How to Bulletproof Your Resiliency with Realistic Optimism?
Optimism is the elixir of resilience. Having a mindset geared to a positive future immunizes you from doubt, naysayers and critics. Belief in a better tomorrow helps you weather the storm of today.
Optimistic people always see the glass half full and decide to spend their time filling the other half. They believe in the end story. Not a happy ending but a better ending.
Why? Resiliency is not being a rock, unable to change. Nor is it bouncing back, as you never return to the same point. Instead, resilience is the ability to adapt — in any given situation — with a sense of purpose, optimism, and hope.
However, optimism cannot be blind. Rose tinted realities so come asunder when slammed up against immovable people and problems.
The danger is the “positive” glow of warm feelings can stunt your ability to weigh people’s intentions: good or ill.
Like the three monkeys seeing, hearing and speaking no evil, it impairs your ability sieve and read signals. In short, underestimate the risk, overestimate your abilities.
Resilient people are not naïve they have just learned to navigate the complexity in our lives better than others. Here are three ways to up your realistic optimism and strengthen your resiliency.
1. Open Your Aperture to Possibilities
Target or problem fixation is symptomatic of people stuck in a rut. Repeating the same action yields identical results.
However, more than poor results being mesmerized by the problem acts as a powerful zoom lens destroying your periphery vision. Pounding at the same problem –with a similar approach — is a recipe for frustration.
Instead, step back. All situations are a rich interplay of people, personalities and perspectives. Changing one variable can lead you to reframe the problem anew. By positively reappraising the situation, assessing which variables are fluid or fixed, it enables you to see a hidden opportunity.
Being able to detach oneself and see a stressful situation from multiple perspectives not only open the aperture of possibilities but helps you assess dynamics and motives without the build-up of negative emotions.
2. Build a Box of Resilience Tools
Tough times are a given. You can never know what potholes you will face or how deep they will be.
The good news is that you have made it this far. To have done so you have employed a range of strategies (perhaps unconscious) to overcome adversity.
Sit back, reflect and plot out all points of adversity you have faced. What active problem-solving strategies did you use? Most of us muddle through but can learn, build upon and try new approaches.
Perhaps, on reflection mentors, friends or family were pivotal in riding out the storm. Maybe it was reaching out to an “expert” coach, colleague or specialist who help you unpack and overcome that experience.
Alternatively, you may have sought out and acquired a new skill -humble or huge-, set goals, broken down the problem into manageable chunks, plotted out the points of conflict and resolve them.
Whatever the recipe for your past success (or failure) learn from them. Develop a playlist, a personal game plan, an approach you use, enrich and adapt with time.
An evolving toolbox that helps you cope psychologically — understand your reactions and patterns-, draws upon the value others can give and enables you to actively build problem-solving strategies, based on realistic and attainable goals.
3. Look for Opportunity and Find the Flow!
Optimist genes did not exist. How we react and adapt to adversity is on a built rich medley of our experience, psychological make-up, learnt strategies, role models and background.
However, no of us is a set of railroad tracks locked pre-set course. Shifting how we speak about events, challenges and opportunities unlock new destinations.
When listening carefully to pessimists, what is striking is their thought patterns and words spoken. Hinged on the “negative,” pessimist tend to focus on the permanence “forever,” how events are universal and invade all aspects of our lives, “it always happens to me!” and finite “it never improves.”
Optimists are more fluid in their thought patterns and spoken words, they tend to view situations as temporary and limit their scope and impact.
It does not mean they ignore the pachyderm in the palace. Instead, they do not dwell on negatives thoughts and seek progress.
Optimists’ are more likely to use words such as “sometimes” or “lately” to describe a situation and to find an internal locus of control to “influence” if not change events.
Subtle as shift might seem, the language we use affects the meaning we give to an incident. An interpretation that helps us place the episode in its context, in the wider arch of our lives. More than rationalizing away a problem, it helps us confront, appraise more objectively and find a new, better way through.
About the Author
Simon Trevarthen is Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of Elevate Your Greatness (EYG). EYG helps individuals, teams, and organizations unpack the secrets of success by becoming even better versions of themselves through dynamic keynotes, seminars, and workshops on innovation, inspiration and presentation excellence.
