Are You An Optimist Or A Pessimist?

How do you feel about the year ahead? Are you an optimist or pessimist?Are such attitudes born into you or do you acquire them? Brenda tends to be an optimist, while David is more of a pessimist. As usual, opposites attract for a reason. David helps balance her rosy "can do" Pollyanna spirit with his practical, "gotta plan for this emergency" attitude. He tells someone he'll arrive in a half hour, knowing it should only take him 20 minutes to get there. Then he surprises the other person by arriving early. Brenda always tries to make people happy by promising over-optimistically, that she'll get there in 15 minutes, knowing full well it will probably take her 25. Which friend would you rather be waiting for?

David doesn't want to disappoint, or be disappointed. As soon as David's football team commits one error or the other team scores a touchdown, he is inclined to say, "There goes the game." He has prepared himself emotionally to lose. Even when Brenda's team is down by 20 in the final quarter, she thinks about the many times teams have come back even from 20 point deficits to win the game. So, frequently pessimism is a self-protective mechanism that serves a useful function-it keeps you from disappointment, even in the simple case of a game. In a larger sense, pessimism keeps you and others you love from getting hurt. That can be good.

Julia is a woman who is frequently cautious and tends to be pessimistic. It is not hard to understand why. When she was growing up, her father first became ill with cancer when she was only eight. She found out about it on her eighth birthday. She was devastated as she was very close to her father. The family had planned to go to Disney World that summer, but because of her father's health and the extra expenses, they couldn't go. During a year of endless treatments, appointments, and waiting, he battled back, and his cancer went into remission. He went through two more bouts with illness and after each, hopes were raised that he would be well. He enjoyed a year or more of good health with each remission. In between the good times, there were many events her father missed as she was growing up. Then he died when she was 15.

If that is the kind of childhood you have had, it is not hard to see why one might develops a certain pessimism about life.

Still, an optimistic spirit breeds happiness and contentment. Psychologists are beginning to study what makes people happy and able to bounce back from setbacks. Perhaps we have spent too much time studying the problems that come from trauma and loss, bad parenting, or alcoholism in the home, and should spend more time researching how to improve well being. A University of Pennsylvania psychologist, Martin E.P. Seligman says in a new book, Authentic Happiness (Free Press), that the time has come for science to seek to understand positive emotion. Others who have studied happiness or optimism say that heredity does have a big role to play in who develops this kind of temperament.

A study of identical twins found that whether they had grown up together or apart, they were very similar in regard to their basic emotional happiness, kind of an "emotional baseline" you are born with. This book says that even those who experience extremes in luck-such as someone who becomes paralyzed or someone who wins the lottery, return to their emotional baseline after about six months of adjustment (Newsweek, Sept. 12, 2002).

Doctors say you can, over time, move your emotional baseline up and improve your ability to look at things more positively. On the flip side, I appreciate those who help me stay grounded in the hard realities of life. We can both learn from each other.

If you're interested, there is more information about:
The most important event of all time and
The most important Book of all time.

email this message to a friend   |   DW Home

Contributed by Melodie Davis from her weekly columnANOTHER WAY (http://www.thirdway.com/aw/).For information on using Another Way in a local newspaper, contact:ANOTHER WAY, 1251 Virginia Ave., Harrisonburg, VA 22801-2497; or call1-800-999-3534; fax at 540-434-5556; or email me at:Melodie@mennomedia.org