When I had children, I made a very conscious decision: I wanted them to be optimists. I was not raised to be an
optimist and it’s definitely something I continue to work on. I’m much more positive and optimistic than I used to be, and what’s more important, I feel like I have some control over it.
Having practiced psychotherapy for over 25 years, I’ve listened to many, many people tell me their stories. And I noticed something huge: their level of happiness had very little to do with their life’s circumstances. Being into developmental psychology as I was, I assumed they must have had happy childhoods. Wrong. Some did, sure, but many didn’t. What most of them did at one point or another, though, was have an “Aha!” moment where they decided that they had some control over how they responded to things and people around them. Most of them, at some point, realized, “Wow, this sucks, but I can choose to let it ruin me, or I can do something about it.”
By contrast, many of the sadder, more depressed people felt they had little to no control over their situations.
Now, let me be clear – I’m not judging people for being depressed. Sometimes depression comes out of the blue and hits you over the head with a 2 x 4 and despite your best efforts, takes its sweet time in leaving. I know – I’ve been there.
But, there are personality characteristics that seem to go along with fighting one’s way through depression, grief, and bad times in general.
The great news from a study out of University of Zurich is that people can successfully improve these personality characteristics, much like you’d strengthen a muscle.
We’ve known for a while that people who are happy tend to do certain things to sustain or increase their happiness, like looking for silver linings, being grateful or counting their blessings, and being optimistic. But are they born this way? Do they learn it in childhood?
This study shows it might not matter. There were 178 subjects in this study (fairly large for a psychological study) and they participated in various character training exercises for 10 weeks. The group that trained in these five traits:
- Curiosity
- Gratitude
- Optimism
- Humor
- Enthusiasm
showed the largest improvement, especially in “Life Satisfaction,” although the group that trained in these five traits:
- Appreciation of Beauty
- Creativity
- Kindness
- Love of learning
- Foresight
improved as well, just not as much as the first group. Both groups that had training improved in their overall mood and life satisfaction.
What’s fascinating about the field of Positive Psychology is that it doesn’t focus as much as traditional research does on disorders and diagnoses. Traditional psychology focuses on what goes wrong, and how to improve clients’ symptoms to the point where they are “back to normal,” whatever that is. But Positive Psychology looks at resiliency and what makes some people able to be happy despite their life circumstances.
The great news here is that anyone can do it. There’s hope for all of us pessimists yet! I’m not sure I’ve ever been prouder than when my 5-year-old won the “Positively Positive” award from his day camp counselors for saying, “Hey, we can still have fun!” even when everything about a planned hike was going wrong, and just generally having a smile on his face. Or maybe when my 9-year-old advocated for his chance to be pitcher for his little league baseball game even though he’d never even tried it before and had no idea if he could do it or not (he wasn’t great, but I was just impressed he was willing to try it for the first time in front of all those spectators). I’m far from a perfect mom, but I have tried to encourage them to think this way, and it seems to be working.
Over the next year, I plan to go into these characteristics more in depth, and offer practical exercises to develop your
own positive muscles. Make sure to subscribe to this blog or like my page on Facebook so you get all the updates.
Great blog post. I am an optimistic realist. I still look at “worst case scenario” and plan for that, while attempting to keep my focus on the “bright side” as much as possible. This helps with both maintaining a stable living existence (worst case scenario rarely happens) and maintaining/ cultivating a positive outlook. It’s not always easy and it has been a learned trait over a number of years, but I find I am “happier” than I was earlier in life. I try not to cling too much to the notion of “happiness” at it seems fleeting to me, but rather pursue long-term contentment. I heard a phrase the other day that I found particularly insightful – “Quiet the inner critic.” Self-criticism is beneficial to stop yourself from repeating non-productive behaviors (eating an entire pan of brownies with a pint of Hagen Daas for example), but overall we give it too much creedence. Life is short – and the small stuff doesn’t matter anyway.
Correction – I should say I am more positive (not “happier”) than I was earlier in life. That’s more accurate.
Yes, “happier” is a funny word, meaning many things to different people. I’m definitely more content, more grateful and in general, more satisfied with myself and others than I ever have been. Of course there’s room for improvement, there always is, but it’s a process and there’s really no end goal.