A shared universe › Blog › Optimism can be learned · Español
You can learn to be more optimistic, and it isn’t about thinking everything will turn out fine but about how you explain the bad things that happen to you: as something that will last for ever, spoils everything and is your fault, or as something temporary, limited and with several causes. That explanation can be reviewed with practice. Two people lose the same job. One thinks “I’m useless, it always happens to me”. The other thinks “the company was going through a bad patch; I’ll find something else”. The difference is not in what happened to them, but in how they tell it to themselves.
The psychologist Martin Seligman spent years studying this way of explaining what happens, known as explanatory style. With Christopher Peterson he published in 1984 a paper proposing this style as a risk factor for depression.
When something bad happens, we ask ourselves three questions without realising: will it last for ever or will it pass?, does it spoil everything or just one part?, is it my fault or did other things play a part?
A 1986 meta-analysis that brought together 104 studies with almost fifteen thousand people confirmed it: explaining bad events as down to yourself, lasting and all-embracing was clearly and repeatedly linked to depression. With good events it was the other way round, though less strongly: people who put them down to luck, to something passing or to an isolated detail also tended to be worse off.
Whoever answers “for ever”, “everything” and “me” sinks more easily. These are associations: on their own they don’t prove that this way of thinking causes the sadness, but they do show that the two go together.
That way of explaining things is not your fate: you can learn to review it. The University of Pennsylvania created a programme that teaches 9 to 14-year-olds to spot their thoughts, check whether they are accurate and look for other explanations. According to the university itself, in around twenty controlled studies it has prevented or reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety, although it acknowledges that some findings have been inconsistent.
It isn’t about fooling yourself or repeating cheerful phrases, but about arguing with yourself the way we would argue with someone who accuses us without evidence.
At first it is hard, because the pessimistic explanation arrives on its own and very fast. With practice, that pause to review it may start to come sooner. If your thoughts keep going round and round, you might find it helpful to read about rumination and how to get out of it.
It is not denying problems or forcing yourself to be fine. There are days when the sad explanation is the true one. Learned optimism means not adding a “for ever” and an “everything” that aren’t true to what already hurts.
Nor is it about always putting the blame elsewhere. Recognising your own part is healthy; what weighs you down is turning one mistake into proof that everything about you is wrong.
And it isn’t quite the same as hope, although the two are alike. We talk about hope in the article on hope.
If sad explanations have become the only way you look at what happens to you, or they come with a low mood that lasts for weeks, it is worth talking to your GP or a psychologist. Reviewing your thoughts with someone who knows how is easier than doing it without help.
In A shared universe you can light a star with “What I hope for”, without names and without anyone knowing who you are. And sometimes it is the words other people leave you that lend you the optimism you don’t have today.
If what you were hoping for arrives, you can come back and say “It went well”, and thank the people who kept you company.