![]() "You might think that means there is an optimism gene," Seligman says. Seligman circulated a questionnaire at an annual twins convention (in Twinsburg, Ohio) and found identical twins more similar than fraternals in levels of optimism and pessimism. ![]() About 50 percent is due to inheritable conditions, he says. How do people turn out this way? Lifelong optimism can be explained in one of three ways, says Seligman. "Their view was, I know I have succeeded in the past, and I'm quite confident that if I can look beyond today's problems to a point on the horizon, I know I'm going to get there." But the one thing they had in common was how they all talked about the mountains they had to climb every single day." His subjects kept a perspective on the tasks at hand by placing them within a larger, long-term vision. "For example, there's a conventional wisdom that these are all alpha people who exude aggressiveness and do nothing in life besides work. "I didn't find a lot of other common traits," he says. Garten found every last one of them to be extremely optimistic. Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, interviewed 40 of the world's most successful business executives for his book The Mind of the CEO. Where are all these sunny-side uppers? Jeffrey E. (People who tend to see themselves as responsible for positive situations are more resilient and more likely to bear up under repeated rejection.) And researchers have found that optimists are less likely to develop cancer or to die from heart disease. ![]() Optimists are more productive at certain jobs-one company made sales-force hiring decisions based partially on the outcome of psychological tests. According to Seligman, pessimistic people are two to eight times more at risk of depression, a significant statistic in a country that seems a half step away from putting Prozac in its drinking water. You'll have a better chance of being promoted, fighting off the cold that's been going around, and attracting people to you-platonically and (hubba-hubba) otherwise. If you approach life with a sense of possibility and the expectation of positive results, you're more likely to have a life in which possibilities are realized and results are positive. As Seligman explains, optimism serves as a crucial framework for relating to experiences. For instance, if an optimist encounters a recipe she can't make work, she's likely to perceive the failure as external and temporary ("I'm just having an off day"), while the pessimist makes it internal and indelible ("I'll never learn to cook"). If it's thought about as permanent, unchangeable, and pervasive, that's pessimism." Victories are just the reverse: Optimists think of them as permanent and far-reaching pessimists think of them as fleeting and situation-specific. ![]() ![]() Martin Seligman, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, explains it this way: "If a setback is thought about as temporary, changeable, and local, that's optimism. Optimists, in other words, know how to bounce back. "When you throw them out the window, they land on their feet." Vaughan, MD, author of Half Empty, Half Full: How to Take Control and Live Life as an Optimist, describes it as a psychological righting reflex. Researchers have characterized it as everything from a coping mechanism to a physical patterning of neurobiological pathways established in the earliest years of life. According to experts in the field, optimism is a high-voltage power tool in the life-skills toolbox. You know them: endlessly, unbearably sunny Pollyannas, clearly in denial about the world's harsh realities, skipping along blithely, head in the clouds, and no doubt (everyone else can't help hoping) about to step in something very, very unpleasant.īut optimism is much more than a reckless chirping through life. Many of us have a hunch-though it hasn't been proven beyond the shadow of doubt-that the only category of humanity more annoying than street mimes is relentless optimists. Lise Funderburg argues that optimism isn't the refuge of bubbleheads it's a scientifically proven way to get happier, healthier and even catnippier to the opposite sex. ![]()
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