Pessimists are always right, optimists are always successful.

I shared seligman's Live an Optimistic Self yesterday. Seligman is the father of positive psychology and once served as the president of American Psychological Association. Before seligman, psychology focused more on personal psychological problems and even diseases. Seligman believes that psychology needs to help ordinary people and make others live happier and more active lives. To this end, he founded positive psychology.

On the road to growth, optimism is very important to us. Because in the process of growing up, we will always encounter all kinds of obstacles. In fact, when people are born, they are in a helpless state. When a baby is born, it will do nothing but cry. Slowly, she learned to grasp things, learn to climb, learn to walk, learn to speak, and have more and more control over life. Go out of the room and go to the world. Suppose he meets some obstacles in this process, and he won't study again for protection. For example, when a child develops a language, no one responds when he speaks. He may think that language is useless and thus lose the ability to speak.

Although we will not encounter such extreme things, in fact, similar things will always happen in our lives.

Pessimist:

The first time I fell in love, I stopped believing in love.

The first time you invest in leeks, you should save them regularly.

I failed in my first speech, so I dare not speak in public.

Optimist:

First love is hit, adjust yourself to make yourself more attractive, and finally gain love.

The first time I invested in chopped pepper, I learned to invest and finally got a good return.

I failed in my first speech, learned to speak, and finally became a great speaker.

We will see that although it is the same thing, the ending is quite different. Pessimists believe that things are permanent and self-made, while optimists believe that difficulties are temporary and there is always a way to solve them. The problem is only a small obstacle on the way forward.

Pessimists indulge in failure because they think failure is permanent and universal. They become depressed and helpless. A little setback is a big failure in their eyes, and a failure is considered a complete failure, so they put up a white flag and surrendered first. It may take them weeks or even months to recover, and if they are slightly frustrated, they will once again enter the abyss of helplessness. This theory clearly predicts that cleverness is not necessarily success in class and playground. Success belongs to people who are smart and optimistic enough.

Is it enough to be optimistic about everything? For example, if you do nothing, you are optimistic that good luck will come to you. At this time, we need to add a qualifier to this optimism, which is rational optimism. Closer to the word is boldness and caution.

Meyer Musk, the author of Life is Me, said that when he was a child, his parents would take his family across the desert in Africa. Every time they travel, they will be fully prepared, including how to deal with various dangerous animals in the desert. Dare to explore and see the risks of all kinds of things. This is rational optimism. Aim at the known rationally and aim at the unknown optimistically. Only in this way can we continue to enter the unknown world and gain new gains.

Here, seligman also gave some advice on when to be optimistic and when to be pessimistic (cautious).

& lt The principle of whether to use optimistic technology is to look at the cost of failure in a specific situation.

If the cost of failure is high, then you should not be optimistic; If the price is small, you may wish to be optimistic. & gt

ABCDE rule

This is the so-called ABC mode. Quote the ABC model developed by psychologist Ellis: When we encounter an adverse event, our most natural reaction is to keep thinking about it. These thoughts will soon condense into beliefs and become habits, and we will not be aware of our own thoughts. These ideas will not just stay there, they will have consequences, and what we do is the direct consequences of these ideas. For us, it is the key to give up, get depressed or cheer up and try again. D is a rebuttal and e is an argument.

Look at the next example.

Bad thing: I worked hard to cook and invited a group of friends to dinner, only to find that an important guest hardly ate vegetables.

Idea: This food tastes terrible. I can't cook at all. I wanted to take this opportunity to impress her, but now it's all gone. She did me a favor and stood up and left the table without eating.

Consequence: I feel very disappointed and hate myself. I felt ashamed, so I avoided her all night. Obviously, things didn't go as I expected.

Refutation: This is nonsense! I know dinner wasn't that bad. She may have eaten nothing, but others ate a lot. She doesn't like my cooking. There may be a hundred reasons (other possibilities). She may be on a diet, she may feel a little nauseous, or she may have a small appetite (other possibilities). Although she didn't eat anything, she looked happy. She also told some jokes and looked very happy. She even said that she would help me wash the dishes. If she really didn't like me, she wouldn't say so.

Motivation: I'm not as angry or embarrassed as I was just now. I know that if I avoid her, I will really lose a chance to know her. I can relax myself and not let my imagination ruin my dinner.

So the next time something bad happens to you, remember the ABCDE rule. Such a bad thing has become an opportunity to learn. As romain rolland said in Michelangelo, "There is only one kind of heroism in the world, and that is to love life after recognizing the truth of life."