Using both Optimism amd Pessimism (10th January 2012)
For the first blog of 2012 ( and indeed the first new log for some time) I’d like to examine the related subjects of optimism and pessimism.
So is your glass half full or half empty? Does the statement a pessimist is seldom disappointed resonate with you? Do you always look on the bright side of life?
The world I inhabit (coaching, consultancy and lecturing) tends to favour optimism and positive thinking. We are told that optimism improves our health and extends our lives. Being of an optimistic frame of mind can earn you more money or push you up the greasy pole of career advancement faster.
However, recent research indicates that optimism and pessimism need not be a fixed point of view but mindsets to be adopted depending on the circumstances.
Edward Chang, Professor of Pyschology at the University Of Michigan, has started to investigate the flexible deployment of optimism and pessimism.
Successful people can employ pessimism as a powerful weapon to prepare and motivate themselves for the future. B Cade Masse, an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Yale School of Management, captures it brilliantly saying “Optimism and pessimism are feelings about the future. They help us to manage our expectations and our actions moving forward.
It is also possible for successful people to use pessimism as they produce scenarios for the future mapping out how the world might change. These scenarios benefit and come alive if they are enhanced by offering both perspectives, an optimistic one and a pessimistic one.
Optimism can be energizing and motivational in prompting dynamic action, whilst impending disaster is also be a powerful incentive to get things done to avoid that unhappy outcome.
David Armor at Yale summarises ” The emotional component of optimism and pessimism is what makes them so influential. We can look ahead and anticipate in objective terms what is likely to happen. Both optimism and pessimism bring feelings along with them and these feelings push us into action more forcefully than any rational prediction could”