Prelude

The book Learned Optimism was written by Martin Seligman. I selected this book, because I thought that I could improve my habit of pessimistic thinking and learn to be more optimistic. I feel like my pessimism has always brought me down a bit, and it might be also one of the reasons to depressive thoughts. Like I am rarely disappointed, but I believe it is because I just don’t allow myself to expect the best result, and sometimes it may stop me from attempting at all. In the book, Martin Seligman says that optimism can be learned, and I think he offers some good points on why it would be worth my time to attempt to make myself less pessimistic and more optimistic.

The Decision

In his book, Seligman says that the first thing to do is to decide to change. Without the quest, the solution is impossible. Seligman says that constant pessimism often leads to depression, and depression is a difficult state to get out of or even decide, that you attempt to do something differently. It may seem silly to try to think optimistically when you can’t find anything to be optimistic about, and that may affect to your decision to change. It requires mental strength to get that decision, but when it’s done, the quest can begin.  I have seen this in my life, that when the pessimism takes you to situation you can’t see a way out of, it is really hard to even attempt to think optimistically. In this situation, Seligman offers some questions to ask yourself, which makes the quest to optimism easier. For example, you can ask yourself:

What if depression is the result of your way of pessimistic thinking, not other way around?

What if depression just arises from setbacks you think pessimistically about?

What if we can unlearn pessimism and acquire the skill of looking setbacks optimistically, would that reduce the feeling of depression?

When I think about these questions, I feel like pessimism doesn’t actually offer anything. Often I hear that pessimists won’t get disappointed, but they won’t get that happy either. I see two layers here first, the decision to change and then on how to do it and what to ask yourself to take the first steps.

Keys of success

Traditional keys of success are based on talent and desire. If the objective fails, often the society thinks that you either didn’t want it enough, or you weren’t talented enough. In his book, Seligman offers another point of view to this. What if failure occurs even when talent and desire are there, but optimism is missing? To me, this is an interesting take because often when I fail in something, I feel like I have the talent and desire to do it, but I break myself with pessimism. I can think for example “this is never going to work” and that doesn’t mean I would lack the talent or desire to make it work, but I lack the belief and optimism to make it work. And like Seligman, I believe that has a bigger effect than the society believes.  Seligman asks the following questions in his book:

What if you can have all the talent and desire necessary—yet if you are a pessimist, you still fail?

What if optimists do better at school, at work and on the playing field?

This last question really makes me think, that would I have done better if I would have been more optimistic? I guess that’s a question I can never get an answer of, but from now on I am going to think about it. I believe that more optimism can provide a better result, even if the talent and desire would be there already.

As overall, the book had other good things about learning optimism too, but these few stood out the most for me. I think I can use these mainly in improving my own mind state, and also if I am ever at a job which requires recruiting people, I am going to take their optimism and pessimism more into accord, and value it as much as talent and desire are valued when applying for the job. Pessimism brings toxicity to the workplace, and that definitely isn’t needed, and it isn’t useful.