Sculpting Project 22: Leaping Over Walls: Week 2

I was born optimistic, I developed pessimistic skills and by age 11 could be labeled a pessimist. Now I still have a strong tendency towards prudence which can become pessimistic, but I am again largely optimistic. How did I get here? I see two major contributors. 1. At age 15 I found a relationship with Jesus. This created a major worldview shift. I moved from a kingdom of darkness into a kingdom of light (Col. 1:12-14) and this greatly brightened my outlook. 2. In my mid-50’s I discovered positive psychology. This field of study gave me an increased understanding of the value of optimism and some skills to cultivate it. These Sculpting Projects are a blend of my faith and psychology.

Quick review:

We are a genuine Pessimist if we see the bad event as: (PPP)

Personal: It’s all my fault.

Pervasive: It will affect every part of my life.

Permanent: It will never change.

We are a genuine Optimist if we see the bad event as: (SIT)

Specific: It will just affect this one part of my life.

Impersonal: It is not my fault.

Temporary: This won’t last forever.

You also remember that pessimists are shown to be more realistic than optimists. So why would I want to cultivate optimism? Consider these research discoveries from:

Sports: Teams and individuals explain their game difficulties with 3P’s or SIT. Pessimists (3 P’s) lose more games than the Optimists (SIT). If you want to pick a winning ‘dream team’ study their explanatory styles and pick the optimists. After a setback in a game the pessimists collapse and the optimists get stronger.

Bottom line: Optimistic teams and individuals win more.

Politics: Optimistic candidates win more elections.

Business and school: We might think that doing well in business or school causes optimism. But studies show that it is the other way around. Optimism is more powerful in creating success than talent, IQ, SAT scores and other qualifying test scores.

Bottom line: Optimistic students and business people are more successful than pessimists.

Health: Laboratories around the world consistently find that optimism promotes good health. One example is our immune system. Our brain and immune system are connected, not by nerves but by hormones. Hormones are chemical messengers that travel through our circulatory system and tell each part of our body about our current emotional state. When we are pessimistic, or depressed, or grieving one of these transmitting hormones called catecholamines (we’ll call them ‘cats’) becomes depleted. When your ‘cats’ are low another chemical called endorphins gets excited and becomes very active. These are ‘feel good’ chemicals that are no doubt very helpful in many ways, but when your immune system discovers that the ‘cats’ are low and the endorphins are up the immune system turns itself down. So when you feel more helpless your immune system becomes more helpless. When we are pessimistic we live in a chronic state of lower immune activity. The good news: when we become optimists the ‘cats’ go up and our immune system gets busy again.

When do we want to tap into the realism skills of the pessimist? Two times. 1. When the stakes are high, when the choice is high risk. ( Do I jump out of the plane with this dilapidated looking parachute or do I wait for a stronger looking certified one?) 2. In the early stages of comforting a grieving friend. (‘Cheer-up, things will get better any time.’ vs Listening and grieving with.)

When do we want to tap into the vast advantages of the optimist? The rest of our life.

How to become an optimist:

The primary skill we will develop is to correct our explanatory style. How do we talk to ourselves when bad things happen. We will learn to correct the 3 P’s with the 3 D’s.

Last week we worked on our ABC’s . This week we begin to add D’s.

A-adversity (something bad, small or big happens)

B-belief (we express our beliefs by explaining why this happened)

C-consequences ( we feel and act a different way)

D- distance, distract, dispute

Sculpting Project 22: Leaping Over Walls

When we notice any A (adversity) happening, tiny or huge, our B (beliefs) will automatically begin to run in our thoughts. This week choose one of the 3 D’s to respond to these B (beliefs).

Distance: Remember that our thoughts are just thoughts. And our thoughts are not necessarily the Gospel Truth.

Distract: Tell our thoughts to “Stop” we can add a slap on the knee or a finger snap, or silly sound to add effect. Then do something different and or begin to think about a different topic.

Dispute: Argue with the 3 P’s belief thoughts that we are having. Become a lawyer for our defense.

Don’t let automatic pessimistic belief’s go unchallenged. Sometimes one of the P’s (usually personal, It is mostly my fault) is true, but rarely, to never are all 3 correct.

Next week we will take an additional week on this skill of disputing and we will begin Leaping Our Walls.