Being Optimistic By Keeping Your Line in the Water!

I’m going to introduce you to two people that have something in common.

The first is a woman who was an aspiring writer who had recently been divorced and living on government aid. In fact, she was so poor that she couldn’t afford a typewriter.  So she typed her 90,000-word novel on an old-school manual typewriter and sent it to publisher after publisher – only to see it get rejected 12 times in a row!

The second is a snotty 7-year-old Canadian kid who was out fishing for the first time with a family friend. They were out on a lake for hours with no bites!

More on how their stories ended a bit later. But just so I don’t leave you hanging too much – one of the things they both had in common was a propensity for being optimistic.

If you read my recent post on how to build resilience, you would have learned that optimism is one of the key factors in being resilient. That got me to asking myself a few questions, namely:

  What is optimism?
  Are there any other benefits to being optimistic other than it helping us be resilient?
  Do optimistic people display different characteristics than pessimistic people?
  Can optimism be learned?

This blog post will set out to answer all of those questions in 1,500 words or less…

Let’s first start out with…

A Definition of Optimism

Which comes from Carver et.al. who define optimism as follows: “Optimism is an individual difference variable that reflects the extent to which people hold generalized favorable expectancies for their future.” ¹

Simply put – optimists are people that expect good stuff to happen to them, while pessimists are people that expect bad stuff to happen to them.

Carver and his colleagues go on to describe something called…

Dispositional optimism

Which is having a general belief that good things will happen or expecting the best.

One of the leaders in the field, Dr. Martin Seligman and his colleagues use another way to assess optimism, which is called…

Explanatory optimism

Which looks at how we explain the good and bad things that happen to us.

So, when something bad happens to us, Seligman found that we answer the question ‘why’ it happened to us along 3 different dimensions:

(1)  Internal vs. external – Internal – meaning that we think we are the reason for something bad happening to us. External – meaning we think other people or circumstances are the reason for something bad happening to us.

(2)  Stable vs. unstable – Stable – meaning that we focus on the stable things that we cannot do anything about when something bad happens – those things that are unchangeable and permanent. Unstable – meaning that we focus on the temporary or fleeting causes of the problem that we can do something about when something bad happens.

(3)  Global vs. specific – Global – meaning when something bad happens we think it will affect other areas of our lives negatively. Specific – meaning it is isolated to one area of our life and won’t lead to negative stuff in other areas.

It is important to note that each of these is a continuum and almost never is a line drawn with people placed in one group or the other. People range from very optimistic to very pessimistic, with most being somewhere between. ¹

To summarize explanatory optimism, Seligman states that when something bad happens optimists tend to see them as:

  External – it’s not all their fault.
  Unstable – they can do something about it.
  Specific – it won’t affect other areas of their lives.

Pessimists on the other hand when something bad happens to tend to see them as:

  Internal – it is all their fault.
  Stable – there is nothing they can do about it.
  Global – it will negatively affect every area of their life.

There has been a ton of research done on some…

Benefits of Optimism

Some of the benefits include:

Improved medical well-being: Just a few of the studies that have been done that show how optimism can improve our medical well-being include:

  You are less likely to develop coronary heart disease. ²

  One study showed less distress before and more life satisfaction after coronary bypass surgery. ³

  Another showed optimism showed less distress over time for women having surgery for breast cancer. ⁴

  Ability to heal quicker. ⁵

Cope with stress better: Students just starting college were able to adapt better and experienced less distress at the end of the semester. ⁶

Greater social relationships: Probably due to the fact that optimistic people are more fun to be around and are easier to like.

  College students who were optimistic had greater social networks in their first semesters than did pessimists. ⁷

  Optimists are better at handling and resolving conflicts in relationships. ⁸

  Optimists reported better relationships, with less negative interactions and more cooperative problem-solving. ⁹

Live longer – People who are optimistic have been seen to live longer.

Stress – Optimists have also been seen to stay in high-stress jobs longer!

Okay, I can cite research all day that shows the benefits of being optimistic, but I think you get it, there are a ton of benefits to being optimistic – so I will stop there.

You are probably asking, “ok great, is there anything I can do to be more optimistic?”

It sure seems like it. Seeing as how optimism is a belief system – there have to be some beliefs and behaviors that optimists engage in to reap the benefits from the section above. With that in mind, let’s now take a look at some of the things…

That Optimists Do Differently…

They I.D. problems: they are good at identifying problems, which means they know what they have to fix.

They see situations as challenges: instead of seeing situations as threats, they see them as challenges. By seeing things that way, they are more likely to cope with them rather than withdraw.

‘Control the controllables’: optimists are good at identifying what part of the problem they can control and do something about, as well as accepting the stuff that is beyond their control. This also means they don’t experience the energy drain that comes when something is beyond their control.

Proactive and action takers: optimists are approach oriented and step towards the problem and try and find solutions, they take action!

