A few days ago, I posted a point of entry into a new way of looking at life, a declaration that I would “switch teams” from pessimism to optimism as a 90-day experiment. I invited all of you to come along for the ride, but I didn’t provide much in the way of guidance as to what exactly that ride would entail. Let’s now take a look at some of the specific strategies from Seligman’s Learned Optimism and agree to practice them collectively, with the caveat that we should all feel free to make our own way into a more positive way of life. If you have an idea that isn’t covered here, please add it to the comments section of this post or the previous post. Hopefully we’ll get a little community going of people who are trying this challenge together!
Mind Your Ps
Seligman covers pessimistic beliefs with the alliterative descriptors, “permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization.” This comes from Chapter 3 in the book, but let me just give it a quick rundown. Pessimistic people tend to take bad situations and turn them into permanent ones in their minds. Say, for example, your car breaks down and you say to yourself, “I’ll never be able to drive a decent car.” That would be taking a temporary situation and making it permanent. An optimistic person would say something like, “It probably just needs an oil change. I’ll take it to the shop tomorrow.” That explanation is temporary and also action-oriented (we’ll get to the bit about actions in a minute).
The second feature of pessimism is pervasiveness: taking something local in nature and extrapolating it to all of reality. Let’s say you had a bad experience with a landlord who cheated you out of a deposit. You might say to yourself, “landlords are all crooked, deceitful, greedy people.” That sounds a little bit extreme, but sometimes we do tell ourselves these rather harsh things about those around us or about ourselves. Notice also the word, “all,” which is very similar to the “never” in the previous example. In philosophy classes and writing classes, we teach our students to avoid all-or-nothing arguments, words like “always” and “never,” which do not admit of exceptions. This sloppy thinking should not be tolerated in our internal dialogue. An optimist would say something like, “I had a disagreement with this particular person, but I’m not going to let it bother me.” We can all convert pessimistic statements into more optimistic ones by editing internal dialogue.
The third feature is personalization. Pessimists tend to blame themselves rather than external conditions or actors. Suppose I ran a race and did not achieve my personal best time. A pessimistic response would be, “I’m not good at anything: I might as well quit.” That is both a personalized response and an very all-or-nothing sort of statement. It would be better to say to myself, “I probably need to drink more water next time” (specific and action oriented) or “the other runners had more experience than me” (external, not as action-oriented). We can all be on the lookout for this sort of internal dialogue and convert it into specific and action-oriented statements.
Stop Ruminating and Act
Another big aspect of pessimism is the tendency to ruminate upon problems and negative emotions. Pessimistic people tend to be introspective, and they play over and over again a reel of negative events and feelings, trying to understand what went wrong. Analysis of a problematic emotion only leads to more of that very same emotion. So if I am depressed, and I write in my journal about how depressed I am, it will only make things worse. We tend to think that we should “vent” and “express ourselves,” but this may sometimes magnify the problem to the point where it gets blown out of proportion. A trivial incident becomes all-consuming in this way.
Constructive action is usually better than rumination, even totally unrelated constructive action. If I am feeling upset, I could go for a walk, paint a picture, or work on my stamp collection—anything is better than stewing! Seligman says that even distraction is far better than continuing to ruminate. Of course, I could also take constructive action to solve the problem that is bothering me, and that might be even better. But it really just needs to be something that is interesting enough to stop the rehashing and overanalysis of the upsetting situation.
Pessimism is not exactly the same as depression, but the two are highly correlated. By breaking pessimistic patterns of thought, it is also possible to decrease the propensity towards depressive states. Seligman writes that “what looks like a symptom of depression—negative thinking—is the disease...It is a disorder of conscious thought” (73). This might sound like a radical statement to some of you. Perhaps it underplays biology and environment, but it certainly zeroes in on the part of depression that we can control the most easily. I can’t change my genetic inheritance, but I can control to a large degree what happens in my head.
The Connection to Mindfulness and Meditation
Of course we can’t really begin to change internal dialogue unless we first become aware of it. The trouble is that our own thoughts are so familiar and automatic that we don’t even notice them. If you are saying to yourself, “God, I’m such an a**hole,” and you have been saying that in your head for 20 years in awkward or uncomfortable moments, you probably aren’t even aware of it anymore. By getting quiet and observing the thoughts, you can truly see what’s happening. Then you have a better chance at changing the stream of consciousness.
Practicing breathing exercises also helps to slow down the flow of thoughts so that you can better deal with them. Practice breathing in for 4 counts, holding for 16, and breathing out for 8. Do this at least four times at the beginning of your meditation session. This activates the stretch receptors in the lungs, which then send an “all’s well” message to the brain, interrupting the fight-or-flight response that triggers the production of stress hormones. So deep breathing is like an emergency brake that halts the stress response.
For the rest of your meditation session, concentrate upon watching the thoughts and simply letting them rise and fall. You will not need to actively resist them: they will fall apart on their own, just the way that a firework explodes and then falls away into sparks. The thoughts cannot sustain themselves without your help. When you stop supporting them, they go away. If you have a mantra that you know, then you can say that as a replacement. If not, you can use an English word like “calm” or another word of your own choosing. When you catch yourself inquiring into the stream of thoughts, just repeat your word or mantra.
Those are some opening suggestions for the optimism challenge. Please try some of these and report your successes in the comments below. See if any new ideas or strategies occur to you during this challenge and share them with the group. By the end of 90 days, we should have some interesting results! I look forward to hearing from you.
