Personal Strengths–An Expanding View

Posted on December 9, 2011 by

Reaching the Top.

“Using our strengths is the smallest thing we can do to make the biggest difference,” says founder of Centre for Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP), Alex Linley.

The idea has been around for centuries:  To live our best life, we need to play to our strengths.  Aristotle said so 300 years BCE.  But when asked, only about a third of us can name our own best strengths.

Can you?  Do you know what your top strengths are?  Can you spot them in your partner?  Your kids?  Your best friends?

How might it impact your life—and theirs—if you could?

That’s what this post is all about.

Why Strengths Matter

When you’re aware of your strengths, you can leverage them to create a happier, more authentic, fulfilling, engaged and productive life.   And isn’t that what we’re all after?

Not only that, but when we put our strengths to use, doing what we do best and most joyously, we contribute more to our families, communities and, indeed, the entire world.

Recognizing and encouraging others’ strengths enables them to be their best as well.  When you notice and openly appreciate the strengths of your partner, child, coworkers or friends, they feel truly seen and uplifted.

In fact, in his book Average to A+, Dr. Linley makes a strong case for the proposition that we have a responsibility, not only to ourselves, but to civilization itself to use and develop our strengths.

What Are Strengths, Exactly?

All living things share the tendency to grow, to develop, and to realize their potential, humans included.  Each of us has within ourselves a kind of internal compass that directs us toward the paths that will lead us toward becoming the best that we can be, that provides us with a sense of what is right for ourselves.  To the extent that we follow its guidance, we live authentically, in harmony with our unique individual self.

Our strengths represent our alignment with that internal compass.  They’re signaled by our personal combinations of interests, natural capabilities and preferences.  And it’s when we put them to use in our lives that we feel most authentic, energized and fulfilled, confident that we’re being who we were meant to be.

Strengthspotting

The scientific study of strengths is a relatively new field and so far only some have been named that meet the researchers’ strict definitions of “strengths.”  The VIA Strength list counts 24; the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP) names 60.  But the list is expanding all the time and researches agree there are probably hundreds of strengths.

In practical terms, it doesn’t really matter what you decide to call a strength.   Dr. Linley says that whether you can name a strength succinctly in one or two words or not, it will have the same impact if the label you give it is meaningful for you.  So feel free to make up your own labels for your strengths.

When you’re working towards spotting a strength in somebody else, check with them when you think you have identified one and see if they agree on your description of what you observed.  People love to have their strengths noticed and identified, and looking for others’ strengths will help you been more aware of your own and of the ways that all of our strengths contribute to the world.

The key to identifying your strengths is to think about the kinds of things that make you feel most alive, that feel like “the real you.”  They’re the sorts of things that you look forward to doing, that catch your interest the most, that you learn most easily and do quite naturally and well.

Here are some other clues that Linley says you can use for spotting strengths:

  • You feel really energized and engaged and may lose track of time when you use them.
  • You learn new information or skills quickly in the areas associated with your strengths.
  • You tend to succeed when you use them and to do well
  • You don’t procrastinate about things associated with them; in fact areas involving your strength have a great appeal and you tend to give them priority attention and time
  • You love using them, even when you’re tired or stressed or otherwise worn down.

Strengths Surveys You Can Take

Positive psychologists are hard at work to identify strengths formally and have developed formal assessments that you can take that will tell you what your strengths are.   The classic measure is called the VIA (Values in Action) Survey of Character Strengths, and you can take it or a Brief Strengths Test online for free here.  (You’ll have to register; but your info is completely safe at this site, run by the University of Pennsylvania.)  This survey measures 24 strengths that are rooted in your core values.  (See “What’s Right with You: How to Discover Your Personal Strengths,” and “The 24 Personal Strengths: An Overview.”)

For a small fee, you can take the interesting “Realise2″ strengths assessment from CAPP that measures 60 strengths.  I strongly recommend the Premium Profile for the additional information it gives you.  You can read about its enhanced features at the site.  The Standard Profile is fine, too. (I am not affiliated with either survey or organization, by the way, and receive no commissions from them.)

While you’re at the CAPP website, take advantage of the free downloads of additional strengths and strength-spotting information under the “Resources” tab.  And be sure to check out the “Strengths Dynamics” tab at the site where Alex Linley publishes interesting new strengths-related essay every two weeks.  Regardless which strengths are yours, his tips give you great ways to apply them.

