[Revu2]

I'm curious if any members have worked with Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism quiz? It's 48 questions and you can find it by searching and looking for a link at Stanford.

The key to the whole thing is how we explain what we go through. Optimists generally take credit for the good things and feel they apply across their whole lives; they also limit their ownership of bad things to a one-time event in a specific life domain.

I think mastering the optimistic explanation "on the fly" could be an interesting project. Its a species of self-talk.

Comments welcome.

I'm pretty sure I would fail

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[Perna]

I did it a long time ago, in the 90's when the book first came out, etc. I bought the book right then, as an expensive hardback (with bright orange cover :-) and started reading it but it felt too broad, repetitive and "obvious" to me and did not hold my interest. I have always been more optimistic and hopeful than not so it did not have that great an impact on me.

[vans1974]

I took it awhile ago...I recall it scored me as very optimistic, but I'd say I'm just moderately optimistic.

[Revu2]

He has another book out around 06, and still runs the Center for Positive Psychology. On their site are many studies that seek participants. Could be fun if I could spare the time.

I have the follow on book on request from the library, so haven't seen it yet.

My challenge, actually, THE challenge, of my life is holding my optimism/enthusiasm down to workable levels where I don't get too manic. I was considering today what are those feeling good for anyway? I couldn't answer.

So I ended by inviting those feelings to take a seat and enjoy the show.

R.

[Elektra_]

lol pessimistic here and dont need a test for that

[splitimage]

I read the book / took the quizz about 2 years ago. It was really a revelation to me. I scored off the charts in terms of pessimism. But it was a novel concept to me that I could change my outlook. Since I read the book, I've been using CBT to try to change my thought patterns, and it's slowly working. I really do believe we can change our natural predisposition.

splitimage

[Poppy Princess]

It's a foolish quiz. It invents situations without giving specific details.

For example:

3. You get lost driving to a friend's house.
I missed my turn.
My friend gave me bad directions.

Now how should I know what the answer is? My friend gave me great directions, perhaps. Perhaps he didn't. I won't know until he actually gives them to me. Did I miss my turn? It's hard to say when the reality has yet (never will) replace the invented situation. One could take a bad turn, or one could be given bad directions. It depends. One's self esteem or imaginary pain doesn't even come into it. You either had good directions or you didn't. Simple as that.

What a useless exercise.

[tranquility84]

Originally Posted by splitimage

I read the book / took the quizz about 2 years ago. It was really a revelation to me. I scored off the charts in terms of pessimism. But it was a novel concept to me that I could change my outlook. Since I read the book, I've been using CBT to try to change my thought patterns, and it's slowly working. I really do believe we can change our natural predisposition.

splitimage

I just took the test and is rated really pessimistic, not that I am not aware of it. Am really working on correcting my distorted thinking. Sometimes I really doubt I can change the distorted thinking I have had for the past 30 years, but your post gives me hope. Tks for this

[Webgoji]

I'm definitely a pessimist, but it didn't seem like some of those questions had anything to do with being optimistic or pessimistic. Plus, some of them just flat out seemed to be dismissing responsibility.

[Revu2]

Michanne, there is no pass or fail, but a score that points to whether you may be more or less optimistic or pessimistic. Most people would likely know generally where they fall, but the scores have some subtlety that can be intriguing.

Of course, Poppy Princess, the situations are contrived. What they are trying to get at is our usual way of explaining what happens. So, again, like Webgoji points out, Seligman seems to be getting at these preferences for how we explain stuff to ourselves indirectly.

There are six separate things the test questions measure: our explanations in three domains for good situations and bad situations (3 domains X 2 situations =6 subsets).

The permanence part of the scoring considers the duration we put on good and bad experiences. Optimists frame good experiences as long lasting and bad ones as temporary; pessimists take good experiences as short lived or the exception and bad ones as longer lasting.

The pervasive dimension looks at which parts of a person's life he or she considers affected by an experience. Optimists tend to seen good experiences as flooding across many areas of their lives and bad one as in a specific area; pessimists feel one or two bad experiences affect everything else; and one or two good experiences don't have "legs" that affect how they feel about other areas.

The final area or domain is personification, or whether some result is attributed to internal or external sources. This is likely the questions that appear to be inviting a lack of responsibility. Which, technically isn't exactly accurate: it is just that some people would place the responsibility outside themselves and others would accept it.

Optimists, it may not surprise, leave the responsibility for bad outcomes to others and keep the responsibility for good things to themselves; pessimists attribute good outcomes to outside sources and feel bad outcomes are their responsibility.

