Joy 101: Optimism

Welcome to a brand new blog series, Joy 101, in which I’ll be delving into some of the key components of joy. I’ll be exploring what positive psychology tells us about each component, exploring the proven benefits, and of course, giving you some tips on how to invite each one into your life.

In today’s post, I’m going to be exploring with optimism. What is optimism? It’s defined as mental attitude characterised by hope and having confidence in your chances of success and a positive future. Put simply, it’s believing that everything will work out, and adopting an attitude that supports that belief.

For a really long time, psychologists believed that optimism and pessimism were fixed personality traits - they thought you were born as either a glass half full or glass half empty sort of person, and were stuck in your camp for life. Recently though, research has shown that that isn’t the case, and that we can all learn to be more optimistic.

And there’s a big incentive to do just that, because optimism is associated with a whole host of benefits… 

Benefits of being optimistic: 

  • Optimism is really closely linked to happiness. When you have positive expectations for the future you are more likely to feel happy and content. 

  • It’s also linked with a reduction in negative emotions, so you’re less likely to feel down if you’re an optimist. 

  • Optimism is good for your health! There are some really robust and long term studies which have shown that optimists tended to be healthier over time. There are two reasons for this - firstly optimists tend to take better steps to protect their health, engaging in behaviours that protect and improve their health. It’s also thought that having an optimistic explanatory style has been shown to boost your immune system. 

  • There’s some research that suggests optimism could also be linked with greater longevity. An interesting study (often referred to as the nun study) analysed diaries that a group of nuns had kept throughout their lives. Researchers found that the nuns who wrote more optimistically ended up living 10 years longer than nuns who wrote in a more negative way. 

  • Optimism is linked with better performance - people who identify as optimists are less likely to quit, more likely to see things through, more likely to seek ways to continually improve and tend to be more productive as well. 

  • Finally, being optimistic is also believed to help us cope better during difficult times. 

So, now we know all of the ways in which optimism can contribute to a joyful life, and we know that we can all learn to be more optimistic, how do we get started? Here are some tips to help you…

Tips to help you be more optimistic:

Focus on the good 

We have an inherent negativity bias as humans, which means that we naturally give more weight to the negative parts of life. We can start to correct this negativity bias by consciously focusing on the good. Think about your life so far. What have you achieved, in both your career and your personal life? What has gone really well? What role did you play in those things going well? How can you use those skills or learnings to help you pursue future goals? 

Give the Best Possible Self exercise a go

The best possible self exercise is a written positive psychology intervention. It invites you to spend a couple of minutes imagining your life in the future, assuming that everything has gone as well as it possibly could have done and you have achieved everything you want to achieve. Then once you’ve visualised that future self, you spend 20 minutes writing about what you saw. It doesn’t matter what you saw or how you write it, it just matters that you spend 20 minutes writing continuously about what your perfect life looks like for you. It’s okay if you need to repeat or go over things to fill the time. Studies have shown that completing this exercise regularly is really effective for boosting optimism.

Try on different hats

One great way to build optimism is to experiment with both optimism and pessimism. Think about a goal that you have - get really clear on something that you want to achieve and why. Then imagine that you are a real pessimist, the most pessimistic person you can imagine. How do you feel about your goal as a pessimistic person? What are your emotions in relation to that goal. Then - switch! Become the optimistic person who believe that everything is working out perfectly. How do you feel about your goal with this hat on? Do you feel motivated? Ready to take more action? Take a step back and ask yourself, what feels better? Which hat do you want to wear? Which hat is going to let you make progress towards your goal and keep you energised?

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In summary - optimism is great, and we can all learn to be optimistic! I hope this post has inspired you to be a glass half full kind of person, and that you get to experience all the benefits that attitude will bring.

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