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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video we're gonna talk about optimism okay welcome back so let's crack into this optimism let's talk about why optimism is important what optimism is some details about the different aspects of optimism I think you're gonna find that very interesting we can dissect it quite a bit this is a topic that has been studied by by many researchers in the positive psychology movement just very recently in the last forty or thirty years and then we're gonna give you some practical ways to start to actually build up your optimism you want to be more optimistic yeah it's awesome I love feeling optimistic I love being able to look forward to my future so for me that's like huge this exercise that I'm going to share with you at the end of video it's gonna be huge so stay with me it's simple but it's really powerful and it's really gonna build up your optimism in a very practical way all right so let's get into this so first of all why is optimism something that we should care about what's important about it well a lot of the information I bring to here comes from dr. Martin Seligman and he is one of the leaders the positive psychology movement right now and he published a seminal work I don't remember exactly what it was but it was like 30 or 40 years ago he published this this brilliant work and a book called learned optimism or what he did is they he did a lot of research about how optimism works and he looked at the effects of optimism in business in the workplace and social situations just in our private lives and he looked at all the different variables that are involved he really broke it down did the research found ways to actually build up optimism and a lot of my information is coming from there so one of the things that they found in that research is they found that optimism is important for success in life people that are more optimistic or just more successful why is this the reason this is I think ultimately we'll boil it down to here is to distance when you're able to remain optimistic you're able to stick with the process you're able to stick on the path and you're able to bust past many more obstacles that a pessimistic person would and you simply see more opportunities you try more things and when that happens what do you think does that make you more successful or does that make you less successful right how could you possibly be unsuccessful if you are super super persistent if you're super super hopeful if you're willing to try every Avenue if you're willing to do it all and you're just willing to go all out and test it all and still remain hopeful and still remain happy still remain cheerful still remain confident I mean isn't that something that you want to have as a personal trait I mean I know that that sounds awesome I can just see all the different places in my life where I failed where I've fallen off track or I wasn't able to to do as much as I wanted at the gym or with my nutrition or with my job or my career or some project that I started you know things that I procrastinated on you can just see that if I was more if I was more optimistic in those situations I would have been able to push through a little bit more just a little bit more and sometimes that's all it takes is just a little bit extra push one extra obstacle that you get through and then you get a new resurgence like a second a second wind of motivation and then that carries you through but in the meantime you need that optimism so some of the most successful people that you find in the world and in some of the biggest corporations and companies out there are extremely optimistic and they did Studies on this and they actually proved it and a lot of companies actually started to use this research and started to give their employees tests when they were hiring employees they would look and they would specifically test the employee not on their technical skills but they would test the employee on his outlook on life and on his optimism level and they would hire the people that are more optimistic for example they did this in the insurance industry in the life insurance industry because what they found is that for example for salesman optimism is one of the leading factors one of the critical factors for their sales success and what they found is that the people the salesman in a life insurance company for example the ones that outsell everybody else those are usually the most optimistic and why is that because selling life insurance requires a lot of optimism you have to do a lot of cold calling you have to be out there talking with clients with prospects and that whole process can be very demoralizing if you go out there and you call one client and that client rejects you and he says no I'm not interested in life insurance and you get a second client who says no and a third client and a fourth client and then ten clients later most of us most normal people would be so demoralized that we would say screw this this this cold calling business doesn't work it's too painful if like I get rejected too much and so we would get so hurt by it that we would quit because we would assume that because we got 10 rejections that we'll keep getting rejections but the optimistic person he'll get 10 rejections and he'll say to himself okay I guess Henry Jekyll's but this 11th one this 11th called this might be the one and then sure enough he makes that 11th call and he nails it he lands it and so he he gets his success and then he just builds on it and builds on it and builds on it and this is actually very practical you can see this in sales numbers for the top salesman in the country you've got to be very optimistic if you're doing cold call sales so you can just see how this might translate and apply to something that you're doing in your life right how many projects have you fallen off track with how many diets right exactly how many things do you know you need to be doing but you're not doing