I would consider myself an incredibly happy person. Is my life perfect? Absolutely not. In the last few months I broke my foot, my mom was hospitalized for a week due to struggling mental health, my car required expensive repairs, and my family had to put down a cat that we have owned since I was in the 5th grade—all while juggling work and school. But somehow, regardless of what obstacles or setbacks I face, I have been able to remain positive and motivated. But just a year ago, this was not the case. Even a very minor setback would discourage me to the point of having awful anxiety attacks. It is not that my life was any objectively worse or better at the time than it is now, and I’m not on any anxiety medications—I just process thing optimistically. “Optimism is an individual difference variable that reflects the extent to which people hold generalized favorable expectancies for their future” (Carver et al. 2010). Because I have adapted a more optimistic outlook on life with better outcome expectancies, I have gained a positive well-being.
Positive well-being is defined as, “optimal adjustment to life and positive mental health” (Schneider et al. 2012). To me, I know that I have a positive well-being because my anxiety no longer gets in the way of me preforming important tasks or attending planned events, I practice regular self-care, I no longer experience being too depressed to get out of bed, and I am able to adjust to changes and setbacks in life. As someone who spent most of their young adulthood so far crippled by anxiety and depression, being able to say those things about myself is a big deal! And I would say without a doubt, that I owe that sift in my well being to more optimistic.
So how did this shift occur? About three months ago, sometime in the third week of this semester, I came home from work and was venting to my fiancé about how stressed I was with work and school. I was going on and on with negative comment after negative comment, then all of a sudden it hit me how much I had been complaining over the last couple of weeks. It was clear with to me that I had been putting everything through a negative lens and sabotaging my own happiness. I realized that if I was ever going to be happy, I needed to stop wasting my free time being negative and assuming the worst, and instead focus on all the positive things in my life.
The tendency for pessimists to put things in a negative lens doubt their chances of achieving their goals comes from the process of making negative attributions. “An attribution is an inference about why something happened” (Schneider et al 2012). Optimists and pessimists make very different types of attributions. For example, pessimist are more likely to make internal attributions when something bad happens, meaning they blame themselves for it, and more likely to make external attributions when something good happens, meaning they do not give themselves credit for the good things in their lives; optimists are exactly the opposite, giving themselves credit for the good things and not blaming themselves for the bad things(Schneider er al 2012). For example, my optimistic attitude when I was proud of myself for being strong maintaining my straight A’s even though I have had some personal setbacks this semester (internal attribution), but I did not blame myself for breaking my foot and having to miss a couple days of work (external attribution). In the past though, I likely would have said that my classes were just easy and that I was a clumsy idiot for falling and breaking my foot.The attributions of optimists and pessimists also differ in how we see a negative event as effecting or not effecting future events. “Optimists tend to make stable attributions for good things that happen (i.e., the cause of the good event will continue to benefit me), and unstable attributions for bad things that happen (i.e., the cause is temporary and thus unlikely to harm me again). The attributions of pessimists reflect the opposite pattern in which they see the cause of positive events as unstable and the cause of negative events as stable” (Schneider et al 2012). In my case as an optimists, I made the stable attribution that my ability to juggle work and school through these recent setbacks means that I will be able to face future setbacks; and the unstable attribution that just because my mom is struggling with her mental health now does not mean that she will always be sick, but rather that she is very likely that she will be better after seeking help. But without my optimistic outlook, I more likely would have seen it as me barely having gotten through the tough time and that I wouldn’t be able to handle it if anything else went wrong. I also would have told myself that my mom’s poor mental health would never improve and that I would always have to worry about her. Finally, the attributions of optimists and pessimists differ an how they apply the occurrence of a negative event to events in other areas of their lives. “Optimists tend to make global attributions for good events (i.e. the cause has benefited me in this area and can also benefit me in other areas) whereas they tend to make specific attributions for negative events (i.e. the cause has harmed me in this area but will not in other areas). As you might expect, pessimists tend to explain good and bad things that happen with the opposite pattern of attributions” (Schneider et al 2012). In my case, when I found out my car needed to be repaired and that it would cost a lot I was stressed, but because I knew the problem was specific to the situation I did not have an anxiety attack and decide that my entire day was ruined. Because I have a pattern of using these multiple attribution styles associated with optimism, you could say I have an optimistic explanatory style.
Research supports my claim that my overall quality of life is greatly improved due to my shift to more optimistic explanatory style. “Optimism has been linked to better emotional well-being, more effective coping strategies, and even to better outcomes in several areas of physical health” (Carver et al. 2010). I would say that all of those things are true for myself: I am less anxious, I am able to cope with stress, and I am sleeping and eating better than before. “The advantages of optimism also seem to translate into the domains of interpersonal relationships: optimists are better liked than pessimists, they benefit from their natural tendency to see things in the best light, and they appear to engage more productive effort in the sorts of problem solving that keep relationships alive” (Carver er al. 2010). I have seen this point in action both in my romantic relationship and my friendships. Looking back, I used to spend my time catching up with friends talking and venting about things I was stressed or upset about; now, I instead try to talk about positive things that I am excited about. While it is nice to have friends and parters to vent to, I have found recently that my relationships thrive more when I focus on the bright side. I hope that in the future I am able to continue to maintain my optimistic explanatory style, and in turn maintain the positive well being I have found.
References
Charles S. Carver, Michael F. Scheier, Suzanne C. Segerstrom, Optimism, Clinical Psychology Review, Volume 30, Issue 7, 2010, Pages 879-889, ISSN 0272-7358, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.01.006.
Schneider, F.W., Gruman, J.A., Coutts, L.M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.