By Brynn Pyper
“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. ”
Thinking about the future is usually an experience that makes you really excited or really depressed. Some people fantasize about what they are sure is coming in their future and have high hopes and dreams that fuel them through their dark times. On the flip side, some people have hopes and dreams they’re sure will never be realized. Either way, looking ahead can be met with feelings of either optimism or pessimism.
Optimism is one of the characteristics of Human Flourishing studied within positive psychology. The optimism module on MyBestSelf101 describes optimism as a quality that helps you feel control in your life; it’s less about looking at things from a positive perspective. However, sometimes experience tells us things about trying to be optimistic that no one can prepare you for.
My first experience with trying to practice optimism was less than helpful, I’m afraid. I engaged in the “best-possible future” journal taught by Sonja Lyubomirsky and became overwhelmed with all I realized I wanted in my life. Trying to pin everything I really hoped for in my life down into a single statement or paragraph was stressful and desperate. Not only was I picturing everything I wanted for myself, but I also got caught up in everything that I was and wasn’t doing at that very moment to achieve the perfect future I envisioned. I found myself stuck in some very self-defeating mindsets revolving around the idea that I was doomed to fail. I didn’t feel like I could trust in anything I wanted because I couldn’t trust anything I didn’t have control over.
Thankfully, optimism is a bit more involved than simply picturing the best life for yourself as an individual, which explains why the way I went about my journaling experience was so overwhelming. Martin Seligman (2007) describes how optimism is less about being optimistic about one thing in particular, and that it’s more of an enabling perspective, one in which we aren’t trapped by our circumstances into certain perspectives. He recounts his research concerning learned helplessness and how he taught dogs that they couldn’t escape a noise they had every opportunity to escape from because they were unable to stop it in the past.
In his book Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman (2007) shares an optimism scale where you can figure out your levels of optimism and pessimism concerning different parts of your life. I was surprised to see that I was fairly optimistic about myself but more pessimistic about my environment. At first, I thought, “Well, that’s not a problem. If I just expect people to let me down, then I don’t have to rely on them and I can be more independent anyway!” However, as I read more about what Seligman wrote and thought more about my experiences living this way, I realized that was a pretty lonely and dismal way to see the world. Instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt, I was judging them and effectively distancing myself from others simply because I was pessimistic about how they would interact with me. I thought I was answering Seligman’s questions with an optimistic outlook about my environment, but I was really doing the opposite.
So, after Seligman helped me realize I was pessimistic towards others and my environment, I got a little better picture as to why I felt overwhelmed with the “best possible self” exercise. If I had realistic expectations for myself but didn’t trust or believe in the world I lived in to get me there, then I’d end up pretty frustrated. After studying hope a bit more, though, I realized another component to my reaction.
Optimism and hope are different sides of the same positive worldview; optimism focuses more on the big picture while hope focuses more on the individual (Alarcon et al., 2013). Hope can also be a more goal-oriented, specific intention for the future (Bruininks & Malle, 2005). Taking what I learned from Seligman and then what I learned about hope helped me see that I could be really hopeful yet not super optimistic about my circumstances. So, aligned with all these different theories, I really had to think about what things I was more pessimistic about in my expectations for the world I live in and the people I choose to rely on. I had to adjust these expectations to things that were more reasonable.
Here’s an example of an inner dialogue I had to unravel:
Pessimistic Brain: My friends always let me down, so I don’t have to rely on them.
Optimistic Brain: My friend was busy tonight, so they couldn’t respond to me when I reached out.
Thankfully, my optimistic brain won this battle, but I still have to weed through my expectations for others from time to time and adjust them to more progressive mindsets so that I don’t feel helpless in my situation. So, what did I learn from delving into optimism? It’s not enough to just have specific hope for things; having an overall worldview that’s positive and encourages growth is just as important as believing in your own merits and effort. Trusting in a perspective that doesn’t allow us to become helpless to what happens to us is really important when it comes to optimism, and it certainly isn’t just believing in sunshine and roses around us. When we feel stuck, optimism can be a powerful tool that enables us to seek for the view that encourages us to move forward.
“Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.”
REFERENCES
Alarcon, G. M., Bowling, N. A., & Khazon, S. (2013). Great expectations: A meta-analytic examination of optimism and hope. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(7). 821-827. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.12.004
Bruininks, P., & Malle, B. F. (2005). Distinguishing hope from optimism and related affective states. Motivation and Emotion, 29(4). 324-352. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9010-4
Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The how of happiness. Penguin Books.
Seligman, M. P. (2006). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life (2nd ed.). Vintage Books.