You don’t have to Look On The Bright Side to be Optimistic

Whenever I mention the word ‘optimism’ clients often worry that we’re going to get into positive mantras or they start quoting Monty Python and looking ‘on the bright side of life’! As useful as these techniques and tips might be this is not what developing optimism is really about.

The best treatment of optimism probably comes from the famous U.S. psychologist Martin Seligman. He had originally been studying animal models of depression and drafted his theory of Learned Helplessness. Some years later he had a kind of moment of epiphany and realised there was not enough attention being paid to how most of us function very successfully. He switched his attention away from how some people learn to be helpless to how most of us learn to stay optimistic – Learned Optimism (LO).

If clients are going to do just that  – learn to think optimistically – we need to dispel the idea that they will then be seeing the world through rose-tinted spectacles. In fact LO teaches a means of reflecting back on past events, both positive and negative (you won or you lost / you succeeded or failed to achieve a goal) to rationalise them in a way that is helpful for future performance.

LO teaches us that there are 3 key questions to ask yourself about past events, both negative and positive.

1. To what extent are you personally responsible?

For negative events search for factors outside your control: the equipment failed; your competitors played a blinder; the outcome relied on other people etc. You’re not in denial, just identifying and emphasising factors outside yourself.

For positive events search for factors under your control: the outcome couldn’t have happened without your contribution; it wasn’t luck or down to someone else – it was you.

2. What does this say about the wider you?

For negative events challenge any idea that this specific event says anything about your general abilities, your wider skills in other areas or your value as a person; a loss doesn’t mean you’re a loser! Keep the event in its place mentally.

On the other hand, for positive events think about how this event reflects your general ability as a good learner, as someone who is a success or a capable person.

3. How permanent is this situation?

For negative events dwell on how transitory this situation is; it’s a one-off and says nothing about what will happen next time you try.

For positive events allow yourself the luxury of thinking about how this could be the beginning of you ‘on a role’; this outcome now increases your chances of repeating the experience etc.

All just mind games!!!

Well yes, but pessimistic thinking about events is just the same game, so why play to lose? There is a lot to lose too. There is plenty of research evidence that optimistic people are more likely to succeed in work and in personal relationships, to be healthier and to live longer.

Turning back to positive mantras, looking on the bright side and other ‘positive mental attitude’ approaches, in his article Why Positive thinking is Bad For You, Srikumar Rao makes the point that these techniques ask you to recognise situations as bad before you then find something good in them. His recommendation is that you simply don’t categorise events as bad or good – they’re just events.

Learned Optimism teaches us something different i.e. that even when you do categorise events as bad you can think about them in a way that is useful for the future.

And the great news is – it’s a thinking skill you can learn.