patterns.

The Optimism Bias

Optimists pay less attention to detail and fail to seek new information to challenge their rosy views leading to poor decisions. Not only it can lead to poor outcomes, but it makes us underestimate risks or take less action. For example, positive affirmation might work for positive people but have detrimental consequences for those with low self-esteem; they result in worse moods. 80% of us suffer from the Optimism Bias; we overestimate the likelihood of experiencing good events and underestimate the likelihood of experiencing negative events. It is interesting to note that we are more optimistic about ourselves and families, but not so optimistic about others, including our own country.

Positive people overestimate their abilities. That’s why most warning signs fail to change behaviour. People agree that consuming alcohol is injurious to health, but they believe it will harm others, not them. When it comes to driving style, truthfulness, honesty, and modesty, etc.; most of us believe we are far better than the rest. And consider ourselves above average. However, that’s statically impossible — we cannot all be better than everyone else.

So protect yourself from the optimism bias, and be optimistic about it!

Defensive Pessimism

Defensive Pessimist is a particular type of pessimist that takes negative thinking to a whole new level. It’s a strategy that helps people reduce their anxiety; it drives focus rather than avoidance.

That’s why some pessimism comes handy from time to time.

“Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win.” — Bob Knight.

The defensive pessimist focuses on the worst-case scenario; s/he identifies and takes care of things that optimists miss. This approach is very effective to boost confidence. This can help us better prepare for events that are out of our full control such as a job interview or an exam.

Types of Optimism

Not all optimists are the same. Following are the different types of optimism, to see which best fits your style.

• Dispositional optimism, or “big optimism”, is the worldwide expectation that more good than bad will happen in the future.

• Unrealistic optimism is when positive expectations and the actual evidence don’t match.

• Comparative optimism is expecting good things for yourself as compared to another person.

• Situational optimism is the expectation of a good outcome in a specific situation.

• Strategic optimism involves denying risks because you believe you have control.

• Realistic optimism involves keeping a positive outlook within the constraints of this world. Realism refers to the relationship between available knowledge and understanding at any given moment, possible choices and chosen actions.

How to improve Optimism

Optimism is a broad personality trait. But it is not permanent. You can learn to be more optimistic .

1. Turn Off that Television

Even if we do not consider hours of Serials pumping negative thoughts into our brain, five minutes of the morning news is enough to send anyone's mood in a downward spiral. Current state of politics and media can make it very hard for anyone to be optimistic. It is better to consume less live news and read newspapers and discuss with your friends and family members only to keep you up to date. Spent more time to keep yourself healthy with a positive outlook.

2. Wear some positive specs

As far as possible see the positive sides of events. This will help you in positive reframing of your thoughts. Making this conscious effort not only shifts your viewpoint in the short term, but also it may actually train your brain to think more positively.

3. Observe the company of people you are with

We all have those friends who are chronic complainers or gossipers. After spending a few hours with them we find ourselves turning negative. Negativity is contagious. Just as some diseases are contagious many negative emotions can pulse through even social networks. According to studies having a happy spouse, friend or neighbour who lives within a mile of you, increases the probability that you will be happy as well. It is very important to start noticing who you spend time with on a daily basis. The more you spend time with negative people the more negative you are born to fit .

4. Stop reacting, start responding

According to pareto’s principle 80% of things which happen in our life is uncertain and we do not have any control on those things. Positive individuals are able to adapt and thrive with positive response during uncertainties.

Practicing mindfulness is a great way to fight against daily stressors, which is a breeding ground for negativity.

If we can learn to be in the present space () without judgement or thought about past or future, we will find that there’s less room for pessimism. Allow other thoughts to enter our brain but then pushing them gently away.

5. Write in a Gratitude Diary

Gratitude is being thankful. It is appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself. This attitude of gratitude can improve an optimistic outlook. Though it is easier said than done to keep this attitude throughout the day as one is bombarded with so many stressors.

A smart way to ease into it is to end your days by writing a gratitude dairy that takes just a few minutes each day.

Writing down what you are grateful for is linked to greater feelings of optimism.

One study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that writing in a journal about what you are grateful for and your own acts of kindness was linked to greater feelings of optimism.

You can jot down some of your accomplishments as well, as confidence can boost your optimism.

6. Acknowledge the Negative, Don't Forget

Being too much optimistic you should not get trapped into fantasy. That can lead to denial of current reality. It is good for our mental health to see the positive in situations, but not acknowledging negative can affect you in long run. A combination of optimism and realistic thinking can help people navigate through life. Realistic thinking does not mean that you never see the Bright Side of Life but it is simple way of supporting optimism with action steps, so as to make sure that you are not locked into fantasy

Rather than choosing one or the other, how can we integrate both?

Do you see the glass-half-full or half-empty?

Calling people, yourself included; either optimistic or pessimist gets them stuck. It forces us to adopt one view rather than switching between them as necessary. You limit your possibilities, when you overplay either a positive or negative view. Remember,

“Labels get us stuck”

A positive life is more about what we do than the labels we wear. Integrate both negativity and positivity.

Positive thinking encourages us to take needed risks and expand our horizons. But it also leads us to ignore life’s dangers or exaggerate our own capabilities. Negative thinking can be detrimental when it takes over and darkens how we see the world. But a little bit of worry and doubt can keep you on your toes; a dose of “defensive pessimism” can help you neutralize the optimism bias. Pessimists complain that the world is hard; optimists see the bright side and ignore real challenges; they expect positive thinking will change things for the better. Negativity reminds us to be realistic; positivity gives us hope; we need both. This view will help us in developing a realistic thinking.

Idealizing things is avoidance. Our actions, not perception, help us improve the world. We must recover the joy and pleasure in performing our actions.

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
― William Arthur Ward

The proverb based on bible says " there is a time to speak and a time to be silent". Being Trainers, are we aware of the power of silence? Are we adequately mindful about this treasure of a peaceful mind? Our training will be ineffective if we talk too much. If we give time and occasion for our participants during the sessions, while we keep ourselves silent, they will be able to think and assimilate or even they may think out loud in the class rooms, so that we can hear and guide them.

Every coin has two sides. On the opposite side of power of speech, we have power of silence. As we use different languages to communicate silence also is a strong tool to communicate. Nodding head, a glance, a pointed finger, a pause while you speak - all can communicate better than words. Practicing silence can improve your quality of listening. When we are in difficult situation instead of filling our head with noise, being silent gives us enormous advantage towards finding the solution.

But there is another power of silence which we all can experience. For example, as in the case of medication, the power of silence is an experience. This power of silence is hidden deep down inside every one of us.