It was in the third area of Personalization that I pulled my score down from a higher level of optimism. After taking the detailed key in the book (the online site at Stanford only shows general or collated results) and looking at Seligman's logic and examples, I could agree I had some softness there.

As this book is for a general audience, Seligman didn't discuss his research design in detail but it is implied that this test went through rounds of validation.

As a personifier, I have felt great responsibility for far, far, more things than I have a strong influence on—like military spending, environment sustainability, and social fairness. It made the floor upon which I acted: my government is spending MY tax dollars; if I fail at recycling is there any hope others can succeed?; I must be the fairness I seek in others.

Going forward, this book and test has raised these ways of explaining to consciousness and thus closer to being an active choice for myself. I may think and feel my way into explaining something and still choose to carry on, or make a change, but it would no longer be a buried default or kneejerk reaction.

Revu2

Yes, I've read the book and taken the quiz, and I found it very useful in understanding how my thought patterns are slightly off sometimes. Like all other models it's not all-encompassing and doesn't explain everything, but I was surprised at how well the model worked for me, given that Seligman's cultural framework is different from mine.

[BlueInanna]

I didn't know about the quiz, but read the book some years ago. My favorite social worker from of the times my son was assessed for inpatient, recommended it to me. I found the studies very interesting. I'm still stuck in the learned helplessness...

There is some usefulness in being a pessimist, like they're more logical, more prepared for the falls sometimes.

But the main idea in Learned Optimism is for people who've become stuck in the learned helplessness. those of us who've stopped trying to reach for anything better, we fall into believing there's no way for life to get better, like the dogs in the study who sat there hungry even when the gate to the food was unlocked, because of how many times they attempted to reach the food and the gate was locked. It's true for humans too, we can get so sad & stuck that we give up trying to find any solution.

[KC Steely]

I've not read this book, but it does sound interesting. Optimism, in general, is a tricky thing for many people. I consider myself an optimist, but it might be more accurate to make my description that of a cautious optimist. It's easy to be optimist when things are going well and it might even be plausible to be an optimist after a few bad days strung together. But when the whole month explodes, say a number of personal "catastrophic" events occur, then it's really hard to hang onto any thread of optimism, let alone hope. So, perhaps, this kind of describes, my off and on battle with depression. Bottom line, a person can learn to be an optimist, that I believe... and yes, I am working myself into that direction also. That being said, learning to be an optimist, one really has to guard what goes into the mind. There are a lot of negative messages and influences out there which will have an a major impact on a person's attitude and, most certainly, mental health. The media, for instance, is one of the major factors in this issue. I know we all need to know what's going on in the world once in a while through one of the news outlets, but come on, there is not a bigger bunch of negative influencers than the nightly news talking heads! Too much news deals with crime, war, famine, natural disasters, political corruption, etc. and it really will impact a person's sensibilities.

[StrongerMan]

Yes, my situational learned helplessness often gets in the way of my optimism. Or maybe that makes me negatively optimistic? The (my) forecast for rain makes me optimistic of getting cold and wet.

[Revu2]

Thanks for the comments, this thread had been very helpful with sorting out my own feelings and ideas.

I changed my signature image just now to a Mobius strip, as a symbol of my adjustments to success-triggered mania. Which I once endured, but am determined to never experience again. Goodbye super highs; so long follow-on crashes, as well.

Something I do that practices optimism is play with rewriting quotes. For some reason a quote or saying gets my attention. To make it really mine I look at every word and explore what additional meanings or deeper associations arise.

For example. I read a quote in an article about the owner of the Trouble coffee shop in SF CA. She said someone asked her: "What useful skills did she have in a tangible situation?"

This is a great question to start off with. It's as open-ended as several lifetimes. It connects usefulness, skills, and tangible situations. Useful means of service to self or others, skills are my gifts to the situation, and tangible means sensible, touchable, out there in outer reality and not just in my dreams and imagination.

For my rewrites, today, I have a specific situation I'm recovering from. I suffer losses as anyone alive knows we all do, and my own reactions have been to stay engaged in most areas of my living yet feel a deep numbing in the area of loss. Right now, I'm calling off the numbness and restoring feelings and awareness.

What useful skills? Posed as a question and just stopping after 3 words tripped a bit of shock. Numbing parts of myself while the rest of me can act I know can be very useful in the direct emergency situations. I get my physical body or other resources out of harms way, and I need to move quickly to do that in some dire circumstances. Therefore ...

What under appreciated but life saving skills do I have ...

