Are you an optimistic or pessimistic person?

One of the most fantastic books I’ve ever read on psychology was written by Martin Seligman, the creator of positive psychology, called Learned Optimismwhich was translated as learn optimism🇧🇷 The author begins by describing two pieces of research that helped start cognitive psychology – a breaking point with behavioral psychology, when he talks about learned helplessness.

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Drawing on ideas about learned helplessness and its possible relationship to depression, Seligman set out to investigate what causes a person in a situation similar to that of the dog in the experiment to exhibit learned helplessness, while another person simply keeps trying and get out of the situation.

(In one of the experiments, the aversive stimulus was a high-pitched, continuous sound that could easily be turned off in the second situation.)

And the answer to this question – what makes one person give up while another continues – led her to think about optimism and pessimism.

The psychology of optimism and pessimism

In a didactic way, we understand in psychology that optimism and pessimism are ways of thinking, ways of interpreting facts. When an event that we consider negative or unpleasant happens, what do we think?

Example: my girlfriend doesn’t answer my whatsapp message. This is the fact, in itself it is neither negative nor positive (although I have a desire for her to respond). From this fact, what do I say to myself?

If you were a pessimistic person, you might think:

1) – She doesn’t like me anymore.

2) – This relationship has no future, nor will any relationship work out.

3) – This is horrible, now I don’t feel like doing anything else (study, work, meet friends, etc, because everything, all areas of my life are bad).

3 Types of Pessimism (and Optimism)

The three sentences above represent three types of pessimism:

1) Pessimism about the self (the self as being flawed, inadequate, misguided…)

2) Pessimism about the future

3) Pessimism about areas of life

Likewise, we have three types of optimism.

1) Optimism about the self

2) Optimism about the future

3) Optimism about areas of life

Using the same example, if my girlfriend doesn’t respond, I can have more optimistic explanations.

1) She likes me, must be busy

2) She will return as soon as she can. This relationship will work (if not, I’ll find someone else)

3) Although she doesn’t respond, and I’m feeling a little sad about the non-response, it won’t affect other areas of my life.

Optimism and pessimism at varying levels

If we do Seligman’s optimism test, we might get different results today and five years from now. According to external circumstances, we have more or less optimistic thoughts.

It is also common for optimism or pessimism to be limited to areas of life. Maybe I can be optimistic about my affective life and not very optimistic about the country’s economic situation (or my personal financial situation).

In addition to the test – available in the book – the best way to see whether we are being optimistic or pessimistic in a given situation, at a given moment, is by picking up a particular fact (easier if it’s an unpleasant fact).

Fact: I broke a glass

What do I think next?

– How am I stupid and clumsy? Or: was the glass wet and slipped from my hand?

Fact: I lost an excellent contract that would give me a good financial return

What do I think next?

– How are things ever going to get better in the future? Or: this is just a contract. The situation will soon improve.

Fact: I got a bad grade on an exam

What do I think?

– How will this affect everything and I won’t be able to move forward or: can I get this grade back and feel happy that the other areas are ok?

Anyway, the idea is to take a situation in which events did not go according to our wishes and analyze:

Is there a pessimism against the self?

Is there pessimism about the future?

Is there a pessimism that expands from this to other areas of life?

Shifting from pessimism to optimism

Research indicates that being more optimistic increases our level of well-being and happiness. Therefore, whenever we notice that we are being pessimistic, we can switch to more optimistic thoughts, recognizing through the exercise what happened and what we think about what happened.

There is nothing that fixes a person in pessimism. In other words, we can all learn to be more optimistic, which certainly also helps us to have behaviors that we will not regret later.

If I think my girlfriend doesn’t text me back because she doesn’t like me anymore, I might start to have jealous thoughts. That maybe she likes someone else. And with these thoughts, I might write messages to her that I’ll regret later. All created by the mind. And that can be stopped. If we notice the underlying process.

Conclusion

In this text, we try to describe the thoughts that make us have and maintain pessimism and optimism. We also learned that it is possible to switch from pessimism to optimism, thus raising our level of well-being and happiness.

See also the video:

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