Author: Martin E.P. Seligman
Martin E.P. Seligman
Reading time: 26 minutes
Synopsis
Why do some people seem to attract good luck, while others always face problems and feel sad? Pessimists Don’t Get Kissed (1991) explains how negative thinking has spread in our society. It shows why this is harmful and how we can learn to think optimistically again.
What You Will Learn: Understand Pessimism and Become More Optimistic.
You might think it doesn’t matter if you see a glass as half empty or half full. It doesn’t change how much liquid is actually in the glass. As long as everyone has enough to drink, it seems okay. Right? Let’s be clear: No, it’s not okay. How we see life is more than just a view. It has real effects. Studies show that optimistic people live happier, more successful, and longer lives. But how can this be?
To understand why optimistic people succeed, you must compare them with people who are always sad. First, you need to understand what it means to have an optimistic or pessimistic view of the world. These Blinks will show that the main difference is how people explain their problems. Our ways of explaining things show how we see the world overall.
In these Blinks, you will learn:
- why pessimistic people are bad salespeople,
- why girls often blame themselves for problems, and
- how to use the ABC method to break pessimistic thinking habits.
Blink 1 – How We Explain Things Shapes Our Outlook on Life.
Imagine an optimistic person and a pessimistic person work at a company. They just lost an important client. The optimist might say, “This client didn’t want to buy today. Hopefully, things will be better next time.” The pessimist says, “I always do everything wrong. I will scare away every client.” These two statements might be a bit strong, but they clearly show the difference between the two ways of thinking.
A key point here is how lasting a problem is seen. Optimists know that problems are not forever. Our optimist says that something went wrong only “today.” This means he believes things could be very different tomorrow. But for the pessimist, something “always” goes wrong. For them, problems are permanent. With this mindset, they might not even try again tomorrow or the day after.
Another factor is how widely a problem applies. For optimists, problems are rare. For pessimists, they are normal – at least in their minds. The optimist focuses on the specific thing in front of them. The pessimist, however, makes it a general rule. In our example, the optimist talks about “this client.” But the pessimist talks about “every” client. Here too, the pessimist expects the problem to happen again in all similar situations. This makes them feel it’s not worth trying again. The optimist, however, will do better “next time.”
Finally, they differ in how they look for causes. The optimist thinks about the situation or sometimes other people. But the pessimist almost always blames themselves. So, in our example, the pessimist believes they did everything wrong. The optimist, on the other hand, blames “outside circumstances.”
To be clear: Optimists and pessimists are different in three ways. These are lastingness, scope, and personalization. If you have ever said something pessimistic, don’t worry. You can work on all three of these areas. Inside everyone is an optimist, waiting to live life with more hope.
Blink 2 – Pessimism Is Learned, Optimism Can Be Learned.
Have you ever seen a baby that was pessimistic? Probably not. Seligman says that people are not born pessimistic. They become pessimistic later in life. A very important idea here is called learned helplessness.
Seligman showed how this develops with a famous experiment using dogs. In this experiment, dogs received electric shocks. Some of them could stop the shocks by touching a button with their nose. The other group had to suffer the situation without being able to change anything. They got used to being passive and doing nothing about the danger. The interesting part was: Even when they later had a chance to stop the shocks with a button, they stayed passive. The learned helplessness had become fixed.
The same can be seen in humans. This depends on whether you have felt in control of your life or if you feel helpless against fate. People who have had many bad experiences where they felt like a helpless victim are more likely to have a pessimistic view of the world.
Our way of thinking is strongly shaped in our childhood, especially by our parents and teachers. Children copy the important people in their lives. If these people have a pessimistic view of the world, children often adopt this mindset.
How boys and girls are treated differently can also lead to different basic attitudes. If a boy gets a bad grade in math, he might be told he didn’t pay enough attention in class. But a girl might be told she is simply not talented enough with numbers. Studies show that girls more often blame themselves for problems. Boys, however, tend to look for external reasons. Blaming oneself leads to a negative self-image. Such childhood experiences might also explain why adult women are more likely to develop depression.
The learned thinking patterns are also very important in childhood when real crises happen. If a child sees that crises can be handled and problems can be solved, they are less likely to see problems as bigger than they are. So, it is not always bad if children face crises early. This is true as long as adults show them that there is a way out.
Blink 3 – A Positive Attitude Makes Us Healthier.
If we are pessimistic, why should we change our mindset at all? The simple answer: Optimistic people do better.
First, people with a positive view of life have a better immune system. In other words: A pessimistic attitude makes you get sick more easily. If we work on our ways of explaining things, our whole body benefits. For example, studies have shown that an optimistic attitude clearly improves the immune system of cancer patients.
Also, optimists are usually much more active. They take better care of themselves and their bodies. Someone who trusts that what they do has a purpose is more likely to follow healthy routines. Often, it is simply belief that can move mountains.