This thing is odd, because I sometimes just keep recycling through my skills with myself (writing only in my journal, making pyramidal paper designs that illuminate my struggles, moan about my problems to anyone with ears, etc.) and really wallow in it. It's safe inside or alone playing with the rolling marbles in my head.

What under appreciated but life saving skills can I deliberately use in a tangible situation?
Tangible? Touch? Contact? It was contact that shocked me into numbness? I have to get back out there? Back in the saddle? Back into living with all the attendant risks? Somewhere I saw a quote found on a tombstone: "It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch."

Don't ask how I made this association, but a knife is safest when sharp, because you don't need to hack away to cut through.

Rewrite: "Former losses will never stop my living and loving even if l Death plays for keeps."

Okay, back to first quote: What under appreciated but life saving skills can I deliberately use to restore my joie de vivre to 'weller than well'?

The little bits at the end jumped the line of my thinking. Joie de vivre suggests this is different now, a new territory to explore because it's all a foreign language. And weller than well I think is a quote from one of the medical clinics. If you know the source please share.

Enough for now, thanks if you managed to get this far. Revu2

[Revu2]

Another note on numbness from an article by Henry Krystal, The Trauma of Confronting One's Vulnerability and Death, in Omnipotent Fantasies and the Vulnerable Self. Edited by Carolyn Ellman & Joseph Reppen. LOC#: BF 175.5 F36 1997

p. 155-6: "The traumatic process is progressive, has an evolutionary determination, and in its basic course is universal to the animal kingdom. It represents a self-destruct apparatus that guarantees each animal a painless death, that is, death in a state of numbness."

Ha!? I'll let this marinate for a bit.

[StrongerMan]

Wasn't "Weller Than Well" Michael Johnson's followup to "Bluer Than Blue"...?

[Revu2]

Don't laugh. Many [non-optimistic] people think of optimists as head in the clouds pollyannas, but the strongest statement on optimism ever written came from Dietrich Bonhoeffer after he returned to Hitler's Germany from New York where he'd been studying. In the midst of that dark time, he intuitively grasped the Nazis vicious spiritual offensive to drive optimism and hope out of people who had a different vision for the next 1000 years.

He wrote:

It is more prudent to be a pessimist. It is an insurance against disappointment, and no one can say "I told you so," which is how the prudent condemn the optimist. The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not abandon it to his enemy.
¶ Of course, there is a foolish, shifty kind of optimism which is rightly condemned. But the optimism of which is will for the the future should never be despised, even if it is proved wrong a hundred times. Some men regard it as frivolous, and some Christians think it is irreligious to hope and prepare oneself for better things to come in this life. They believe in chaos, disorder, and catastrophe. That, they think, is the meaning of the present events and in sheer resignation or pious escapism they surrender all responsibility for the preservation of life and for the generations yet unborn.
¶ Tomorrow may be the day of judgment. If it is, we shall gladly give up working for a better future, but not before.

[Revu2]

Xerox has launched an online journal, Chief Optimist, and invited Will Taylor, a co-founder of Fast Company and its managing editor, to write an article, "Why Optimists will Win the Future."

Read it here: Chief Optimist?Inaugural Issue - Why Optimists Will Win the Future

He posed 4 questions:

1. What ideas separate you from everyone else?
2. Do you and your people care more than anyone else?
3. Do you have customers who can't live without you?
4. Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?

I suppose each of us might find different questions, or re-write these in different ways to suit where we are now in our journeys.

For me, as an exercise, I might reword these as:

1. What is it I bring to living that no one else can ever exactly duplicate? In writing this is called finding ones voice. In Jazz, getting ones chops. To discover it may require time alone practicing, or traveling, or alone and sitting with the question. And when that gentle whisper of an answer responds, I want to be listening.
2. What do I care about more than anybody?
3. Am I showing up in a compelling way?
4. Am I focused on exactly what I need to learn and avoiding entertaining distractions?

Your thoughts?
Revu2

Interesting. The first set is very competitive in nature... Comparing to the competition. I like yours better because they focus on who you are whomever you are interacting with. Part of good business is knowing when to work WITH your competitors. Early on apple needed Microsoft even though they were already a competitor at the time. In fact they got the first Macintosh.

Have you read Seth Godin? He has some great insights. I like his daily email.

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[Revu2]

Yeah, I like Seth's work a lot, and your pt about knowing when to compete and when to cooperate is well taken. Mary Parker Follett contributed a lot to this distinction.

The xerox article is in 'leadership-speak' so matches its audiences' worldview.
Revu2