them because you tell yourself that they're not going to work that you've tried it but it's never gonna happen that's you being pessimistic so being optimistic is great for your success level and performance level I think it's also good because it just makes you feel good when you're optimistic you feel better you're more cheerful and it helps you avoid things like depression depressive episodes nobody likes to be in those in those holes right all right so what is optimism ultimately you know if we define optimism it's basically a hopeful outlook for the future if you think that your future is gonna be better than today then you're gonna be optimistic you're gonna be hopeful you know good stuff is coming if you expect bad stuff to be coming in your future then you're gonna be depressed you're gonna be sad you're gonna be miserable you're gonna be afraid so that's really the the bottom difference Martin Seligman one of the brilliant things that he did in his research is he said that optimism is explained and past him as an adoptive is he really studied both sides of this one coin he said that the difference is explanatory style it's the way that you explain and the way that you attach meaning so the things are happening to you in your life so it's not that the you know the pessimistic and the optimistic person they both face the same challenge so they face exactly the same challenge but the question is what kind of meaning do you assign to it because it's it's all in the meanings that you assign a thing's an optimistic person will get the same bad situation he'll get that same flat tire on the way to work but he'll assign a different explanation and from meaning to it that a pessimistic person would and there are there are three different types of explanatory style that lead to either positivism or pessimism so let's go over those the first is permanence how permanent is the problem so let's say you get a flat tire how permanent is that problem will the problem last forever so an optimist will say well it's just a flat tire I mean in the grand scheme of my life it means nothing just a flat tire we'll fix it in a few hours who cares tomorrow won't be an issue what about the pessimist well the pessimist will start to say oh my god I got a flat tire flat tire how am I gonna fix this how long is it gonna take to fix and in his mind he builds it up as though this is gonna last for his whole life it seems like it's something that's gonna be permanent it's never gonna be fixed maybe a flat tire is not the best example for that because I think most rational people would say that yeah a flat tire can be fixed pretty quickly but how about something like a divorce or a breakup in a relationship well an optimistic person would say yeah I broke up I really loved that person it didn't work but you know there's there's plenty of fish in the sea we'll go out there this is just one relationship I'm gonna have many many relationships in my whole life so in the grand scheme of things it's not a permanent problem the pessimist what does he do he looks at that relationship and this is the end of his life he sees that he's gonna become he's gonna be single and miserable for the rest of his life he's probably gonna die loan nobody loves him and it's just gonna be that way forever right it's permanent when you think that a problem is permanent you don't want to take any action to change it you're totally powerless you're totally a victim because now you have nothing for to look forward to the optimist he looks forward to a nice relationship in a few months the pessimist he looks forward to being miserable for the rest of his life what you know who's gonna feel better who's gonna go out there and be more resourceful pretty clear right how about the next point pervasiveness all right so this is the second explanatory style pervasiveness and this basically asks the question of you know will this undermine everything how pervasive is the problem so if you get a flat tire how pervasive is it how much does it affect every category of your life an optimist will say well it's just a flat tire all it really affects is right now today so maybe I'll be late for work and I'll miss something at work and that's just that's just work really the rest of my life is unaffected my relationship is great unaffected my my hobbies are great my health is great totally unaffected so only this little category of life is affected by this flat tire this you know my job that's it and even there it's still limited it's not like I'm gonna lose my job because of that so that's the optimist what is the pessimist thing the pessimist starts to spread this around like a cancer it starts to spread so what should have been classified as a local problem becomes a global problem now all the sudden a flat tire well you start to think well the flat tire means I'm gonna be late for work and if I'm late for work I'm gonna get yelled at there and that's gonna put me in a bad mood then I'm gonna come home and then I'm gonna be in a bad mood and I'm gonna be late for dinner and then my wife is gonna yell at me and we're gonna have a fight again and then because of that I'm gonna miss the gym and the kids are gonna be upset and then it added up and it just kind of spreads out and basically your whole life now has been tainted by a very local phenomenon which was a flat tire we can also see how significant this is right how much more resourceful is the optimistic person when they can limit the problem and contain it within a small little area it literally is like a cancer if you can contain that cancer you're much better off than letting it spread through your whole body okay and the third point of explanatory style is personalization what the optimist does is whenever there is a problem he tends to say that he is not responsible for the problem and if there's something good that happens he tends to take credit for it right so in the situation if there's a flat tire what he'll say up just bad luck i I drove over a nail and got