Do you see the glass half empty more often?

In case you do, you are likely to see the proverbial glass half-empty instead of the other way round. Such people typically fall under the definition of being mild to moderately pessimist. The problem with pessimists is that they are generally less happy with their lives in general and when things go wrong, as they invariably would sometime or the other in everyone’s life, their unhappiness with their life could go up significantly. Not just happiness, but it has a ripple effect in the ability to develop meaningful relations with people around as well as success in life.

What goes through your mind when you have had a bad appraisal rating? Or, how do you feel when a project which you were spearheading fails utterly? Or, how do you feel when an interview you had prepared so well, does not actually end in success?

Do you consider these setbacks to be permanent? That is, do these kind of thoughts cross your mind: “I would never get a fabulous rating in my appraisal”/ “I would never be able to successfully lead a project” / “I am not good at interviews”.  This is what Prof. Martin Seligman refers to as assigning permanence to bad/ adverse events in life. Just because one appraisal has been bad, that in no way means that you would never do well in any other appraisal in your life or just because one project that you were spearheading failed, does it mean that you would fail in every other project that you would lead.

The second question is that do you consider these setbacks to be all-pervasive in your life? That is, just because you have had a setback in one aspect in your life, do you get sad and morose about every other aspect of life as well? For instance, just because one appraisal rating has gone bad, does not mean that you get into a shell with all your colleagues in office and cut-off from all your friends at home and elsewhere and get into a shell. True, one aspect in your life has not gone the way you desired, but that in no way implies or indicates that every other aspect of life would go the same way. Getting into a gloomy frame of mind in every aspect of life just because one aspect has had a setback, is what Prof Seligman refers to as assigning pervasiveness to any setback/ negative event that happens in our life. Some of us can keep the “gloom” restricted to the occasion where one has had a setback, while some others make it all-pervasive across all aspects of life and get into an overall state of gloom and melancholy in their lives where, for a brief period at least, they withdraw from everything altogether.

The third and the final question is whether you personalize the setbacks in your life. That is, do you consider anything and everything bad or untoward that happens to you as your fault? It is one thing to take accountability for one’s actions, it is quite another to blame oneself for everything bad that happens to oneself. Not everything bad that happens to you can be your fault or your doing, and most certainly not to the full extent. By blaming yourself totally for all the bad things or setbacks that happen in your life, you direct your anger and disappointment at your own self which is not just bad for your self-esteem and hence future success, but can be outrightly dangerous for your mental health. Depression, after all, is extreme anger directed at self.

Therefore, to recap, if you were to consider anything bad or adverse that happens in your life to be permanent, pervasive and personal to you, then you are likely to be far more pessimistic than would be the case otherwise.

The converse is equally true. If you happen to be pessimistic, the chances are that when good things happen in your life you are likely to consider them temporary, specific to the occasion, and not attributable to you as an individual.

For instance, if I am a pessimist and I happen to get an excellent appraisal rating this year, I would say to myself, “Oh, this year was by chance/ my boss was in a good mood/ etc”. In other words, a pessimist would assign anything good in life to be temporary rather than something which could well be more permanent than a pessimist would like to believe.

Similarly, if I am a pessimist and the project that I was spearheading meets with outstanding success, I would consider the success specific to the occasion. In other words, “this particular project succeeded because we were given all the resources necessary/ this project had the attention of the senior management/ etc.” Instead of exploring the generic reasons for success and hence what may well be replicable in other situations, a pessimist would look at every success as a one-off occasion.

Last but not the least, a pessimist would not ascribe much success to self – “the interview went well because the interviewer was friendly” instead of ascribing it to one’s own competence. No one is suggesting that one brags about one’s achievements nor is the suggestion that modesty is not advisable. However, to take that to an extreme where one is unable to ascribe any success or achievement to himself, can be seriously dangerous to self -esteem and therefore self- confidence.

To recap, if you happen to be a pessimist, for anything good or great that happens in your life, you would (i) consider success to be of temporary nature, or (ii) consider success to be specific to the occasion or (iii) attribute the entire success to others and not to your competence, or (iv) any combination of the first three or worse all the three.

People who have a pessimistic outlook, are not only likely to be much sadder in their lives as compared to their optimistic counterparts, but it is likely to have an adverse impact on their physical health, their ability to maintain healthy & positive relations with people around them, and their success in their professions, whatever they may be. Pessimistic outlook has a negative impact on self-esteem of the individual and therefore on self-confidence. This is based on extensive research done by Prof Martin Seligman in the field of Positive Psychology over decades.