Resilience – Learning to Become More Optimistic

August 27, 2012
Posted by Jan Lawrence

Share with a colleague

Even the most pessimistic thinker can learn to become more optimistic.  The following 4 steps will help develop a more positive attitude.

Step 1:  Get into the habit of thinking with a positive attitude

Step 2:  Become more aware of your self-talk
What stories do you tell yourself when things start to go wrong?  Negative self-talk without doubt influences our subconscious mind.  The more self aware you become of the negative self-talk, the better chance you have of reframing and using more of a positive self-talk.

Step 3:  Ask yourself better questions
One of the most effective and quickest ways to improve the quality of your self-talk is to ask yourself better questions.

Examples:

Instead of asking yourself
“Why does this always happen to me?”

Replace with
“What do I need to learn from this situation so it does not happen to me again?”

Instead of asking yourself
“Why am I feeling so depressed?”

Replace with
“What do I need to do to have more energy and happiness?”

Regardless of the situation you find yourself in, asking better questions will improve your attitude.  It sounds simple, and it is simple.

Step 4:  Always set positive goals
Goals are dreams with legs and can be used to create a positive attitude.  Try to always set goals in the positive.

Negative goal:
“I will not eat any unhealthy foods and will keep away from sweet things.”

Positive version:
“I enjoy eating healthy, low calorie foods and will eat this way for the next month.”
Positive psychology research has found that focussing on a positive goal is much more effective than focussing on a negative goal!

Exercise

Using a challenging situation you are familiar with, think about the negative self-talk you may have used in the past and write down if you could have asked yourself better questions.

Putting challenging situations into perspective

Think about or write down your challenging situation:

Write down the best case scenario below:

How likely (1- 5)

Write down the worst case scenario below:

How likely (1- 5)

List solutions here:

Learning Realistic Optimism is part of our Courses, details can be found here