Optimistic Style

Mental Toughness Key Dimension #1

by Andreas Stamatis, Ph.D.

Synopsis:

1. Mental toughness is “a personal capacity to produce consistently high levels of subjective (e.g., personal goals or strivings) or objective performance (e.g., sales, race time, GPA) despite everyday challenges and stressors as well as significant adversities.”
2. Mental toughness is a “caravan” of eight key dimensions: self-efficacy, success mindset, context knowledge, buoyancy, optimistic style, overcoming adversity, attention regulation, and emotion regulation.
3. Optimistic style is the tendency to expect positive events in the future and attribute positive causes and outcomes to different events in one’s life.
4. Optimism, as a strategy of how we interpret adversity in the world, can be learned/taught.
5. On average, optimists lead healthier lives and exhibit higher motivation and career success.
6. The explanatory style (3P’s: Permanent, Personal, Pervasive) is central to what differentiates the optimist from the pessimist.
7. Our explanatory style affects how we “filter” the world, which affects our actions.
8. Being over-optimistic is unhealthy and potentially dangerous.

Since we have now covered what mental toughness is and which are its key dimensions (see previous “story”), let’s go on by breaking down one by one. Today, we’re starting with optimistic style. Let me share a true story first and use it as an example…

Two years ago, a male hockey player (let’s call him Liam) came to my office and wanted to talk with me. I agreed to visit with him the following afternoon.

Visit #1: Liam was recruited as an exceptionally good hockey player. The coaches had really high hopes. He would kill it in practice. However, he’d struggle during most of the games. Things had gotten that bad that he wouldn’t even start anymore. His father (who meant a lot to Liam) was very disappointed.

Liam came to me very desperate: he didn’t want to disappoint anybody. This disappointment was spilling over other parts of his life (e.g., school). He wanted to understand what was going on with him. He wanted to perform as well as he could perform and stop feeling hopeless.

Our first talk went pretty well. First, I asked him a couple of questions. Once he felt comfortable, I let him talk. At the end, I asked him to fill out the Mental Toughness Index (MTI). We agreed to visit again….

Visit #2: Based on his MTI scores, his own assessment of his optimistic style levels was low. In fact, that was his lowest score in all eight key dimensions. I explained to Liam his MTI scores. We agreed on focusing on discussing optimistic style first.

Optimism is about expecting, in general, good outcomes in your life. However, not all people approach life the same way. Think about individuals you know: Some tend to believe that things will go their way (aka optimists) and some others anticipate the opposite (aka pessimists).

I gave Liam the following example in order to show him that we all face adversity. However, the key may be perception. Our actions are based on our perception of the world or of a hockey game.

-So, Liam, let’s say you miss a shot at the beginning of the next game. You can start thinking that you suck, that you shouldn’t have missed it, that it means that the whole game or even day will go wrong, that you don’t deserve to play or be here etc. OR… just move to the next play and try to do your best. What do you pick?

-Well, I know what’s right: in a way, to just forget about it and move on. BUT… I just can’t challenge those automatic negative thoughts. I feel so incapable of changing the circumstances. I’ve experienced these feelings of helplessness too many times, you know?

-OK. Let me ask you this now: Do you believe that whatever thoughts you have after a missed shot will influence what you do next?

-Yes, I’ve noticed that repeatedly. I just can’t stop that negative fulfilling prophecy kind of process, I guess…

My goal for the next visits was to educate Liam on optimism and pessimism. Here are some highlights:

• Optimists achieve more, have better overall health, and lead more enjoyable lives.
• Pessimists are more likely to give up, tend to suffer from depression, and lead a less enjoyable life.
• Optimism can be learned, but it needs to be cultivated.
• How can we switch from pessimism to optimism? The big difference between the two may be the explanatory style or the 3P’s.
• Explanatory Style and the 3P’s:

Permanent/Stable (e.g., I’ll never make that shot),

Pervasive/Global (e.g., My whole day will suck since we lost the game), and

Personal/Internal (e.g., It was my fault).

• Explanatory Style — > Perception — > Action: The way we explain life events influences our reactions to them.
• Balanced Optimism: Optimism has to be realistic. Extremely high levels of optimism can lead to problems. As Seligman, the founding father of Positive Psychology, said: overly optimistic people are as much “slaves to tyrannies of optimism as pessimists are to the tyrannies of pessimism.”

Liam and I ended up agreeing on the wording of three short phrases that could help him during unsuccessful plays:

a) “Not me” (not Personal)

b) “Next time” (not Permanent)

c) “Still a great son” (not Pervasive)

He found it helpful to repeat those phrases (self-talk) when his performance would not be optimal. See illustration (The Rain versus the Sun) below:

Optimistic Liam versus Pessimistic Liam

Most importantly, after several visits, Liam understood that optimism is not just positive phrases, but the way you think about adversity; it’s not just about theories but practical techniques; not just about talking about pessimistic habits, but also about developing the skills to replace them with positive self-talk. He also understood that, as a pilot takes ALL precautions before flying the plane (preflight check: fuel, oil, engines, etc.), Liam had to do whatever was possible before playing that game (e.g., practice intentionally every day, hydrate, sleep). A pilot can’t just be optimistic that everything will be OK if there’s no fuel in the plane, right? Same way, Liam had to be pro-active AND adopt an optimistic explanatory style.

After a while, we couldn’t find time to visit anymore. He sent me an email a couple of months later writing that things were going better but it’d take him some time to work on his Cognitive Distortions (3P’s). However, he was investing time on that on a daily basis. That made me happy :)

How about you?

• Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
• Do you think optimism can be learned?
• What’s your explanatory style?
• Do you perceive negative life events as temporary/local/external or lasting/global/internal?
• Do you find that the way you “explain” adversity affects your next moves?

For more information, please see:

Gucciardi, D. F., Hanton, S., Gordon, S., Mallett, C. J., & Temby, P. (2015). The concept of mental toughness: Tests of dimensionality, nomological network, and traitness. Journal of Personality, 83(1), 26–44.

Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1985). Optimism, coping and health: Assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies. Health Psychology, 4, 219–247. doi: 10.1037//0278–6133.4.3.219

Seligman, M. E. P. (1991). Learned optimism. New York, NY: Knopf.

What’s next? Let’s break down another key dimension. Let’s continue with emotion regulation.

In the meantime… live intentionally, NOT habitually,
Andreas.