Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Does it really matter? Rigorous scientific findings suggest your outlook on life directly impacts the success you experience.
You might remember me describing, from a variety of angles, the concept of learned helplessness over the last several years. Today, it dawned on me, I have never discussed learned optimism and how understanding this concept can improve you and your organization.
Whether you are an optimist or a pessimist is easily determined by the explanations you use to account for the negative events in your life.
This is part of what psychologists call "explanatory style." Explanatory style is a psychological attribute that indicates how people explain to themselves why they experience a particular event.
There are three dimensions to every explanation that goes through a person's mind in response to an event. And, all other things being equal (talent, environment, circumstances), the choice in the explanation will determine the level of success you'll experience in whatever you do.
The three dimensions of explanatory style are personal, permanent, and pervasive:
1. Are things that happen to me personal? This involves how one explains where the cause of an event arises. People experiencing events may see themselves as the cause; that is, they have internalized/ personalized the cause for the event.
Example: "I always have problems with math" (internal) as opposed to "These math problems can be difficult for some people" (external).
2. Are things that happen to me permanent? This involves how one explains the extent of the cause. People may see the situation as unchangeable or changeable.
Example: "I always lose my keys" or "I need find a consistent place to put my keys".
3. Are things that happen to me pervasive? This involves how one explains the extent of the effects. A person with a pervasive perspective would see the situation as affecting all aspects of life.
Example: "I can't do anything right" or "Everything I touch seems to turn to gold".
In terms of explanatory style, optimists have the following perspective when things go wrong:
-they place no blame on themselves.
-they assure themselves that any setback can and will be corrected soon.
-they believe this experience was specific to a particular event and cannot be generalized to all other events.
I know these distinctions may sound trivial on the surface, but researchers have consistently demonstrated the powerful impact of explanatory style on the lives of people.
What impact? Here is an abbreviated list of some of the researched-based consequences of being an optimist:
1. Optimists suffer much less anxiety and depression.
2. Optimists adapt better to negative events (including bypass surgery, and breast cancer)
3. Optimism enables problem-focused coping, humor, making plans, positive reframing (putting the situation in the best possible light) and, when the situation is uncontrollable, to accepting the situation's reality.Optimists are capable of learning lessons from negative situations. Thus optimists have a coping advantage over pessimists.
4. Perhaps surprisingly, optimists don't tend to use denial, whilst pessimists often attempt to distance themselves from the problem.Optimists are not simply people who stick their heads in the sand and ignore threats to their well-being. For example, they attend to health warnings and usually discover potentially serious problems earlier, rather than later.
5. Optimists exert more continuous effort and tend not to give up, possibly assuming that the situation can be handled successfully in one way or another. Pessimists, on the other hand, are far more likely to anticipate disaster - and, as a result, are more likely to give up.
6. Optimists report more health-promoting behaviors (like eating a healthy diet or having regular medical check-ups) and enjoy better physical health than pessimists.
7. Optimists seem to be more productive in the work place.
In the future I may share real life examples of where this has separated those who do well from those who don't. All the more reason to have a hope-filled Christmas season!
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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.
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