Personally, I found both the VIA and Realise2 assessments extremely valuable in terms of the insights they gave me.  Both did an excellent job of identifying strengths that I heartily agreed were really “me,” and knowing them felt genuinely empowering.

The top strength the VIA assessment identified for me was “Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence,”   and CAPP’s Realise2 assessment identified my top strength as “Scribe.”   Obviously, I love writing, and I love promoting excellence here at Positive-Living-Now, and sharing my love of beauty with you at High on Happiness.   Each survey captured a different side of me and I related to them both.

The additional strengths the surveys named for me validated other aspects of my life that I highly value and consider central to who I am.

That’s what identifying strengths does for you: it validates and encourages you.  It confirms your sense of who you are and that you’re on the right track.

Start thinking about your own strengths today.   What values and activities turn you on the most?  See if you can names some, then take the assessments so you can think about your strengths in depth.

As Lindley said, it’s a small thing to do, but it can make a really big difference—both in how you see yourself and in how you live your life.

Speaking of validation, if you enjoyed this article, you can validate my efforts in writing it for you by clicking “Like” or “+1” below.  Thanks!  I appreciate it!

 

 

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The Power of Positive Praise

Posted on December 1, 2011 by

Smiling Office WorkerFor two hours, Bob had been tearing away at his inbox, tossing outdated notes and junk mail, filing papers in relevant folders or creating new ones.  As he went along, he listed the projects and tasks that needed his attention.  When ideas came to him about one of the tasks, he jotted that down and tossed the note into the project’s file.

Finally the basket was empty, and he did a quick review of the list he’d made, prioritizing its items.

Now that he had a clear idea of what needed his attention, he took a break, grabbing a cup of coffee and a snack from the vending machines.  He felt really energized and ready to give his attention to the top item on his list.

He opened the folder on his newly cleaned desk and was just starting to make some notes about where to pick up the work when Steve, his new manager, stopped at his door.

“Wow, Bob!” Steve said, grinning.  “What happened here?  Your inbox looked like a mountain when I walked past here this morning. “

“I decided I needed to get organized,” Bob said, smiling.  He was surprised that Steve had noticed, and even more surprised that he stopped to comment.

“You must have been really focused to demolish a pile that big!” Steve said. “Have a great afternoon.”

Steve’s going to be a super star as a manager.   In terms of giving positive praise, he did everything right.  He noticed a good piece of work when he saw it and expressed his recognition right away.  He was specific about what impressed him, and he praised the focus Bob had demonstrated instead of just saying, “Good man!”

If Steve’s style is consistent, the chances are high that his department will do well.  Praise from our superiors is, sadly, still rare in the workplace.  Only 12% of employees feel that they receive meaningful appreciation, says an article at http://appliedappreciation.com/resources/     In fact, the US Department of Labor and Statistics shows the number one reason people leave their jobs is that they do not feel appreciated.

When Praise Poisons

We all love to hear that someone noticed something we did well, that our efforts are appreciated.  And because we love to make other people feel good, most of us try to be liberal with our praise.  We believe it builds self-esteem and encourages good behavior.

But praise is a tricky thing.   Done wrong, it can backfire and produce the opposite of its intended effect.  It can discourage and demean the recipient, leaving them feeling worse about themselves than if we hadn’t said anything at all.  And it can actually diminish the very behavior we’re trying to reinforce.

We say things like “You’re so smart!” or “You’re so graceful!” or “You’re so strong!” thinking we’re making someone feel good about themselves.  We’re especially guilty of doing this with our children.

But research by Carol Dweck  on the effect of praise on mindsets clearly shows that when we praise a person’s traits instead of their efforts, we push them toward the fixed mindset that inhibits effort, diminishes motivation, promotes risk-avoidance, increases anxiety and

Take the phrase “Good job!” for example.  We might mean it as praise, but is it really?  Especially when we use it with our children, it’s more of a judgment, a statement of our approval.  Rather than expressing appreciation for the other person’s efforts, it’s often said as a reward, given in the hope that we’re reinforcing a behavior.  Then it’s not really praise at all, but an attempt at manipulation.  And the recipient isn’t fooled.