a flat tire no biggie it wasn't my fault if something good happens to him like he gets a promotion then he's gonna do the opposite he's gonna say yeah that promotion I got that promotion because it was me I went out there I worked my ass off for a whole year I I beat my sales figures now I got this awesome promotion that was me that was all me that's what an optimist does what does a pessimist do a pessimist does the inverse of that that means that when there is this flat tire the pessimist is gonna look at it say god dammit I should have been like why wasn't I more careful I should have been more careful and not driven on that nail and in his mind he blames himself and then the reverse of it is when he asked something positive happened he tends to be humble and like he gets that promotion he says well yeah I got that promotion sure I worked for a year but in the end anyone could have gotten that promotion it wasn't really me it was it was a company the company needed someone and I was the only one who fit the bill so really I can't take credit for that promotion it was it was really the right timing the right situation nothing to do with me so he's not he's not invested in positive stuff this is this is a really you know another really big distinguishing factor between positive positive thinking people and negative thinking people and you can see how how much this affects your willingness to go out there and take action in the world when you think that you're responsible for everything that's good and not so much responsible for anything that's bad then you want to go out there and you want to act and you feel like hopeful and if you're thinking the opposite and you don't want to act you feel miserable you're beating yourself up you're feeling guilty all the time so the question is ultimately what is your explanatory style you can actually get tested on this there are tests out there that will assess you on the different levels of your explanatory style and you can actually do things to improve it a little bit too much to get into here getting all into all the tactics there but the question is you know how how optimistic are you about your future what do you think about your future right now are you hopeful for the next month are you excited about all the stuff it's gonna happen to you in the next six months how about in the next year how about in the next decade are you excited for the next decade of your life if you're not then you're not being very optimistic and that is something that can be tweaked this is something that can be worked on with a few little techniques and actually I'm gonna give you a great technique right now that is gonna help you turn this around so if you're not optimistic this will help you and if you are optimistic this will take you to the next level if you do this exercise so the key point that I want you to take away here is that optimism can be stoked up like a fire you know you've got a campfire and it's got a dying down and then you can blow air on it you can put some more kindling on it and then it'll spark up and flare up well that's what you can do with your optimism so right now maybe you're just feeling kind of at a at a at a baseline level where you're not too pessimistic about your future but you're not too excited either so what I recommend you do is you do the following exercise I want you to take your journal piece of paper something or you can write and I want you to write out and list 30 things that you're most excited about in the next year that you're gonna do 30 things that you're super super excited about maybe it's that vacation you want to take maybe it's that relationship that you hope to get into maybe it's that promotion at work you know you're gonna get maybe as having all your credit card debts eliminated maybe it's starting that new business of yours or starting that dream project or losing some weight whatever it is but start writing it down and be as specific as possible 30 things that you're excited about achieving in the next year that really really motivate you try to focus on the ones that get you excited this is simple like that this is all this is the the whole exercise sit down actually do this take 20 minutes or whatever it takes you to write all this stuff out what and notice notice how you feel notice how you feel right now notice how you feel before you do the exercise and then I want you to notice how you feel after you finish it if you're like me you're gonna feel so much more optimistic you're gonna feel energized you're gonna feel happier going to feel alive you're gonna feel like there's something to your life because your future now is bright and it's right here before your eyes you've articulated it you're you've laid it out very clearly and it's right before you I recommend you do this exercise more than once do it right now but also continue to do it throughout your life continue to do it do it at least once a month do it even once a week because it's gonna get you connected back to the stuff that's exciting to you and it's also gonna you know your mind is gonna brainstorm and come up with new stuff to put on that list and you can be brainstorming about what you're gonna be doing for the whole year but you can also localize it down and you can you can shorten the time frame to something like the next month or even what you're gonna be doing over the next week or even today even today you can do it just like what are five things you're gonna be excited about doing today if you do that exercise in the morning just for five minutes what are the five things you're gonna be excited about doing today they'll probably even take you just two minutes to do that you're gonna feel you gonna be much more excited about your day and you're gonna be much more optimistic alright so this is what I've got to say about optimist I'm gonna be signing off go ahead and post me your comments down below I love to hear feedback and your thoughts on this 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