Negative Positivity Adds Optimism

Optimism is hand in hand with truth and accuracy. Life is full of setbacks and difficulties, big and small. When we face all these difficulties, we give some reactions to them. There are some explanations we make in our internal system. These are all our own comments based on what we have learned before, and we are absolutely correct in these comments. All these explanations determine our behavior and the results we get.

In my previous article I said that our learned helplessness restricts our lives and perhaps prevents us from realizing our true potential to life. Martin Seligman, who also laid the foundations of Positive Psychology, says that we can move from learned helplessness to learned optimism by strengthening our cognitive skills, and that this approach will make our lives easier and create better quality happy relationships.

When it comes to optimism; There is a segment that is far from reality and blindly perceives everything as positive thinking. It is not optimism to say or think "Oh, how nice I had an accident", "Oh, how nice it is to be sick", "Or fortunately I was wrong".

Optimism is hand in hand with truth and accuracy. The approach here is about being aware of what conclusions our thinking leads us to, and moving from generalizations and conclusions to a slightly more flexible field and seeing positive options as well.

You know they always say "Do you see the empty side of the glass, do you see the full side?" Optimism is about keeping his energy positive to see both and achieve what he wants to achieve. Because a problem with yourself, can you increase your energy by saying that this glass is half empty? Walk around for a while this glass is half empty, see what kind of feeling has prevailed and how your energy is. This is about your mood and feelings. Your thoughts, your feeling; your feeling changes the first step you take and results will change.

The glass is half full and I can see how I can fill the remaining half, okay, right? Optimism is about finding that something you can do even in a situation you don't want to happen to you. It's about not writing a disaster scenario.

Martin Seligman says it makes us feel helpless when our explanations of life's undesirable situations are framed by pessimism. However, by changing our explanations, we can learn to look from the optimistic framework and move the results we get to more positive. These are statements we make to ourselves. Actually the thoughts that underlie our behavior.

How do we think about the things that happen to us and what kind of results do we get?

You have been following a strict diet program for a while. But that evening you had an incredible desire and thought about it, ruining your diet with fried potatoes, chicken, and cola.

You are not able to do this job, you ruined everything, very weak willpower. You can't even hold a throat.

You drop the diet and become more withdrawn by labeling yourself as clumsy, or you prefer to be even more cruel to the surroundings and yourself.

In another example,

Your department lags behind in achieving the goals within the company and your manager complains about this situation.

Why isn't my team doing what it's supposed to do? I showed them everything. Why can't I get it to work well? I'm a bad manager, I want to get angry and shout at my entire team, everyone pisses me off, you think you're making these or similar statements to your own internal system.

You are angry. You feel bad about yourself, you shouted at everyone. Your team's motivation has dropped. You do not want to appear to your manager.

In another example,

You came home early from work and you caught your son smoking.

I'm going to drown him, what does this kid think he's doing. It shook my trust in him. He was saying that nothing like this would ever happen. Irresponsible and liar. I will not listen to him again, I will not trust him. You have thought about similar things, or you have already made such things as your son, you got angry, you shouted.

You were so angry that you lost yourself, you foamed with anger, you punished your son, you said you would not trust him.

Do you consider all these situations of adversity PERMANENT (pessimistic) or temporary (OPTIMAL)? Are you generalizing (pessimistic), do you think it's specific to that moment or that person? (OPTIMISTIC)

In fact, you switch to the optimism part by opposing thought. And it would be good for you to sit down and write all this. What setbacks am I experiencing? It is very important to write what I think, what am I doing and what are my results. Then, how can I look at this thought from a broader perspective, it is possible to create new realistic and optimistic options for yourself by calling your common sense, thinking whether this situation is temporary or general.

Opposition actually means learning to argue with yourself. You will find that realistic and optimistic statements energize you.

Let's continue with our examples. In the first example, the person who broke his diet gave up blaming himself. Whereas, if he opposed his own thought, actually switched to a new thought;

Calm down, you haven't had dinner yet and you're very hungry, you've been on the diet for two weeks, I congratulate you for that. I can make up this loophole. I better calculate the calories I eat. So tomorrow I can talk to my dietician about it and even walk for an extra half hour.

Look, this inner conversation reveals a positive energy in you and you will continue where you left off on the diet tomorrow. If you are general, if you say that it always happens and if you stick negative labels to yourself, you will give up.

Let me start to reduce my loss. I can do it from tomorrow, just as I have been on my diet for the last two weeks.

In the second example, how can the manager oppose his own thinking?

It is as follows:

It's true that my team is lagging behind. There are new elements. Could they have not fully learned the jobs? I can talk to them. I might ask what they need. Maybe my manager is under pressure from above. I can make him understand me too. Or I can ask if he sees something that I haven't seen. In the meantime, how can I motivate my team, I will work on this a little bit.

Now what would the energy of a manager change his mind like in this way?

I can calm down and talk more positively with my team. I can make them understand me, be impulsive to them and only apologize for being angry. And I can talk about how we can achieve faster and better results. In the meantime, I can prepare a separate report on what's going well for my manager. Yes, I can do that.

In the third example,

Yes, my son has broken my confidence, but that doesn't mean he's a completely insecure kid. I've never seen you lie to me until now.

Our communication has been very good in the past. Now it is normal for him to want to experience new things with adolescence. I better calm down and talk to him.

I managed to calm down and talk about the situation. I just apologized for being angry without listening to him. At least we talked and I will make sure to talk to him and spend time with him.

Take a look at the generality of your thoughts and how it makes you feel helpless. Write down their thoughts and oppose them, ask what alternatives to my thinking are, STOP your thinking, provide evidence, look at alternatives, and switch to a more optimistic perspective that gives you new positive options, and applaud your new way of thinking that will energize you.

Life shows the same difficulties, sadness, and setbacks to the negative and positive thinker. Positive thinkers better avoid these situations. They will fail, they may be defeated, but they will recover faster. They do not generalize this situation to their entire life. Optimistic thinking goes hand in hand with reality and always with new positive options. And by thinking about it, it's possible to move on to a more optimistic perspective. This supports you to get more satisfaction from life.

Does too much optimism always work? Could there be situations where it wouldn't work? And even are there situations where this way of thinking should not be used at all? I will share it in my next article. Stay on track.

For more information, I recommend reading Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism.