Is optimism tied to American-style individualism?

A person can be optimistic about a lot of things. A sports fan can be optimistic that their favorite team is going to have a good season. Some people are optimistic about the future. But, does optimism spring more readily from a culture that also values individualism?

This article sets out to show just such a link. 

As an aside, I’m always surprised that the Germans are such a dreary lot.

The piece cites a Pew Research Center study of 44 countries that focused on people’s sense of control and also the effect of hard work. The results show that Americans believe both in the ability of the individual to exercise control and also in the value of hard work to affect an outcome.

Seems sensible but, then again, I’m an American.

Our individualized optimism is even set apart among other wealthy nations. Again, what’s Germany’s problem? They build some great cars and have the Autobahn for goodness sake.

I find the study results interesting because I do not find the average American all that optimistic. Instead I see and hear a sense of stuckness from a lot of people. People are questioning the cost and benefit of everything from education to government. Certitude of mission seems in short supply. Not even NASA seems sure of their mission these days.

Still, there’s a kind of resilience alongside the uncertainty, a kind of confidence borne of the unusual alchemy of democracy and individualism. As attitudinally challenged as we are here, I’m glad I’m not in Germany.

Flow & living as an art

A couple years ago, when I first started to think about optimism I considered the phrase, living is an art.

It seemed like a pretentious notion, perfectly mated to new age sensibilities. As time went on I began to think that even if it did seem pretentious it might very well be true.

The word flow triggers the same response. This article defines flow and describes its eight ingredients:

1 The experience occurs usually when we are involved in tasks that we have a good chance of completing.

2 We are able to concentrate fully on the activity.

3 The task has clear goals.

4 The task is such that it gives us immediate feedback on how well we are doing.

5 Our involvement is “deep but effortless” and this “removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.”

6 There is a sense of exercising control over our actions.

7 Concern for the self disappears but paradoxically our “sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.”

8 We lose our normal sense of time “we can feel either that it has speeded up (and passed quickly) or slowed down.”

Just to show how challenging flow can be when it comes to, oh let’s say, golf and writing consider my take on them respective to those activities:

1 This is a very poor fit. The sense that the task of writing and golf can be completed is completely absent from the experience. There's always another swing to be made and another word to be chosen.

2 Yes, full concentration on both golf and writing is highly desirable.

3 Yes, the goals are clear (usually).

4 Um, sometimes the task gives immediate feedback and sometimes it doesn’t. I can spend quite a bit of time writing only to realize days later that what I wrote didn’t really work. Similarly, working on golf involves a good bit of sideways and even some backward steps. It’s simply a very hard game and reliable feedback isn’t a constant.

5Effortlessness in golf or writing is both rare and short lived. It does happen, it’s glorious and then it’s gone.

6 Certainly, control over actions is a feature in both golf and writing.

7 The disappearance of the self is a tough one, too.

“Just be the ball." -Ty Webb in Caddyshack

8 The emergence of the stronger self is true. Success brings confidence. In golf, I can recall certain shots, the way impact felt, the way the ball flew and I can imagine myself doing it again. Good writing, too, breeds an excitement about the next idea, the next event and the next part of a story. Time does speed up when I’m writing, but that’s mostly because I am always putting it between the rock and a hard place of other activities that demand my attention. Golf has an easier time of it; if I’m on the range or the course the nature of time does change.

More flow is a good thing, but it’s not always easy to achieve.

The optimism & gratitude connection

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." - Cicero

I believe this.

Rarely do any of my borderline-pessimistic friends speak of gratitude. They tend, instead, to repeat narratives about those who have slighted them. Each repetition make the offense new again.

It's a very bad habit.

The funny thing is that even though I can trend toward pessimism I have feelings of immense gratitude. To start with, I am grateful to God and the fates for living where I do and when. I was never so foolish that my gratitude toward my parents faltered. I know that few parents measure up to mine when it came to love, support and understanding. They were amazing people.

On the other hand, gratitude can bring out something else in me as well. On the other side of gratitude is a fear that even with all of the gifts and benefits I've enjoyed, my life's work may not amount to much. It's the feeling of knowing you've had so much help and good fortune but it still might not be enough. In those sobering moments I am prone to remind myself that Van Gogh sold only one painting, The Red Vineyard, and then died a few months later at the age of 37.

The Red Vineyard

My total writing sales amount to just about what Van Gogh got for his painting and I'm now 53. I say it's sobering to avoid using the word depressing.

