From Hopelessness to Happiness: A Learnable Life Skill
From Hopelessness to Happiness: A Learnable Life Skill
If life could be graded, Anthony would give his an F. His new job is stressful, his teenage daughter is struggling with depression, he and his wife are fighting a lot lately, and he hates himself for the extra 50 pounds he’s carrying.
Anthony feels hopeless and his life seems depressing and dark. Every setback reinforces his feelings of pessimism and grim certainty that nothing will ever get better.
Barbara’s struggles seem just as daunting. Her husband lost his job two months after the birth of their first child. She is responsible for her elderly mother, who is becoming increasingly frail. To make things worse, her best friend and main support is moving to another state and the landlord just raised the rent by $200. Despite all this, Barbara gives her life a strong B+ and knows there are some A+ days ahead.
Unlike Anthony, Barbara sees her setbacks as temporary obstacles to be overcome. To her, crises are part of life, opportunities for her to gain in wisdom and courage.
Put simply, some people are optimists and others are pessimists. However, optimism isn’t an accident—it’s a skill that can be learned, one that can help us feel better, resist depression and greatly improve our lives.
Summer vacations with family or friends can be the best of times or the worst of times. Endless plane trips, boring hotel rooms, exhausting hours in the car, funky cabins, long lines or six straight days of rain — vacations can be difficult.
On the other hand, exploring new places, sharing experiences with people you enjoy or having time to just goof-off for days at a stretch can become the sweetest memories. Whether you’re spending time with people you love, meeting new friends, reuniting with relatives or getting some much-needed time alone — vacations can be the best thing since summer was invented.
Whatever you’ve planned for your vacation, you’ve done so because you’re hoping for a particular experience. But the same drive to plan for a special trip also comes with high expectations for how we want that experience to go. This summer, watch out for those great expectations and enjoy the surprise of your vacation as it unfolds.
Breaking the “I give up” pattern
Psychologist, clinical researcher and bestselling author Martin Seligman has spent 25 years studying optimism and pessimism. In his book, Learned Optimism, he states that pessimistic thinking can undermine not just our behavior but our success in all areas of our lives.
“Pessimism is escapable,” he writes. “Pessimists can learn to be optimists.”
By altering our view of our lives, we can actually alter our lives, he says. First, he says we must recognize our “explanatory style,” which is what we say to ourselves when we experience a setback. By breaking the “I give up” pattern of thinking and changing our interior negative dialogue, we can encourage what he calls “flexible optimism.” He believes that focusing on our innate character strengths (wisdom, courage, compassion), rather than our perceived failures boosts not just our moods, but our immune system. Research has shown that optimistic people tend to be healthier and experience more success in life; therefore, he encourages parents to develop the patterns of optimism in their children.
Practicing “spiritual optimism” is another way to improve the quality of our lives, writes Joan Borysenko, psychologist, speaker and author of several books, including Fire in the Soul. She encourages people who experience feelings of despair and hopelessness in times of crises to remember it takes courage to live, and that we can find that courage by facing our fears, finding support and using prayer or meditation.
Similar techniques outlined by Dr. David Burns in his book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, have been effective in treating depression. He believes that changing our thinking has a profound effect on our moods, including cases of severe depression. It’s not our lives that depress us, he writes, but our thinking about our lives.
Getting help to change our thinking
Despite all the expert advice, Anthony can’t simply will his thinking into a positive outlook on life. Practices of gratitude or finding support through friendships could certainly help Anthony improve his perspective. But much of what drives pessimism are deeply ingrained negative beliefs that have been reinforced over a lifetime. Untangling those is not just a matter of willpower.
Those negative beliefs are often tied to wounding events in our lives that have left behind memories with powerful beliefs associated with them. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapy that helps people process negative beliefs associated with traumatic memories, removing the power of those events on the psyche. When those beliefs create a sense of hopelessness or unshakeable pessimism about life, working with an EMDR professional can help clear those beliefs and allow a person to regain a more hopeful outlook on their life.
With help, Anthony can learn to be more optimistic and experience a more satisfying future by believing — like Barbara does — that his life is filled with both challenges and opportunities to overcome those challenges.
Author’s content used under license, © Claire Communications
Next Steps
Maybe it’s enough for you to be reminded of the effect optimism has on our quality of life experiences. If so, using this season of thanksgiving to reorient your thinking towards gratitude is one way to encourage an optimistic viewpoint.
However, if you’re experiencing the weight of pessimism as a sense of hopelessness, you may need the help of a professional. If you’d like to work with one of the counselors at Simmeth Counseling Group, you can all our office for a free, 15-minute consultation.