Information seekers: optimists try to learn more about their problems which can lead to success.

Willing to ask for help: by asking for help, optimists get support which can lead to many of the benefits above.

Utilize positive emotions and humor: they have an overall positive disposition and use humor as a coping mechanism.

Self-care: optimists are more likely to be healthy eaters and exercisers, both of which affect their minds and bodies in a positive way.

Now that we understand what optimism is, the benefits of being optimistic, and the things that optimists do differently, let’s look at a…

Process for Being Optimistic

Here is a 4-step process I learned from the amazing work of Dr. Karen Reivich from the University of Pennsylvania on how being optimistic. I created an acronym that may help you remember it better – ICAN:

IDENTIFY: Identify a situation that is difficult for you right now – perhaps a situation at work, with your spouse or kids – whatever.

CONTROL: List out everything about that situation you can control or leverage – push yourself to come up with a good list – like the optimist you are!

ACCEPT: List out everything about that situation you cannot control that you need to let go of, stuff you need to just accept – again like the good optimist you are!

NOW: Come up with an action plan to affect the things that you listed above that you can control! So, how are you going to modify your situation to bring about a better outcome?

Back to the 2 People…

I introduced you to in the introduction who had being optimistic as a shared trait.  The first one, whose novel was rejected 12 times, was eventually given the green light from publisher Bloomsbury after the daughter of the CEO fell in love with it. You are probably familiar with the novel, Harry Potter, and its author, J.K. Rowling.

The second one, the 7-year-old who was fishing kept asking the recently divorced older family friend “are we going to catch anything?”. The family friend would reply “I think we will, you can’t make the fish be hungry, but you can keep your line in the water!” Lo and behold, a little while longer the kid ended up catching a big catfish! To which he asked the older family friend, “is this Daddy meant when he told you that there are a lot of fish in the sea?” To which the older family friend replied: “not exactly, I will have that conversation with you in 10 years from now.”

Until next time, keep your line in the water, keep being optimistic and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick

Use It or Lose It:

A 4-step process you can use for being optimistic that we just discussed uses the acronym ‘ICAN’:

IDENTIFY: Identify a situation that is difficult for you right now.
CONTROL: List out everything about that situation you can control or leverage.
ACCEPT: List out everything about that situation you cannot control that you need to let go of, stuff you need to just accept.
NOW: Come up with an action plan to affect the things that you listed above that you can control!

When to Use It:

When you are in a situation where you want to be more optimistic.

What Do You Think?

Do you consider yourself an optimistic person?  Is the ‘ICAN’ process above something that you can see yourself using? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this post, it would mean the world to us if you shared it with people you care about via any of the social media platforms below!

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References

1 Carver CS, Scheier MF, Segerstrom SC. Optimism. Clin Psychol Rev. 2010;30(7):879-89.

2 Optimism, cynical hostility, and incident coronary heart disease and mortality in the Women’s Health Initiative. Tindle HA, Chang YF, Kuller LH, Manson JE, Robinson JG, Rosal MC, Siegle GJ, Matthews KA. Circulation. 2009 Aug 25;120(8):656-62. doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.108.827642. Epub 2009 Aug 10.

3  The relative importance of dispositional optimism and control appraisals in quality of life after coronary artery bypass surgery. Fitzgerald TE, Tennen H, Affleck G, Pransky GS. J Behav Med. 1993 Feb;16(1):25-43.

4 How coping mediates the effect of optimism on distress: a study of women with early-stage breast cancer. Carver CS, Pozo C, Harris SD, Noriega V, Scheier MF, Robinson DS, Ketcham AS, Moffat FL Jr, Clark KC. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1993 Aug;65(2):375-90.

5  Perceived stress and cortisol levels predict speed of wound healing in healthy male adults. Ebrecht M, Hextall J, Kirtley LG, Taylor A, Dyson M, Weinman J. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2004 Jul;29(6):798-809.

6  Modeling cognitive adaptation: a longitudinal investigation of the impact of individual differences and coping on college adjustment and performance. Aspinwall LG, Taylor SE. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1992 Dec;63(6):989-1003.

7 Modeling cognitive adaptation: a longitudinal investigation of the impact of individual differences and coping on college adjustment and performance. Aspinwall LG, Taylor SE. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1992 Dec;63(6):989-1003.

8 Optimism in close relationships: How seeing things in a positive light makes them so. Srivastava S, McGonigal KM, Richards JM, Butler EA, Gross JJ
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2006 Jul; 91(1):143-53.

9 Optimism: an enduring resource for romantic relationships.
Assad KK, Donnellan MB, Conger RD J Pers Soc Psychol. 2007 Aug; 93(2):285-97.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/positive-psychology-resilience

Carver et al., Optimism Chapter 28, Oxford Handbook of PP, Edition 2 (2011.)

Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. New York: Vintage Books