Living Forwards And Upwards- About Finding Hope And Optimism (And Knowing When Not To)

‘Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.’

                                                              Søren Kierkegaard (philosopher)*                                                                                           

*The quote was kindly sent in by a blog follower!

Are you a ‘glass half full’ or ‘glass half empty’ person? Your answer is likely to very much depend on your general sense of hope and optimism. These two very closely related concepts help us to live our lives forwards and upwards. While an optimistic attitude is generally associated with a high level of well-being, there are some situations where it has been shown to be less helpful. I am admittedly leaning towards the ‘glass half empty’ attitude and believe that it has served my well in some situations. So today I would like to shed a little bit of light into the pros and cons of optimism.

The advantages of optimism

Of course, without optimism human kind would not have achieved anything. Optimism helps us to make great plans, and have dreams and hopes. More specifically, it has been shown that optimistic people enjoy following benefits:^1,4

• They experience life as more pleasurable.
• They are generally more confident, motivated, energetic and tend to be more proactive, persistent and committed when working towards goals. For this reason, they also often achieve more at work. They tend to be more productive (particularly under pressure), and do not get disheartened in jobs where setbacks are frequent and work-stress is high. They are also best suited for jobs that require initiative, persistence and the ability to ‘think big’.
• They are less likely to become depressed.
• They are on average in better physical health.
• Being optimistic also has something to do with self-control and the ability to change ourselves, which where were the topics of the last two posts. This is, because optimism is a great motivator, which helps us achieve the goal we have set ourselves, even when we experience setbacks.

What does it take to be an optimist?

Optimism is a mindset that is partially influenced by our personality, but it has been shown that an optimistic attitude is something, which can be learned.^1,2 Essentially, optimists have a strong sense of hope for the future even when facing difficult circumstances.^1-4 Instead of reacting with hopelessness or despair, optimists have the hope that that things may change, which inspires them to have faith and to plan for better days.³

In addition to the sense of hope, optimists have a different thinking or explanatory style compared to pessimistic people. Our explanatory style is about how we interpret or make sense of our life events.¹ The explanatory style has three key elements: pervasiveness (our view on how many aspects of our life are affected), permanence (our view on how long a situation will last) and personalization (our view on who has caused the situation). Here are some examples of optimistic explanatory styles when facing failure or adverse events:¹

• Pervasiveness: Optimists tend to identify a specific cause and only see specific aspects of their life affected. For example, if experiencing a rejection by someone else, they may think ‘This specific person does not like me’ rather than ‘I am unlikable’.
• Permanence: Optimists will generally think that the problem may be overcome relatively quickly. When becoming unemployed, an optimist may think ‘I am likely to get another job soon’ rather than ‘That’s it, I will never find work again’.
• Personalization: Optimistic people tend to externalize failure. This means that they put the blame for the difficult situation or mistake onto external events (or other people) rather than themselves. When making a mistake they may think ‘Well, I have been really tired and overworked’ rather than ‘It is all my fault’. On the other hand, when experiencing a success, optimistic people use an internalized explanatory style: they believe that the positive result is down to their ability.

Thinking that a problem is temporary, that there are specific causes for it, and that it is not our fault is of course bound to make us more hopeful and positive. Conversely, if we think that a problem is permanent or lasts for very long, that it is likely to affect all aspects of our life and that we are to blame for it, we are not only more likely to feel despair but we also tend to lose self-esteem.¹ This is very significant, as poor self-esteem can further exacerbate the situation.

Pessimism, learned helplessness and depression

People and animals who are put in an adverse situation, which they cannot do anything about and from which they cannot escape, they tend to become passive and give up;¹ In other words, such situations make us helpless, and we remain helpless even if the situation later changes and could be resolved. This state is known as learned helplessness. Only a minority of people do not become helpless, and these are the ‘natural optimists’.¹ As discussed above, these people think along the lines of ‘It is just the situation. It will pass and things will get better.’

So almost everybody can become pessimistic when facing really difficult situations, but there are different degrees of pessimism. If we have a very pessimistic general attitude to life, we may not even need extremely adverse events to trigger helplessness. We are also more likely to collapse under pressure, tend to stay helpless for a longer time and across more aspects of our life than people who are less pessimistic and who may regard failures as a temporary event causing only brief demoralisation.¹ In the worst case scenario, an extremely pessimistic thinking style (‘It is all my fault, it will always be like this, and all aspects of my life are ruined’) together with its associated learned helplessness and loss of self-esteem can result in depression (protracted learned helplessness).¹

So it is no surprise that pessimism is associated with a lower level of mental well-being, as it makes us feel bad about ourselves, our relationships and the world in general. In addition to the pessimistic explanatory style, there are further specific pessimistic mindsets and consequences:²

• Awfulising: Strong exaggeration about how negative an event or a person is.
• Exaggerated sense of rejection: Similar to awfulising, we may feel easily rejected or feel disproportionally hurt even with a minor rejection or criticism.
• Distress intolerance: People tend to underestimate their ability to cope and recover from difficult events.
• Negative self-fulfilling prophecies: Assuming a negative outcome often brings a negative outcome. This is due to a negative communication with others (somebody else may react negatively because we suggest that we are expecting a negative outcome), and because we may not bring in as much commitment into a given situation.

