The ideas behind how to develop an optimistic attitude works through the power of justifiable non-negative thinking. Optimism correlates to enhanced well-being and success.
At a glance with, pessimists tend to believe that bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. A negative explanatory style hallmarks pessimism. On a different note, optimists gravitate towards the belief that adversity or defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case. Forward with, they do not condemn themselves over a defeat. Instead, they lay the blame on circumstances, bad luck or others. This attitude primes you as an optimist, to see a bad situation as a challenge to try harder.
The Good Of Optimism
To note with, pessimists give up more easily while optimists do much better in the various dimensions of living. From the foregoing, how to develop an optimistic attitude pays off well.
Amid all, when life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, the optimist weathers them better. Along with this truth, how to develop an optimistic attitude, centers on learning to speak to yourself about your setbacks from a more encouraging viewpoint. It aims to increase your control over the way you think about adversity. Furthermore, it seeks to liberate you from the tyranny of pessimism and a negative explanatory style. With an optimistic attitude, you cease looking at bad events in their most permanent, pervasive, and personal light.
Expatiating further, when we encounter adversity, we react by thinking about it. In quick time, our thoughts transform to beliefs. Our beliefs affect what we feel and do. They are responsible for our dejection and giving-up, on one hand, and our well-being and constructive action, on the other. On to good, how to develop an optimistic attitude, points to changing the pessimistic or negative explanatory style. Seeing the link between adversity, belief, and consequences is a first step in the process. When we explain bad events as the result of permanent, pervasive, and personal traits like being lousy, selfish, inconsiderate, or inadequate, dejection and giving-up follow.
How To Develop An Optimistic Attitude In 5 Steps
1. Be Objective About The Adversity
From a leaky faucet to a frown from a friend, a baby that won’t stop crying, inattentiveness from a spouse, adversity can be anything. Being objective about the situation means recording your description of what happened, not your evaluation of it. To buttress further, if you had an argument with your spouse, you might record that she was unhappy under adversity, not the inference that she was unfair.
2. Note How You Interpret Adversity, Your Beliefs About It
Separate your thoughts from your feelings. “I feel incompetent because I blew my diet” stands as a belief, not a feeling. It’s accuracy can be evaluated.
3. Record your feelings and what you did in the wake of adversity
Let your awareness guide you to write your feelings and actions. “I feel sad.” “I had no energy.” “I went back to bed.” “I told him he was untrustworthy.”
4. Dispute Your Disturbing Beliefs
Disputing the overwhelming beliefs that follow adversity, enables you to change your reaction to them, from dejection and giving-up to activity and good cheer. To illustrate with, if an adversity features as doing poorly in an examination, the attending belief could stand as “I’m just stupid and inadequate” while the feeling could be “I feel totally dejected and useless.” You can dispute the irrational, disturbing belief. “I’m blowing things out of proportion.” “A lot of other things going on in my life take time away from my studies.” “Now, I know how much work I need to put into my studies in order to do better in the future.” “This one-off event is not enough to label me stupid.”
On the same level with, an adversity can headline as a situation where you view suspiciously your spouse or partner’s interaction with another. This pessimistic attitude draws in feelings of jealousy, abandonment, and resentment, and the belief that your partner does not care much about you. You can dispute this belief and elevate your energy. “I’m overreacting.” “She actually spent more time with me than the other person.” “I don’t need to be baby-sitted.” “Her not clinging to me at all times, shows that she feels secure enough about us.” I can mingle and meet people on my own.” “She knows that I know she loves me.” “We’ve been together for a long time, and she’s never broached the topic of splitting up or seeing other people.”
5. Feel Yourself Energised
When you effectively dispute your disturbing beliefs, you change your feelings from despair to hope; and your course of action, from withdrawal to plunging ahead. So, search for evidence pointing to the distortions in your catastrophic, pessimist explanations. Our pessimistic reactions to adversity often headline as overreactions. For good, we have ourselves energised as we successfully dispute our pessimistic, negative beliefs.
How to develop an optimistic attitude works through the power of justifiable non-negative thinking.
I completely agree the optimistic outlook makes one thrive. This is a very interesting take on it. I feel like I’m neither an optimist or a pessimist, but somewhere in between the two. I use them both to my advantage depending on the situation.
A lot of critical self-reflection is necessary to move past our limiting beliefs and moments of negativity. What we believe in grows, so to believe in better, we must consistently reflect.
In my life, I am guided by the slogan “As you radiate, so you attract”. I think that life should always be viewed from the brighter, more optimistic side. There will always be ups and downs in life, but we need to keep a positive attitude and believe in a better tomorrow. I really liked the post.
This is what I’m all about. Seeing the glass half full, rather than half empty. Watching your thoughts and words are important and reframing to positive.
Optimism is a must-have. It’s very easy to be pessimistic and that leads nowhere. Overall, a great read.
Love, love, love this post. When you sit down and rationally evaluate the situation, it is a lot easier to sort out your feelings and see things more clearly, which is something that I am so glad that I eventually learned. Sure, sometimes it takes me a few minutes, or longer, to gather myself depending on the situation, but in the end, I am able to calm down and regroup – and my entire life has changed because I have trained myself to develop a more positive mindset. I truly hope this post helps teach people to do the same, because it can do wonders in so many aspects of their lives.
“Separate thoughts from feelings…” So true. We tend to let our feelings rule over us and allow the negative voices in our heads take over and undermine our capabilities. I constantly talk myself out of that.
Great read! I like what you said about being objective about the situation. And recording the description not what I interpret out of it. Many times they can be interpreted wrongly and we end up being sad or disappointed about nothing at all.