According to a wonderful article titled “Five Reasons to Stop Saying ‘Good job!’”    by Alfie Kohn, the phrase is a kind of “sugar coated control.”   It’s giving someone attention and approval, Kohn points out, “for jumping through hoops, for doing things that please us.”  It can addict people to the reward of approval, making them work not for the joy and satisfaction of the work itself, but only for the reward—and only as long as the praise is forthcoming.

Steve, the manager who recognized Bob’s efforts, avoided merely saying “Good job.”  Instead, he pointed out that Bob must have been really focused to accomplish as much as he had in a couple of hours.  It showed that he noticed Bob had exerted himself.  To Bob, that was meaningful and motivating praise.

Positive Praise

The kind of praise that encourages and builds someone recognizes their efforts and their strengths.  It’s not about how it met your expectations or satisfied your demands.  It’s about genuinely appreciating the care and attention and effort they gave something, about how they applied themselves.

“You must have worked really hard on that!” you say, and they swell with pride.  “It sounds like you really care a lot about your family.”   “You kept on trying even when it was really hard.”  “You were so patient with that client.”

Another way to show someone that you noticed their achievement simply by saying what you observed:  “You put on your shoes all by yourself!”  “You put so many solid details into your report.”  “Look at that!”  “You used so many colors!”

Or you can ask questions about how they accomplished what they did:  “How did you figure that out?” or “How many ways did you try that before it worked out?”  “How long did it take you to do that?” “What was the hardest part of that?” Or ask about how they feel about it:  “Are you pleased with what you did?”

You can show a genuine interest in their work or achievement:  “Tell me more about it!”  “Show it to me.”

The key to positive praise is to focus on the process, not the product.  We want to love people for who they are, and to praise them for the amazing things they do.

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The Excellence of Effort

Posted on November 19, 2011 by

Mountain HikingSeventh grade is tough.  Suddenly you’re thrust from the comfort and security of a well-known environment where you were the big fish into the new, sophisticated world of junior high school.

Even if you have done pretty well in school until now, if you’re like most kids, your first report card is going to be a shock.  Your math scores, if you’re normal, are going to plummet.

Psychological research and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck, set out to see if she could change that.

She and her team went to several New York City public schools and separated the new seventh graders into two groups.  For half an hour once a week for eight weeks, they taught the kids about the way our brains work.

One group, the control group, learned about various brain functions, such as memory.  The other group learned how experience and genuine effort can make brains smarter.  Intelligence, they found out, was like a muscle.  The more work you give it to do, the stronger it gets.

Over the course of the school year, the math scores of the control group fell.  But the kids who had learned that working your brain makes it smarter got higher scores. 

Just showing them that it was possible to improve your learning ability motivated them to work hard enough to prove to themselves—and everybody else—that it was true.

Plenty of research since then backs up the hypothesis that Dweck had set out to prove: Whether we see intelligence (and other personal traits, too) as fixed or changeable significantly impacts our lives in surprising and counterintuitive ways.

The Flaws of the Fixed Mindset

If you believe that you were born with a fixed helping of intelligence, or of the ability to write or do math or be sociable, you’re what psychologists call an “entity theorist” and you’ll hold different kinds of values, make different kinds of choices, and set different kinds of goals than the “incremental theorists,” people who believe these traits can be developed and grown.

In her book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals, Stanford psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D., says entity theorists turn away from challenging goals.  Because they believe they are stuck with a fixed amount of ability, they only go for things they’re pretty sure they can do.  They take it for granted that there are some skills they can never possess or some things they could never be good at doing.

Yet we promote entity theorizing in some very counter-intuitive ways.

Suppose, for example, that as you were growing up everybody told you, “You’re so smart!”   Would you be willing to tackle any challenge that came your way?

Surprisingly, the answer is no.  If you failed at something, after all, it would show that you weren’t as smart as you thought—or that others believed you were.  And that would be embarrassing, maybe even crushing.

Entity theorists (who see traits are fixed), believe there are limits to what they can achieve, that abilities are set and no improvement is possible.  They believe that talent creates success without effort and give up when things seem difficult.

According to an article in New York Magazine, for example, a large percentage of gifted kids underestimate their abilities.  If math or spelling don’t come easily to them, they assume they just aren’t good at that subject and set it aside for something that is easy.

