Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
Sure, you think you’re an optimist. Everyone thinks he or she is an optimist. But we can’t all be optimists, can we?
So think about it, and carefully: The answer could impact your mental health and professional well-being.
According to Bruce Christopher, there’s a sure-fire way to tell: Ask yourself how you deal with life when things don’t go your way.
“Anyone can be positive when things are going great,” said Christopher, a psychologist who delivered a keynote address at the AICPA’s Interchange conference in New Orleans. “The real test is how you act when things don’t go according to plan.”
“Optimism,” Voltaire once said, “is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.” So why, you pessimists might ask, should you strive for a positive attitude, especially when there’s so much to gripe about nowadays?
Three reasons, counters Christopher:
- Your attitude predicts success. Optimists are way more likely to be professionally successful. And if you don’t believe that, read Learned Optimism, by Martin Seligman.
- Your attitude shapes your mood. Good attitude equals good mood … and vice versa.
- Your attitude is contagious. And why? Because of what Christopher calls “The Projection Principle”: The attitude you give to others is reflected back to you. It’s so true. How many times have you found yourself feeling better because someone else in the room is in a good mood?
So what are the secrets to optimism? Christopher found three of them:
- Optimists leap through their fears. They are afraid, but they have the courage to break through their fears.
- They learn to let things go. There’s no road rage among optimists, because they employ what Christopher calls the “999 Rule”: Will this matter to me in nine days? Nine weeks? Nine months? If the answer is no, let it go.
- Optimists find freedom in failure. “They see failure as something they can change the next time around, something to learn from, and temporary,” Christopher said.
Knowing all that, let’s ask the question again: Are you an optimist or a pessimist? What are your secrets to a positive attitude?