Still, I am glad to have so much gratitude in my heart. I just need to create a technique that allows me to convert feelings of thankfulness into optimistic action, and that's proven tricky for me so far. 

Optimism and cardio vascular health

If you’re smart, you’ll ignore this blog post and read this article from Scientific American Blogs by Scott Barry Kaufman immediately.

Here’s the most relevant quote from the article:

“Since that 2012 review, two additional studies have come out that further point to the robustness of this association. Rosalba Hernandez and colleagues focused on the American Heart Association’s definition of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which involves consideration of 7 metrics grouped into two categories: health behaviors (diet, smoking, physical activity, BMI) and health factors (blood pressure, blood sugar, total cholestrol). This was the first study to consider the association between optimism and CVH as defined by the American Heart Association, and this was also the first study to utilize a large sample of ethnically/racially diverse sample of adults.

Using data collected from 5,134 adults aged 52-84 over an 11 year period, they found a significant association between optimism and cardiovascular health (CVH), with the most optimistic people showing twice the odds of having ideal CVH profiles. The association remained significant even after controlling for socio-demographic variables (i.e., age, sex, race/ethnicity, marital status, education, income, and insurance status) and measures of psychological ill-being (e.g., depression), again supporting the notion that a lack of ill-being doesn’t necessarily indicate the presence of thriving.”

OK, so you’ve insisted on hanging around. I’ll tell you why I find it so relevant.

An old friend of mine is becoming ever more prone to pessimism. He’s always had an inclination toward mild fatalism though he’s married, has a family and fine career.

Still, he experiences the word no more strongly than any other:

No, I can’t do anything I might enjoy.

No, I can’t get any meaningful exercise.

No, I can lose any of the weight I’ve packed on over the last year or so.

To put the cherry on the sundae of this guy’s life let me tell you that he had an emergency angioplasty a couple years back. The artery that was blocked is nicknamed The Widowmaker by cardiologists.

You would think (and I thought) that this and the other normal stuff of life in the 50s would wake my old friend up to the need to take better care of himself. But it hasn’t…yet. I am ever the optimist.

Another quote from the article is this:

“When individuals are confronted with challenge, they may succumb or they may respond in one of three ways: They may survive (continuing to function, but in an impaired fashion), recover (return to previous levels of emotional, social and psychological functioning), or thrive (to go beyond the prior baseline, to grow and flourish). Through the interactive process of confronting and coping with challenges, a transformation occurs.”

I readily admit that for many years I trended toward an acceptance of mere recovery as opposed to a quest to thrive. I have since learned the error of my ways. Some days, perhaps more days than I would care to admit, I have to beat back the temptation to accept simple survival and recovery as good enough. But they’re not.

Pushing my old friend back from the brink and on toward his better self can be an emotional challenge. And, it would be nice to have someone encourage me as I have encouraged him. I will always believe that he’s one clever bit of encouragement away from changing the way he treats himself. Someday he'll thrive.

The power of pessimistic expectations to alter the future?

To be honest, I found this article by Tali Sharot a little dull until I read:

"The problem with pessimistic expectations, such as those of the clinically depressed, is that they have the power to alter the future; negative expectations shape outcomes in a negative way. How do expectations change reality?

To answer this question my colleague, cognitive neuroscientist Sara Bengtsson, devised an experiment in which she manipulated positive and negative expectations of students while their brains were scanned and tested their performance on cognitive tasks. To induce expectations of success, she primed college students with words such as smart, intelligent and clever just before asking them to perform a test. To induce expectations of failure, she primed them with words like stupid and ignorant. The students performed better after being primed with an affirmative message."

The idea that negative expectations can shape outcomes in a negative way upsets the idea of the necessity of pessimism or at least tempered realism. In other words, could what would otherwise be a constructive effort to create a positive effect be upset by negative expectations preceding the effort?

If this is true it places even greater importance on prior expectation and outlook. It's all too easy to say, "Well, I probably won't be able to improve my golf game, but I'm going to try." and then contend that the statement constitutes a realistic outlook that's supported by the willingness to put forth an honest effort. That statement doesn't feel pessimistic to the person who made it (me).

This all seems like more support for Dr, Seligman's advice to make the narrative more positive, and to use that positivity and the beginning of the narrative.

Cognitive Optimism Versus Zen Wisdom: A Buddhist answer to cognitive persuasion and control

This article by Andrea F. Polard Psy.D. got me thinking and feeling.