Kids “who think that innate intelligence is the key to success,” the article explains,” begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.

Most American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart.   “But a growing body of research,” the New York Magazine article says, “strongly suggests it might be the other way around.  Giving kids the label ‘smart’ does not prevent them from underperforming.  It might actually be causing it.”

The Power of the Incremental  Mindset

The better way to help a child—or anyone else, for that matter—is to encourage the incremental mindset by praising her for her effort:  “Wow!  You must have put a lot of work into that!”

The positive results the incremental, or growth, mindset produces even show up in the corporate world.

When CEOs believe that mistakes help people learn, they can lead their companies into greatness, Dweck says.  Such leaders encourage employees to see their mistakes as providing valuable feedback that they can use to develop different strategies.  They set up mentoring and employee development programs to encourage employee growth.

Companies that see themselves only as a showcase for brilliance, on the other hand, try to hide their mistakes and often end up failing.

Take Home Lessons

The first take home lesson is that if you want to be great at something, get to work on it.  “If you can’t excel with talent, triumph with effort,” says talk show host Dave Weinbaum, and he got it right.

At her website Mindset Online,  Dr. Dweck cites Robert Sternberg, “the present-day guru of intelligence” as saying that “the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.”

The second lesson is to challenge your limitations and dare the rough ground.   Don’t deny yourself exciting and valuable opportunities just because you’re not sure you can do them.   Keep reminding yourself that you can learn.  The science in neuroplasticity says experience even changes our DNA.

“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it,” says Dweck, “even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

Part of the reason that you thrive when you adopt the incremental mindset is that you no longer fear failure.  It falls into its rightful place as information instead of acting as a label of your abilities or worth.   It’s still not fun to fail of course. But when you see things with a growth mindset, it becomes worthwhile, freeing you to give even the scary things a run for their money.

And doing the difficult makes you feel like a million bucks.

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How to Make Your Optimism Soar

Posted on November 3, 2011 by

Soaring Optimism“Whether you think that you can or think that you can’t,” said Henry Ford, “you’re usually right.”

And right, too, was Mr. Ford’s astute observation.   Our beliefs about what we can achieve play a key part in our motivation, determination and success in any endeavor.

Optimists—those who believe in their goals, in the likelihood of their acquiring the means to achieve them, and in themselves—are much more likely to achieve success than the pessimist, whose thoughts are filled with doubt.

The good news is that all of us can pump up our optimism quota; we can build our personal stores of positivity and hope.

Where you currently fall on the optimism/pessimism continuum is a matter of how you habitually evaluate your experiences.  In other words, it’s rooted in the kinds of stories you tell yourself about the things that happen in your life.  Note that word “habitually.”  Your views aren’t inborn; they’re  interpretation styles that you learned, and you can learn to change them.

In his book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, positive psychology founder Dr.Martin Seligman describes three facets of how we explain a situation to ourselves.  And it’s these three facets that are measured in the Learned Optimism Quiz that I mentioned in my last post.

If you took the quiz,  you may be wondering what that terms meant in the breakdown of your score.  (If you haven’t taken the quiz, you may want to stop reading here before you take it, because this information may skew your score.  Take the quiz first if you’re curious about your optimism level; then come back.)

 

The Three Faces of Optimism

The test scores are measurements of the three facets of optimism that Dr. Seligman identified: Permanence, Pervasiveness, and Personalization.

Permanence means you think the situation will endure over time, that it’s relatively unchanging.  Pervasiveness means you think the situation affects everything in your life.  And Personalization means you think of yourself as the cause of what happened.

When bad things happen, pessimists think they will last forever, or that they will happen over and over.  Not only that, but the bad thing ruins everything for them and it’s all their own fault.

Optimists, on the other hand, think that the bad thing that happened is a temporary situation.  It happened and it’s over.  Tomorrow will be a new day.   They also see the unhappy situation as having limited impact.  It might affect how well they do on the report they have to give today, but it has nothing to do with their family life or how much they enjoy their partner.  And they tend to put the blame for it outside themselves.  The bus was late today.  The dog ate the homework.

When good things happen, the stories optimists and pessimists tell themselves are exactly the opposite.

