Two Fundamentals Of Optimism
How a positive attitude promotes overcoming
I have always struggled with understanding Optimism. I had a general idea that I gained from popular culture. Just thinking everything would automatically happen as intended seemed logically inconsistent.
Recently, on a long drive, I was listening to a talk by Earl Nightingale called “The Strangest Secret” [1] which I recorded on my phone. I would alternate between listening to it briefly and then thinking about it to internalize the concepts. Then it clicked, and I got a new insight I wanted to share.
Understanding Struggles
When working towards a goal, we may be faced with or foresee various kinds of struggles. I think they can be categorized as follows:
- Internal struggles
Internal resistance comes from our thinking and action habits that hinder or distract us from making progress. This is in opposition to deliberate action and conscious effort. For example, irrational fears called phobia, aversion to harmless discomfort in the form of boredom, or negative self-talk degrading our self-confidence. This prevents us from realizing our potential because of self-imposed limitations. - External struggles
External resistance is the objective problem that we need to solve to make progress. For example, when training for a Marathon, some of the external struggles we need to overcome involve consistently finding time for training, nutrition, and finding a good place to run.
In any situation, good or bad, the best we can do is full-hearted constructive action to tackle external struggles. And for this, we need the full cooperation of ourselves to start with. This is where an optimistic attitude in the form of faith and belief in oneself comes to the rescue. This doesn’t mean expecting that things will fall into our laps without any effort. It means that we can pay the price to reach our goals. It also does not mean we ignore reality and live in the delusion of our abilities and skills. It is the faith that we can develop new skills through consistent practice and keep progressing despite obstacles, setbacks, and struggles.
With a can-do attitude, we use confirmation bias to our advantage. It is a very innate and powerful bias that causes our perceptions to accept facts that confirm our beliefs. I will present two optimistic attitudes that take advantage of this bias. As the saying goes:
It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! — Earl Nightingale
Fundamentals Of Optimism
Here are some of the ways that we can do this:
1. Believe that we are destined to succeed
Giving up is one of the biggest causes of not reaching our goals. We may give up on a worthy cause because we anticipate a greater risk for the reward due to a negative situation that confirms and fuels doubt. Consequently, we start thinking that the reward is not worth the effort. This reduces our motivation and creates internal resistance.
Believing that we will succeed makes us view the failure or difficult situation positively. As we don’t have any self-doubt about finally reaching our goal, when the going gets tough, there is no self-doubt to feed on it and hinder us from giving our best effort. Dorothea Brande, the writer, went even further by saying:
Act as if it were impossible to fail — Dorothea Brande
Belief in success does not mean that we don’t have to work hard. The difference between belief and expectation is that the latter implies entitlement. Not getting something that we are entitled to cause frustration and disappointment. On the other hand, faith in our abilities will ensure that we will continue to take action because there is no doubt about reaching the goal.
Persistence is simply another word for faith — Earl Nightingale
Confirmation bias to support our belief will enable us to see what we can learn and control to move forward by automatically uncovering paths through obstacles.
2. Anti-paranoid attitude: The universe is conspiring to HELP us
Most of us don’t have a favorable opinion about the universe. We think that the universe is either indifferent or is trying to make things worse. Of course, I am not a physicist, but this default belief comes from the law of thermodynamics that entropy always increases. It is a fundamental law of nature that begs the question, are we using our perpetually increasing entropy by looking at how the universe is hindering us or constructively looking at what opportunity it is providing us for progress?
There are no failures only feedback — Brian Tracy
The Anti-paranoid attitude is from Brian Tracy, who is a big proponent of positive thinking and action. It is a fact: every situation has aspects that hamper us as well as those that promote progress. Moreover, the things that hinder us today inform us about critical problems. Discovering and addressing these problems is essential because they will give the biggest reward.
Final thoughts
As humans, we are all endowed with a brain too big for body size in the animal kingdom. Ironically, the fatal dangers we encountered throughout our evolutionary history have caused us to be biased toward negative thinking and threat detection. Most of these fears are irrelevant in the relatively safe modern life but drive self-imposed limitations. Therefore, it is our prerogative and responsibility to think positively and act constructively to realize our full potential. This article presents two fundamental mindsets for developing an optimistic attitude.
Reference
[1] “You become what you think about” by Earl Nightingale ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh8MnjYgq-I&list=PL4jmlfzAQ2LmUiwXOJjWFmZnzWkksdqCs&index=1&t=1650s
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