So what are the disadvantages of optimism?

What can there be wrong with optimism if it makes us more successful and feel good? Well, it appears that there can be quite significant disadvantages as well:

• It has been shown that optimists tend to distort their reality slightly towards the positive, introducing a positivity bias, where as pessimists often have a more realistic understanding of their ability to influence situations.¹ Unjustified optimism and hope (also called delusional optimism) can set us up for huge disappointments, as we may have unrealistically high expectations and be less aware of dangers and pitfalls in our plans. There are many examples from business and finance illustrating this point.⁵ Also, it has been shown that a high level of optimism in youth is a predictor of earlier death.⁶ So in any risky situation or where our decisions can have severe consequences, a healthy degree of pessimism may be helpful.
• Following from above point, there are areas where ‘mild pessimists’ perform better at work, as they are able to assess situations more realistically. These are typically positions requiring a high level of technical skills and where decisions can have far reaching consequences, so that the people need to know when to err on the side of caution rather than charging ahead.¹ Ideally, these jobs should also have lower time pressures and less frequent setbacks.
• Erosion of responsibility:¹ As adults, we are responsible for our actions and if we want to learn from failure and mistakes, we need to be able to get a realistic understanding to which degree we have contributed to a problem. We cannot achieve this if we habitually externalize failure, and put the blame on others or external circumstances. So if we want people to be responsible for what they do, then they need to have an internal explanation style.  But it is important to use this internal explanation style with a degree of self-compassion and making sure that our explanations are balanced, temporary and specific  (e.g. when failing an exam, you may think ‘I may not have studied hard enough on this occasion, but failing an exam is not the end of the world. I will review my exam technique and hopefully I will be more successful next time.’). One exception is depression, where externalization is encouraged, as depressed people usually take too much responsibility for bad events.

How to become a flexible optimist:

As there are clearly pros and cons to optimism, the key is to learn the skill of flexible optimism, so that you can choose to be optimistic whenever needed but be pessimistic when caution is asked for.¹

• As a general rule, moderate optimism should be used when the cost of a failure in a particular situation is not very high, which applies to the vast majority of situations in our daily lives. This could also be described as the expectation that the will manage to get through the day without accomplishing everything we want but probably the most important things; that we will not get everything we want but most things we need; that even when things don’t turn out 100%, that they will at least get better.⁴ But if a situation can have far reaching consequences, then a measured pessimistic approach is likely to be more helpful.¹
• Specific situations in which to use moderate optimism:¹
• When you are trying to achieve something (professional or private accomplishment).
• When you are worried about not feeling well about something (e.g. if you are struggling with depression or are finding it difficult to keep up your morale).
• When you are struggling with chronic illness.
• When you want to lead or inspire others.
• Specific situation when NOT to use optimism:¹
• When you are taking precautions for facing a truly risky and uncertain future.
• When making decisions at work or in private life which may have far reaching consequences.
• When initially talking to people who are facing significant hardship or problems, although you may be able to provide some hope and cautious optimism at a later point once you have established connection and trust. 
• Learning an optimistic thinking style:
• The key to optimism is to adapt our thinking style. As pessimistic thoughts are often extreme, exaggerated and self-punitive, the first step is to learn to dispute and replace these thoughts with less extreme and balanced thoughts.² It may help to do this in a structured way and in writing, particularly when facing a difficult situation.
• For example, we can bring to mind a specific problem/failure and identify our associated thoughts and current (pessimistic) interpretation. Then, we can critically examine our current thoughts, look for evidence for and against them, and replace them with more balanced and less exaggerated statements. It has been shown that this cognitive restructuring technique is a life skill, which can be learned.^1,7

In summary, optimism and pessimism can both be helpful when mastering different life situations and they are, to a degree, a choice we make. The secret is to know in which circumstances to apply a more optimistic or pessimistic mindset in order to try and get the best of both worlds. There is a great quote by the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, summing up flexible optimism as a general approach to life: ‘Prepare for the worst; expect the best; take what comes.’ 

Preview: Next week we will finally start a short series of posts all around the topic of work and happiness.

References and further reading:

1. Seligman MEP. Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Vintage Books; New York. 2006.

2. Diener E, Biswas-Diener R. Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Blackwell Publishing; Oxford, UK. 2008.

3. Fredrickson B. Positivity: Groundbreaking Research to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive. Oneworld Publications; Oxford, England. 2010.

4. Lyubomirsky S. The Myths of Happiness: What should make you happy but doesn’t, what shouldn’t make you happy but does. Penguin Books; New York. 2013.

5. Seligman MEP. Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being- and How to Achieve Them. Nicholas Brealey Publishing; London, UK. 2011.

6. Nettle D. Personality: What makes you the way you are. Oxford University Press; New York. 2007.

7. Pittman CM, Karle EM: Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to use the neuroscience of fear to end anxiety, panic & worry. New Harbinger Publications; Oakland. 2015.

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