EXECUTIVE Strategy: Transforming Pessimism to Optimism

By Steven K. Haught, MBA

One of the major struggles that employers  are experiencing with their workforce is poor morale or declining attitudes. This is a growing challenge for leaders as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause high levels of employee stress about the future.

Part of an employee’s attitude is shaped by environmental factors such as work conditions, external pressures, and corporate culture. But what seems more significant are psychological factors, particularly the employee’s general outlook on life.

If someone is an optimist, they are more likely to have a better attitude about their work than a pessimist, and they are likely more productive. 

Unfortunately, employers rarely think to train their workforce on how to be more optimistic.  It is not impossible to train a team to be generally more optimistic and experts in behavioral science tell us how it can be done. So rather than complaining about your team’s morale or attitude, why not give them the tools to change their brains?

To start, people need to be aware of their pessimism and how it is negatively affecting their health, happiness and job performance. Most people think they’re an optimist simply because they have a friend or relative who’s more negative than they are. But it doesn’t work that way.  Pessimism is a general tendency to expect poor or unfavorable outcomes from all situations and circumstances. It is not about comparing yourself to others… it is a question of whether your outlook is more frequently negative or positive. If we want to change your outlook, where do you begin?

Outlook is shaped by a ‘running conversation’ that goes on in our head from the time we wake up until the time we go to bed and even into the early hours of the morning. If most of that self-talk is negative, it will influence [negatively] how a person sees the world around them. Negative thoughts rewire the brain to look for problems, so people tend to see them everywhere.

The habit of forcing reality to fit into certain patterns is known as the “Tetris Effect.” This expression comes from an experiment conducted at Harvard Medical School, where a group of people who played the game repeatedly over 72 hours and then were awakened early in their sleep cycle saw Tetris patterns even while not playing the game. Everything became a Tetris block.

If people are more pessimistic, that pattern of negativity is fixed in their brains and they tend to focus on what can go wrong in any given situation. 

Whereas, the optimist, in the exact same circumstances, sees the possibilities. If you want to have a better attitude and outlook, you must engage in certain mental practices, because humans need to overcome  the “negativity bias” mentality if they hope to out-smart negative thinking.

Neuroscientists believe, (although an unproven theory), that being more pessimistic allowed our ancestors to survive the daily onslaught of threats to their existence. Consequently, humans are more inclined to pay attention to danger and threats than to positive opportunities. 

Here are three personal practices that can help you change your brain chemistry and rewire your brain to be more optimistic:

1. Practice gratitude, be thankful

Be intentional about being grateful so that it becomes strong enough to counteract the negativity bias.

Also, try expressing gratitude to others more frequently. Use your smartphone to send text messages of appreciation to others in your business and personal network. This intentional practice improves your attitude and your relationships at the same time.

2. Learn to savor the good

This is about lingering over pleasurable experiences for just a few seconds, instead of rushing on to the next thing. Doing so will stimulate positive brain chemistry and preserve the positive experience into your memory. Learn to hit the pause button when you eat something tasty or feel the sun on your face or hug a close friend. Allow it to sink in. Relish these kinds of experiences. Make your good times last by cherishing them in the moment. In neuroscience they say that “the neurons that fire together, wire together.”

3. Manage your self-talk

The psychologist Martin Seligman has discovered in his research that a pessimistic mindset develops when we explain our setbacks in ways that make it personal, pervasive and permanent. So learn to do the opposite.

I can remember the times when I had huge sales opportunities with some of the country's leading media companies. Big dollar deals, just waiting to close.  My positive mental attitude was over the moon.  Then… after the months of tedious negotiations, some of those prospects would send me an email or call, saying they were going to go in another direction, buy another solution. 

When you DNA is infused with a passion for selling, solving problems, the lost sales could have been emotionally devastating.  Instead of telling myself that all my hard work was down the drain, I focused on coming up with a solution for salvaging the deals. While I did not save them all, I did salvage many of the deals, learning a valuable lesson. The lesson learned… when facing rejection, loss or an unresponsive economy, like now… how you talk to yourself makes all the difference between success or failure.

These three personal practices -- gratitude, savoring the good, and positive self-talk -- may seem trivial, but they work. Of course, changes in your outlook won’t happen over night, but in a matter of weeks you will find yourself less stressed, and feel less negative and more optimistic. These practices change your attitude and give you the energy you need to succeed.

Like it or not, we all need to train our brains to overcome our inherent negativity bias. You may be a natural at this, but it is important to know how to help others and to give them the cognitive tools they need to change their brain wiring. 

Having a team with a good attitude doesn’t happen by chance or wishful thinking, it takes earnest effort and proven practices.

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