Learn Optimism

I used to work with a colleague whom I will call John (not real name), and John was always the person to call out why something will not work, or what will go wrong. Of Edward De Bono's six hats, John always wore the black color. If things did go awry, John would say "See I told you", except I could never figure out whether it went bad because he expected it to go that way (ie. self fulfilling wish). So much did John expect things to go wrong that he would grill colleagues, suppliers and partners with so many difficult questions, and I even saw one grown man brought to tears because of this style of questioning. According to John's view of the world, storm clouds were always hanging just over the horizon, even if it was a beautiful sunny day. I used to think this was a very pessimistic behaviour, but never questioned my own rating on the optimism scale.

That was many years ago, and now recently I read a book by Martin Seligman on Learned Optimism (1990), and it re-framed a few things for me, and wanted to summarize and share some of the key findings and results from this ground-breaking research. It may have been superseded by subsequent findings however some of the ideas herein are quite useful for the modern workplace and lives. Not surprisingly, the book is very optimistic about optimism - that it can be developed, and in the overall balance, optimism in many situations and areas of one's life is helpful more than detrimental. There is a place for pessimism however which must not be ignored. The author notes that pessimists are often more accurate about seeing the reality of any given situation, whereas optimists tend to see distorted reality at times. Many experiments have been conducted around this, and consistently, the optimist will conclude that they have more control over a situation which, in fact, they have no control whatsoever. He also notes that there is a place for both optimists as well as pessimists in the workplace. Whereas optimists are more important in roles such as sales, high burn-out jobs, fund-raising, creative jobs, public relations, the mild pessimists do well in safety, cost estimating, contract negotiation, law, financial control, accounting, amongst other roles (note the mention of "mild" here). There are also situations which are more conducive for using optimism (achievement situations where you are wanting to achieve something, protracted situations impacting health, leadership situations), and situations where optimism is not appropriate (eg. planning for a risky future, being sympathetic to troubles of others). If you planning a trip of exploration into an unknown, hostile territory for example, optimism is not going to serve you well! The book finally takes a balance sheet approach to measuring the overall usefulness of optimism given all these pros and cons, and finds that optimism helps in more situations than it is detrimental. So basically, on balance, there is a case of all of us to learn to be more optimistic. You might say "I knew that ... that makes sense", nevertheless the book's breakdown of the significant body of research around this was eye-opening, as well as the practical tips for developing optimism.

Have you ever wondered how optimistic you are? Then you should take the test designed by Dr. Seligman in his book, which comes up with a score for your optimism (or pessimism). It turns out that I am moderately optimistic, and above me are the highly optimistic people, and one rung below me are the average optimists. This surprised me somewhat as I thought (before I took the test) that I was more pessimistic.

What exactly is optimism? You might be wondering this question. All of us have some conception of what is optimism. Is it seeing the "cup half full", rather than "half empty"? Is it about saying or repeating positive re-affirmations to yourself? Is it about wearing "rosy coloured glasses"? Dr. Seligman asserts that the learned optimism is not about re-discovering the "power of positive thinking". In his own words:

"We have found over the years that positive statements you make to yourself have little if any effect. What is crucial is what you think when you fail .... Changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience setbacks that life deals all of us is the central skill of optimism"

He defines optimism to be based on the habitual explanations that one assigns and the thought processes that immediately cross our minds when something bad happens in our life, or also when something good happens to us. He calls this "explanatory style".

Couple of things to note at this point: optimism as defined by Dr. Seligman is not related to anything one can observe externally eg. spoken words, actions, body language, etc. One could be speaking positive words and apparently taking optimistic actions as observed from outside, however according to the book, it is the internal thought patterns and explanations that matter. This is something you cannot easily observe from outside. One could be apparently speaking optimistic words but their internal explanations and self-talk could be very different. Yes, optimism can be faked. Conversely, a person could be spouting negative statements all the time, however this may not bely their underlying state. Ultimately this research is for each of us to measure ourselves for optimism, and not to judge the other. In the case of John above, I realised it is not for me to judge John. Rather this is about personal transformation, leading to societal and greater transformation. Dr. Seligman envisioned no smaller goal from his research than the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the entire nation, and every person in it.

Having said this, Dr. Seligman does go on to show that a person's external words and quotes can be analysed for their level of optimism. For example, where a person refuses to take the optimism questionnaire and test, then it is possible to analyse their spoken words in order to measure their optimism. People such as sports stars, celebrities, politicians, and so on can be analysed in this manner. Dr. Seligman used this technique to analyse the speeches of all presidential candidates from 1948 to 1984 and using anonymised data, he predicted the winning candidate with a very high degree of accuracy, basically because the American people have almost always chosen the more optimistic leader as their president. As mentioned above, if you aspire to be a leader, optimism is going to be a key tool in your kit, and this is not about what you say externally because this can be faked. Rather it is about how you habitually think. An example is given of one presidential candidate (Dukakis 1988) who tried to fake optimism in order to win the American vote. However whilst the candidate was able to fake optimism in the prepared speeches, he became undone in the televised debates with Bush, where Bush was more optimistic. The American people could sense the optimism. If you think optimistically by habit, then your words and actions will be optimistic. If you try to engineer this the other way, and fake the words you say to be optimistic, then really it is not going to work. This is the moral of the story! Dr. Seligman's team analysed all the speeches given by Bush and Dukakis in 1988 and ran it through their optimistic algorithms and did an a priori prediction - Bush to win by 9.2 percent. In November 1988, Bush won by 8.2 percent!