Once we become optimists, bad things happen to us less often. Researchers believe that pessimists face bad luck more often because they are passive. Of course, this does not include big life tragedies – those affect everyone. The higher number of unpleasant events in their lives not only makes pessimists stick to their mindset but also makes them sick. Such events cause stress, which is known to cause illness.
Finally, optimists are also better connected with people. It is easier for them to keep friendships. Because of this, they are more likely to have a trustworthy person to talk to when they are not feeling well. Such a person helps a lot to find a way out of a crisis or just to share bad feelings. Both of these are healthy.
Overall, it is definitely worth looking at the world more positively. But does this mean it’s bad if we describe ourselves as pessimists? The next Blink will show: probably yes.
Blink 4 – The Feeling of Helplessness Can Lead to Depression.
In the Western world, depression is spreading like an epidemic. About one-quarter of the population suffers from depression at least once in their life. But what causes this illness?
Traumatic experiences and biological factors play a part. But they cannot explain the whole problem. For example, if one sibling has depression, the chance is high for other siblings too. However, it is not the only reason. Also, important negative events are not the only cause of depression. We do react to certain situations with mild depressive signs, like a bad mood or feeling tired. But feeling sad is not the same as having depression.
Also, everyone will at some point face feelings like deep sadness, loss, or failure. But not everyone gets depressed because of this. Here again, the key factor is how we look at the situation. Or, as we like to call it: our ways of explaining things.
Similar to the dog experiment, Seligman showed in a study with people that they can learn helplessness. He put his test subjects in a room with unbearable noise. He placed a keyboard with numbers on the table in front of them. Their task was to turn off the noise using this keyboard. However, for half of the subjects, the keyboard was rigged. They could not turn off the noise, no matter what they did. This group, who had experienced helplessness, showed signs of depression in studies after the experiment.
With this, Seligman found a very important factor for depression: the belief that one’s own actions are useless. So, the illness can indeed be caused by bad events in our lives, but only if we believe that we cannot change anything about the situation. This means that optimistic people are less likely to be at risk of depression.
Blink 5 – Optimists Do Better in Most Areas of Life.
Optimists are not only more protected against mental illnesses. They also have many advantages in their free time, for example, in sports. Seligman and his colleagues found this out when they studied the thinking patterns of the Berkeley swimming team athletes.
The experiment went like this: Within a certain time, each swimmer broke their personal record. However, after their fastest swim, their coaches told them they had done much worse. This was very frustrating for the athletes, who had rightly felt good about their performance. The pessimistic club members swam much slower in the next round. Optimists, however, swam just as fast or even faster.
Even if you are not naturally talented in sports, an optimistic attitude will help you. In school, for example, the effects have long been proven. This was shown in an experiment by Seligman. Students were first identified as optimists and pessimists and then divided into groups. They were given math problems. In the first round, it was an easy problem that neither group had trouble with. But then, the experiment leaders gave them an unsolvable problem. The pessimistic children quickly gave up and refused to work on the task further. Optimistic children kept trying solution strategies that had helped them with the previous task.
The question now is: What did the children learn from this frustrating experience? In the last round, they were given a solvable problem again. They also had to guess how well they thought they would do on such tasks in the future. The pessimists thought they could solve about 50% of the tasks. The optimists, however, thought they could solve about 90%. And they solved the task much better, as expected. This shows: Children who learned pessimistic ways of thinking from their parents do worse in school on average.
Blink 6 – Optimists Handle Work Setbacks Better.
Some people could work anywhere and be successful in any job. For them, the secret probably lies in their ways of explaining things.
Let’s take jobs where you face a lot of rejection. In sales, for example, how you deal with rejection decides if you stay in the business, or if you give up and look for another job. The US insurance company Metropolitan, for instance, hires 5,000 new agents every year. Their hiring process is very thorough. The company says it costs over $30,000 to properly train a new agent. Despite this, Metropolitan has a high turnover rate. On average, 80% of employees leave the company by choice after only four years.
Cold calling is still a key part of insurance sales in the United States. This typically brings a lot of rejection. Studies showed that only agents who contacted at least ten potential customers a day and were not bothered by rejections stayed longer. Those who gave up usually quit their job sooner or later.
Here, too, Seligman and his colleagues studied the attitude of new employees during the selection process. He advised the insurance company to hire applicants who showed a high level of optimism, even if they had only average scores in their tests. The agents hired based on his advice actually performed better on average in the following years, compared to those chosen only by their test scores.
So, career success needs much more than just some talent and an impressive CV. Studies show that a person’s attitude contributes much more to how their career goes, especially in areas where we might face many setbacks. So, the best ways to choose applicants are motivation, suitability, and of course, optimism. But if we don’t yet have the positive outlook we want, we should still not give up on our career. As mentioned before, anyone can become an optimist. But how?
Blink 7 – Use the ABC Method to Analyze Your Thinking Patterns.
After the last few Blinks, even strong pessimists are probably convinced. They now believe a more positive attitude always pays off, in a general sense, and also literally. So, how do we best become a cheerful, positive person?