"Instead of trying to persuade ourselves to thinking positive, the Zen approach is to ask ourselves, 'Who is it that needs persuasion?' The idea is to question the way we experience ourselves and others before we even look at the particular negative thought or event. Zen questioning is there to find perspective. Usually we suffer unnecessarily because our perspective is very, very limited, namely the perspective of being a separate person. Our brain produces the illusion of separateness because it wishes to control the concrete world. While this is a fantastic survival strategy, it disconnects us from our community and from the expansive feeling of being related to everybody and everything. Once we get a sense of who we truly are, namely this being connected to the greater Being, we look at the particular, small experience with wisdom. We don’t have to take it so seriously anymore. Just looking at our inner experience from the perspective of Being causes us to relax and smile."

I'm all for keeping my thoughts and feelings in perspective relative to the world around me. Where her article starts to give me pause is when she writes, "...there is no evidence that our thoughts are at the top of a hierarchy inside the brain." They sure aren't. Feelings of fear trumps logic when it comes to someone who fears flying. And, rage has no need for ideas. No matter where our thoughts reside within the brain's hierarchy, these most troublesome feelings and emotions reside near the bottom but that doesn't mean they're not hugely powerful. That's why a cat, even though it lacks a fully developed frontal lobe, can still be desperately fearful and amazingly enraged (sometimes all at once).

What Pollard seems to ignore is that most of the problems of the relentless pessimist flow from a relentless blending of negative thoughts and feelings. It's very hard to have a thought that matters without an awareness of a corresponding feeling. In the same way, we are usually quite able to correlate a feeling to a thought.

Geez, I love a good massage.

Keeping realism from becoming runaway pessimism is a matter of managing thoughts and feelings.

Both are affected by the world around me, there's no doubt. 

But only I can find the balance point between the world and what I think and feel.

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

In his book, Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman advises readers to minimize negative thoughts rather than trying to increase the number of positive thoughts.

This gave me the idea to make a list of the negative ideas that are floating around my head.

Negative ideas are slippery little devils. They often masquerade as neutral or realistic ideas rather than the overtly negative forces they truly are:

1) I'm getting too old to accomplish very much.2) I've wasted some precious opportunities (ones I could not afford to waste).3) I rely too much (in the professional realm) on other people doing things or failing to do them.4) One (or more) of my current projects seems destined to cost me rather than make money.

One of my old pals, Little Stevie, used to quote an old timer he knew: "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"

I always liked that quote. The truth is that I've never (as an adult) felt limited by my age. Oh sure, I imagine that my age could possibly get in the way if I ever had to look for a new job, but it wouldn't be a brick wall. Obviously, this too old feeling is pretty standard stuff. In the end, the reality of aging is what it is.Thinking about it is a genuine waste of time and energy.

Bemoaning a missed opportunity is standard issue what if stuff. Whether the opportunities were truly missed or whether another equally valid and possibly rewarding course was chosen is purely academic. The past is past.

Reliance on others is a hard one. It can true and also hard to change. I do rely on the judgments of others when it comes to my profession. Someone else pulls most of the strings. That reality flows from decisions made long ago. Still, no one attains true autonomy even though everyone says they want it.

Projects cost time and money. Even if they don't cost actual money, time is simply money in another form. I have a friend who is terrified of trying something new (when it comes to business, especially) because he's afraid his efforts are likely to come to nothing. Even before I cataloged my daily negativism I used his monumental resistance as motivation not to give in to his self defeatist example. In the end, I fear standing still even more than slipping backward so all of my projects are all systems go.

Most books never get published.

Most businesses fail.

But, the only certainty is that which comes from an effort never made.

Optimism and faith

Looking back at the definition of optimism I was struck by the fact that the word hope and belief were used.

In elementary philosophy students are taught to differentiate thoughts from belief. One especially amusing professor said, "You may well believe you can fly out the window. But, you think that if you work hard and learn that you might attain your degree in philosophy. Thinking needs a foundation but faith does not."

My guess is that successful optimists manage to develop and encourage feelings that things will turn out well. And, this reminds me of faith...

But, faith tends to leave out troublesome questions like what if. Optimism, it seems, may contain the flexibility to allow for what if questions. In this way, healthy optimism be more of state of confidence rather than simple faith. The what ifs may come to pass, but they will be addressed and overcome.