The author defines the three important aspects of this internal explanatory style that we have all learnt from childhood, when something bad or good happens:

• Permanence ("It's always going to be like this")
• Pervasiveness ("It's going to undermine every aspect of my life")
• Personal ("It's my fault")

Pessimistic people generally think thoughts (self talk) that explains bad events as permanent, pervasive and personal, whereas optimistic people explain bad events as temporary, specific and external. For good events, it is exactly the opposite. That is, optimistic people explain good events as permanent, pervasive and personal, whereas pessimistic people think good happenings are temporary, specific and external. Here it is obvious that the optimism-pessimism scale is by a continuum, and not binary. It turns out that I am more optimistic when it comes to bad events, but I really need to work on my optimism for good events.

The book offers many, many real-world examples of such situations from personal life, work life, relationships, parenting, school, relationships, sports, politics, and so on, and each was immediately relatable. Each of these examples are provided in great detail, so that you can immediately relate to it. Only a few of these examples he provides are:

• Student who struggles through college life
• Parent who yells at a child and then immediately regrets it
• Baseball and basketball sports teams and how they explain failure
• Individual swimmer athletes and how they performed under failure
• Child with cancer whose hopes to meet his hero are dashed
• Residents at a nursing home and their health outcomes
• Person who is on a diet but "blows it" on a night out with friends
• Insurance sales person who hits the wall after so many no's
• Staff who get criticised by their boss at work

... and so on and on. There are too many examples in the book! These real-world examples make the book very credible because we face such situations often during any given day. The question posed is: what habitual thoughts rise in the mind in each one of these situations? Dr. Seligman asks the reader to record the ABC of such situations in a given week, in order to observe what is exactly happening within.

1. Adversity: record the thing that actually happened that challenged you or set you back. It need not be big adversities, even small ones will do - leaky faucet, baby that won't stop crying, a large bill, frown from a friend, inattentiveness from your partner or spouse, someone cut you off on the road, etc.
2. Belief: how you interpret the adversity. Here, we are meant to write down our thoughts, rather than feelings. Feelings go under the next section. Thoughts can be checked for their accuracy, whereas feelings cannot. Thoughts such as "I stuffed up", "I am no good", "He is unreasonable", and so on. These belief sentences should start with "I think ....". In the space of one single afternoon, I recorded three such ABC episodes, so these events are always happening around us - the field is rich!
3. Consequences: this section is to record the feelings and what you did. Feelings of anger, anxiety, fear, guilt or other should be written down here, along with what you did next. These sentences start with "I feel ..." or "I did ...."

The above ABC technique is for observation purposes only, and through this, we are encouraged to observe our negative or pessimistic thought patterns and record them. Once you have recorded them, and noticed your own negative thought patterns, then Dr. Seligman advises the technique of disputation. Basically, we are told to argue with our own thoughts and go on the offense. Our minds and its thoughts are compared to a drunk person yelling obscenities at you across the street. You would not pay any heed to the drunk and their abuse, and so the book argues why would you simply take for granted that your mind's beliefs are correct? It turns out that the mind is at many times like a drunk - it is very poor at coming up with balanced, rational evaluations, especially of ourselves and also especially when it is reflexive. This is why we use other people as sounding boards, and why cognitive therapy is so effective.

Dr. Seligman even goes further and provides tip on how to argue with yourself and your thoughts and beliefs.

• Evidence: if you failed your semester exams and your belief was "I am the worst in the class", then you can seek evidence to see how others actually scored, and may find that many scored below you. If you believed you "blew" your diet on a night out with friends, you could count up the calories and actually find that the calories were only marginally higher than what the diet had prescribed.
• Alternatives: we are urged to find alternative causes for the event, since very few happenings have a single cause. What are all the contributing causes? So you missed kicking a goal and your team lost, but an alternative explanation could be the strong gust that blew. You failed semester exams, and an alternative explanation could be that you were working hard earning money to keep yourself afloat.
• Implications: Even if your belief is correct, and there is no contra-evidence nor any alternative ways of looking at it, you can use the technique of de-catastrophising. Even if my belief is correct, what are its implications? Are the implications actually that awful? Does failing a semester really mean that no-one will hire you and you are a total failure? Does one instance of yelling at your child imply that you are a poor parent? You got criticised by your boss at work, so does that mean you are not good at your job?

When you actually put this technique into use (I mean actually put it to use, by writing it down in the sections above), then an amazing thing happens. You actually take actions to rectify the situation for the better, rather than dwelling, ruminating, catastrophising or feeling helpless. Dr. Seligman even goes further and says you can practice the above technique with a good friend or mentor, in a technique he calls "externalisation". This is like actually "play acting" out a situation. That is, you come up with an adversity (eg. I crashed my car), and then you ask a good friend to actually sit across from you and throw back at you your negative beliefs ("You are a bad driver", "You always end up damaging the car", "You have a big repair bill now"), then you can actively dispute what your friend is throwing at you ("I have a five star driving rating with my insurance company", "The night was very dark and it was raining heavily", "I was tired from working so hard during the week", "No-one was hurt and I am covered fully by my insurance anyway"). This exercise is advised to be performed with actual events from your life, not made up ones. Obviously, your selection of friend has to be careful, someone who has your best in their interest.

By far the most wonderful finding in this whole book is that optimism can be learned, even if one is a diehard pessimist. Even if you are already an optimist, you can become a better one. This is very heartening, and wherever one finds oneself on the optimism scale, it is possible to improve one's optimism levels. Happy learning optimism - its worth it!