Well, first, understanding is the first step to getting better. To gain this understanding of one’s negative thinking patterns, the American psychologist Albert Ellis developed the ABC method.
It works in three steps where you must observe yourself: adversity (or the activating event), belief (or personal conviction), and finally consequence (or reaction). An activating event could be, for example, that someone important to you does not call back. A pessimistic belief might then be that the person does not like you, that you are not pleasant to be with, or even that you are not worthy. The reaction then is a bad mood for the rest of the day.
At first, it can be hard to find these three things in everyday life. This is because pessimistic thinking patterns usually happen without us knowing. But it is worth finding at least five of these ABC chains in your own life. This will help you understand how you talk negatively to yourself.
In short, you need to look for answers to these questions: What causes the negativity? This could be anything, from an argument with your partner, to a missed parking spot, to forgotten groceries. How do we see this situation? Here, it is important to separate thoughts from feelings. Feelings are part of the reaction. Ways of seeing things include thoughts like “I feel useless,” “I am a bad mother,” “I always forget everything,” but also “I did that really well.” Finally, the last question is: How do you deal with it and how do you feel? Some people cry, others shout and get angry, and still others feel ashamed.
It is important to understand that your reactions depend a lot on your inner beliefs, and this combination leads to repeated patterns of behavior. The next Blink will show how you can recognize these behavior patterns.
Blink 8 – How We Think Is How We Feel and Act.
Let’s say you work in an office and urgently need to reach a client by phone. You call again and again, but your client just won’t answer. Quite frustrating – and possibly an activating event for a pessimistic thinking pattern.
At this point, the situation can go in different ways. You might think the client is just busy. The reaction: You leave a message, plan to try again tomorrow, and don’t think about it anymore.
But if you have different beliefs, you react differently. In the second case, you might think the client is not answering because they don’t want to do business with you. This not only leads to low self-esteem but might even make you give up and stop calling. So, the example shows: Your existing beliefs control how you act.
And this is true not only for client calls but for all of life. Such situations are especially memorable for children. If you have children, you should talk to them about their typical “ABCs.” This can give them a new way of looking at things. For example, if your child’s best friend sits next to a new child at lunch in kindergarten, your child might react differently.
One belief could be: “My friend doesn’t like me anymore and prefers other friends.” Your child reacts by feeling hurt and rejected. An alternative belief that a parent could show in this situation is that your child’s friend is just very kind, and they want to welcome the new child. As a reaction, your child could then sit with them, feel confident, and perhaps start a friendship with the new child.
To work on your reactions, you must first start with your beliefs. But how can you actively change these?
Blink 9 – The Right Questions Help You Overcome Negative Beliefs.
In theory, we are now well prepared to challenge the deep-rooted pessimist in our mind. We know that an optimist believes setbacks are temporary, one-time events, and that they are not mainly your fault. But teaching yourself this way of thinking is not easy at all. After all, you have to overcome years of thinking patterns. The following three questions should help you do this best:
The first question you should ask yourself is: Is that even true? Is there proof for what you believe? If one client doesn’t want to buy from you, does that really mean you are bad at your job? How do you explain the five sales you made this week then?
The second question is: Is there another explanation? This question helps you consider other causes apart from yourself, for example, the situation. If your colleagues stop talking as soon as you enter the room, it doesn’t necessarily mean they were talking badly about you. Maybe they just finished their topic. Finally, you can think about what would happen if your beliefs were really true. Would it really be the end of the world?
Once you have practiced this a bit, you can move on to the next step: externalizing. Here, you put your thoughts into the mouth of someone who is not you, and then you defend yourself against them. For example, a good friend accuses you as strongly as you usually accuse yourself of always forgetting everything. Your task is then to loudly defend yourself against this. You can even try this exercise with your children, but you must always make sure that the child truly defends themselves, and that you do not keep giving them self-doubt.
With this, your mental toolbox is now complete. If you regularly use it, you are well on your way to becoming a happier, healthier, and perhaps even more athletic optimist.
Summary
The main message of these Blinks is:
Pessimism means much more than seeing a glass half empty. It is a learned way of thinking that leads to helplessness. In the worst case, it can grow into depression. But if you recognize your old thinking patterns and question them with the right view, you will live a proven healthier and more successful life.
What you can do:
See it through the ABC Method.
Next time your partner is short on the phone, don’t immediately think the worst. On the B-level (belief), if you replace thoughts like “Maybe something is wrong with the relationship” with more likely ones like “Maybe she is just in a hurry,” you will tend to have less annoyed reactions.
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We work very hard to prepare the main ideas of books so that you can learn a lot from them. Each Blink is edited and checked by at least six people. We welcome your feedback at [email protected].
For Further Reading: The Power of Positive Emotions by Barbara L. Fredrickson
The Power of Positive Emotions (2009) presents findings from Positive Psychology. It shows with many examples how positive emotions can change our whole life. In the following Blinks, you will learn which strategies lead to more good feelings and a healthier outlook on life.
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