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On Optimism

9 years ago999 words

I have to study positive psychology as part of my university degree, which I don't mind at all since I have an interest in that topic in the same way that someone stuck in a pit would have an interest in a ladder. It's sigh-inducing though reading through lecture slides that talk about how optimists are better at everything and live happier lives, but that optimism emerges from a history of positive experiences. It seems like a vicious cycle; those who are already happy have happier experiences, while those who have had no reason to be happy continue to be miserable.

And of course it feels so unfair... I look back at my own life and struggle to remember 'good times', positive memories, but struggle just as much to suppress the torrent of bad experiences that readily pour forth.

I'm aware that that's a symptom of depression... and just as aware that depression arises from conditioning (partly; there's a concept called 'diathesis' that says that genes make some people and not others prone to depression, but that external factors are what determine whether those genes activate or not).

Happiness arises from the combination of two different realms of experience: the affective (emotional) physiological pleasure that arises from in-the-moment everyday events such as food, warmth, relaxation, social contact, sex, etc, and the cognitive (thought-based) sense of satisfaction or purpose that arises from looking at your life as a whole and assessing whether or not it's meaningful and headed in a direction that you like.

But what if you lack those daily pleasures? What if your life's been a mess, like mine? What if you have a list of things you want which you've completely failed to acquire? Can you still be happy and optimistic then? Would it be possible to delude yourself so completely? I wonder if it'd be the same as an atheist trying to believe in God despite all the evidence that swayed them towards atheism in the first place. Is it possible to flip around our deep programming in that way?

Cognitive therapies say that yes, it is... and spiritual teachings agree, to a degree. They both say that it's not what happens in your life that affects your happiness, but how you react to it.

The psychologist Martin Seligman (who looks completely different to what I expected based on his Wikipedia picture!) conceived of three different binary dimensions which we attribute our successes and failures to, with one side of the binary leading to negativity and the other to positivity:

We can blame internal factors ("It's my fault") or external factors (the world outside the self);

We can assume the result is stable ("this always happens") or transient (it was a one-off that won't happen again);

We can label the result as something global ("this is generally the case") or specific ("a particular factor was to blame").

Optimists, for example, tend to assume that positive events are due to internal ("I did this!"), stable ("I always do well at this!") and global ("I'm generally good at this") factors, and that negative events are due to external, transient and specific factors ("it was a rainy day; I'd have done better if the weather hadn't been so bad").

For pessimists, it's the opposite; they assume that positive events are flukes and that negative events are their fault and always the case.

I notice myself falling into this kind of thinking. The other day, I was thinking about how my best friend feels like a 'bug in the code' of my life; I compared her presence to playing a game and finding some kind of super-item that you shouldn't normally have due to a glitch, which you'd use knowing that soon a mod or patch would take it away from you and revert things to how they actually should be. An abnormality that'll be gone soon; something I don't 'deserve'.

The sad thing is, believing that something negative will happen - that you'll be rejected or abandoned, for example - tends to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy anyway... You overreact to little hints that might suggest that the person will disappear, become clingy, and ultimately drive them away by being difficult and unenjoyable to be around. You get what you believed to happen because you believed it would happen.

On the other hand, acting as if you've already got what you want - or that it is coming to you, it's just a matter of time - makes that more likely to happen too. Not in the magical way that that book 'The Secret' claims - you can't become a millionaire just by believing really hard - but it's certainly better to act as if something good is coming your way than to assume a negative. I suppose that's another face of optimism.

I may have had some success with that myself. For all my fears of abandonment, I acted towards my friend from the beginning as if we were already very close, and we quickly became close because of that. If I'd been more hesitant and wary, perhaps that would never have happened.

Anyway, I'm rambling. It is a shame to think that those who are rich get richer, while those who are poor can't afford to bolster their wealth... Happiness comes to those who are happy, but if you've got no reason to be happy, you're stuck. Or so it feels from deep down in my pit.

I'm just grateful that I've been having at least some relatively nice experiences with my friend lately... though it's sad to think that it's taken me so many years just to have a taste of something that other people have in abundance all their life.

(Also, why does my previous post randomly have more than 10,000 views? My first thought is to wince, assume trolls, and regret posting on the internet at all... An example of how my own experiences have conditioned me to react with something that's definitely not optimism.)