Pessimists think the good thing was a fluke; optimists think it’s the way things normally go.  For the pessimist, the good thing is an isolated event; the report went well, but it doesn’t mean the dinner date is going to be great.  The optimist lets the happiness of the good thing generalize to all aspects of her life.  The pessimist gives the credit for the good thing that happened to something outside himself:  “Thank goodness the questions he asked were the ones that I happened to know.”  The optimist gives herself credit:  “I’m always so well-prepared.”

This is what the scores on the Stanford quiz describe:  whether you think bad things are permanent, all pervasive and your fault, and whether you think good things are enduring, universal in scope, and to your credit.   Your overall score is the total of your scores for interpreting fortunate or good events minus your scores for interpreting the unfortunate or bad ones.

Here’s a little chart that makes it easier to visualize:

Watch Your Words

I started last week’s article by quoting my pessimistic friend Jake: “Nothing ever works out for me. Every time I think things are finally going smooth, something happens.”  Did you notice the words “nothing” and the phrase “every time?”

Along with “always,” these are key words to watch for when you set out to see how you are evaluating situations.  Whether they’re flags of a positive or negative way of looking at something depends on whether it was a good or bad event.  (Check the table above.)

It’s the negative evaluations that you want to watch for when you’re planning to build your optimism.  Listen to yourself for phrases like these:

  • I’m such a bad . . .
  • I’m no good at . . .
  • I can’t ever . . .
  • I’m so (stupid; ugly; worthless; clumsy; useless; careless; irresponsible; undisciplined; lazy; forgetful; old; fat; etc.)
  • I’ll never be able to . . .
  • I’m so terrible at . . .
  • It’s all my fault

 

Antidotes for Toxic Words

When you catch yourself using phrases like this, stop and hear what you just said.  Then ask yourself:

  • Is that really true?  What evidence do I have?
  • How else could I look at this situation?
  • When have I acted differently in this kind of circumstance?

For more information about how to deal with these kinds of Automatic Negative Thoughts (“ANTs”) and phrases, see Making Ants Dance: The Practice of Overcoming Negative Thoughts.

Paying attention to the way we talk to ourselves about what is happening in our lives, how we interpret and judge things is half the battle in correcting habitual pessimism.

 

Building Hopefulness

If you haven’t yet downloaded the free Quick Start Guide offered at the top right of the page, please grab it!  In it you’ll find eight powerful practices you can put into play to help you build more positivity in your life.

Among the most powerful of these is the Three Good Things practice.  You can also read about it here.

If you want to boost your capacity for hope-filled, optimistic living even more try these:

  • Learn and practice meditation.  Here’s a good video on the basics (Bear with the quick advertising lead.):

How To Meditate on Howcast

 

  • Identify your strengths and play with using one of your top five strengths for a week at a time.  You may want to keep notes on your experiences.
  • Savor past successes and good times.  When you’re enjoying yourself, slow down and get into the feeling.  Look back on the times you succeeded in the past; remember the details and how good you felt.  Try to recapture the feeling.
  • As awkward as it may seem at first, learn to brag a little.  Practicing saying good things about yourself to yourself and to others.

Remember that what you focus on tends to expand in your experience.  You’re free to continue cementing your habit of looking at and generalizing the things that go wrong.  Or you can decide to begin paying attention to, and celebrating, all the things that go right.

The wonderful thing about positivity—as study after study shows—is that it builds on itself.  Once you can generate three positive experiences for yourself for every negative one, you’ll have entered the upward spiral of increasing positivity where optimism soars.

Yes, it takes some effort.  Yes, you do have to pay attention and do the work of questioning your negative evaluations of your circumstances.  But you can get hooked on feeling more hope, satisfaction, confidence, meaning and happiness pretty quickly, and the payoff for the little bit of work involved is phenomenal.  It’s like waking from weeks of gloomy days to discover that the sky is endlessly blue and the sun is shining—just for you.

 

 

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How Optimistic Are You, Really?

Posted on October 27, 2011 by

Glass Half Full

“Nothing ever works out for me,” Jake told me for the hundredth time.  “Every time I think things are finally going smooth, something happens.”

“Well, then,” I joked, “Maybe you better give up thinking!”