The Benefits of Optimism Are Real

This is a fine article from The Atlantic that's very much worth reading:

Emily Esfahni Smith / 2013

My first question is what fosters resiliency? Can resiliency only be gained by enduring hardships?

Or, is resiliency a quality that's either hard wired into a person or it's not?

Optimism defined

It turns out that optimism comes from the 18th century French word, optimisme and the Latin word, Optimum (best thing).

The word, best, as an ardent realist strikes me; not better, best.

I was surprised to see that the word also entails a big picture belief that the nature of the universe is good and that good will conquer evil.

This concept is made famous by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz' contention that this is the best of all possible worlds.

Of course, for Leibniz the best worlds contention was a necessary link in the reasoning he used to create his Monadology.

Sure, Leibniz was pretty much Newton's punk when it came to calculus, but I still concur with his best worlds contention.

For me, though, it's a question of better rather than best. I don't seek to constantly envision the best outcome. The quest (for me) is to avoid a relentless belief in the worst outcome.

So, my book doesn't need to be a New York Times Best Seller and my golf game doesn't need to challenge Rory McIlroy's. I only need to believe that I can write and play golf better tomorrow than I do today.

The spirit of optimism in the face of death: Oliver Sachs in the New Yorks Times

Some moments of optimism come easy, some comes only with a rare kind of courage...

Today I read Oliver Sachs New York Times opinion piece about learning he has terminal cancer and what he's decided his life needs to be about because of it.

He writes of feeling intensely alive and his hope to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross got a good deal right in her Five Stages of Grief but Sachs shows that another kind of person can find optimism where others may well get stuck on mere acceptance.

Acceptance is a kind of pessimism...

Dr. Martin Seligman and Learned Optimism

I actually bought this book for my girlfriend, but I also read it myself. It includes a series of tests that are designed to show whether the reader is inclined toward pessimism.

I am...

More than anything, the book (which you can buy at Amazon) was instructive in the way that Dr. Seligman conveyed how even our most honest narratives can imprint pessimistic patterns of thought in our minds. According to Dr. Seligman, if we want to change our mind we have to change our narrative.

Learned Optimism deserves credit for encouraging me to see the need to be receptive to the idea that a greater sense of optimism was both possible and desirable.

I recommend the book highly. It is quite illuminating.

Train Face

Funny, it took me quite a while to realize what took away my tendency to smile; public transportation.

Public transportation probably seems like an odd barrier to optimism, at least to people who don't have to use it every day.

Still, the fact is that over a decade or so I have noticed that I have Train Face. Train Face is a comparative blankness of affect that can be of benefit when riding public transportation.

A blank, relatively expressionless face doesn't attract attention.

Hapless tourists don't ask you where the Hollwood sign is and the homeless are (somewhat) less likely to ask you for money.

Train Face has becomes an almost physical malady yet it's something I've gotten used to. For the last few weeks I have made an effort to reform my Train Face into something more akin to a smile or at least to less of a frown. Sure, it means some of my fellow passengers are more likely to smile back at me (horrors) and may make me slightly more likely to be approached by someone asking for fifty cents.

Seems worth it...

From cynicism to optimism without a loss of self?

The value of pessimism and it's better looking cousin, realism, are hard to ignore. Without pessimists cavemen busy saving food for the winter would likely have failed to save enough food just often enough to have become extinct.

We should be grateful that there was at least one caveman (picture someone dressed like Fred Flintstone), standing by to sternly warn that there wasn't going to enough food wasn't if winter lasted longer than expected.

Pessimism is a critical part of human intellectual development.

The problem is that it can also get in the way of accomplishing things:

Why try to write a book that is unlikely to ever be published, let alone make any money?

Why try to stay fit when the ravages of time are laughing at your futile efforts?

In other words, why strive?

I don't feel pessimistic. Still, I do feel a sense of reality press down when I consider new projects. And, there are certain terms that cause my essential pessimist to bloom. Among them phrases like, The Middle East Peace Process. That particular phrase has fallen out of vogue with all but the most ardent optimists.

The problem is that I rather like some elements of my cynicism (see, I won't even disguise it as realism). It has made it easier, in some ways, to weather disappointment. It seems to make the world's motions clearer.

But, it has also gotten in the way.

So, I have decided to create this optimism lab. Here, I intend to collect, test and share the tools that have helped others to make optimism have a greater force in their lives; a greater positive force. At the same time, I want to see if I can find a way to balance a greater receptivity to optimism with my organic, if sometimes hyperactive, sense of cynicism.