He laughed and then told me about his latest misfortune. It’s only his sense of humor that keeps him from sinking completely into the depression he continuously fights.
Jake’s the most confirmed pessimist that I know.  And yet, according to an article in WebMD magazine, he has a lot of company.  50% of Americans, the article reports, assume things are always getting worse.

Given that percentage, it came as no surprise to me when USA Today reported earlier this month that the number of Americans taking antidepressant drugs doubled in the last decade.   Pessimism makes us vulnerable to depression’s snare.

How about you?  If you were to take a quiz about your level of optimism, how would you rate?  If you’re like me, you might be surprised.

Take the Optimism Quiz—I Double Dog Dare You

As an ardent student of positivity who makes every effort to walk my talk, I blithely assumed I’d get gold stars for optimism when I took this brief 15-question quiz.  So when my results said “You’re a Pessimist” and told me that I only scored 60%, I was shocked.

Optimistically, I blamed the test construction, and went off in search of a better quiz.
I found one, too.  This one, from Stanford University, is scientifically grounded and based on the work of Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology.  After doing extensive research in learned helplessness, Dr. Seligman set out to investigate optimism and to see if it could be learned as well.  He chronicles his findings in his book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, and it’s on his research that this test is based.

The results aren’t delivered to you in a single score—although the various parts of it are totaled to give you an overall reading.  And it was a big help in showing me where I was pessimistic in my thinking and why I ranked as a pessimist in the simpler quiz.

To my relief, it also showed me where I was strong in optimism.

 

Why Knowing Matters

Getting insight into the ways I was evaluating situations pessimistically was really valuable for me.  I could see right away how my viewpoint operated in my life, where it served me well, and where it was getting my way.   Armed with my new knowledge about myself, I can begin to be more aware of how I interpret things and to make conscious choices that will increase my well-being.

Knowing your weaknesses and strengths is always an asset.  When you’re aware of behaviors that are preventing you from being all you can be, you can begin to make changes in a more freeing direction.

Next week I’ll describe the aspects of optimism that the Learned Optimism Quiz measures.  If I told you about them today, the information might skew your answers to the quiz.  And it’s important that you get accurate results.

 

The Perils of Pessimism

Even if you don’t especially enjoy taking quizzes, may I strongly suggest that you take this one?  It will only take you a few minutes, and if you have some invisible areas of pessimism in your life, it’s important for you to know.

It’s more than a matter of how much you enjoy your life—although pessimism is definitely a joy-stealer.  Whether you look at life’s perils instead of its promises can impact your life in a number of serious ways.  Here’s what the research shows:

  • Pessimistic people are more likely to suffer from depression and sadness;
  • Performance at work, school and sport is dragged down by pessimism;
  • Pessimists rarely venture outside their comfort zone;
  • Pessimistic people are less likely to use their  talents as fully as they might, robbing themselves of the enjoyment of self-expression;
  • Pessimistic people are poor leaders compared to their optimistic peers;
  • Pessimistic people have weaker immune systems and poorer health.  They catch colds more frequently and are more likely to suffer a second heart attack.
  • They don’t live as long as optimists. They suffer the chronic diseases of aging earlier and more severely;
  • Pessimistic people are more easily knocked down by life’s disappointments and setbacks; their resilience is low, and so is their ability to persevere when obstacles arise;
  • They miss out on a lot of life’s richness and joys.

 

The Good News

The good news is, first, pessimism isn’t all bad; it does have its positive side.

The value of pessimism is that it lends itself to more accurate judgment in many cases.  The pessimist’s view of things isn’t distorted by enthusiasm or a bias toward best outcomes.  Pessimists are likely to be more aware of potential dangers and are more careful in risky situations.  They don’t overestimate their abilities.

Sometimes pessimistic people claim that they are more realistic than their optimistic counterparts.  And in general, they are right.  They tend to be more grounded in physical reality, often perceive it more accurately, and are good at observing details.

But not all pessimists are realists, and not all optimists distort reality.

Secondly, life-enhancing optimism is a skill that you can build.   As with any skill, all it takes is attention, a desire, some information and practice.

Next week we’ll look at methods you can use to boost your optimism to create a more flourishing life.

For now, do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to take the Learned Optimism Quiz so you can refer to it when we look at optimism’s parts, see what your scores mean,  and explore how to be a flexible optimist, capable of using both ends of the spectrum for optimum well-being.

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