Pic courtesy of SuperForester Glenda
Dear SuperForest,
It’s a question my thoughts return to no matter how many times I think I’ve got this whole “life” thing sorted: What does it take to lead a happy, fulfilled existence? At times, all these negative thoughts swirl around in my head, but they’re not reflective of the optimism I feel inside. Is there a way to drown out these thoughts? If I’ve developed a tendency to see the glass as half-empty, can I regain my habit of focusing only on the good?
In an effort to answer some of these questions, I recently had a chat with one of my former professors, Bill von Hippel from the University of Queensland. In this interview, he offers us plenty of insight about this always-intriguing topic.
What are the benefits of seeing the glass as half full?
“Optimism turns out to have a number of positive benefits. The first one would be that for people who are optimistic – as you put it, see the glass half full – when they encounter obstacles, they tend to view those obstacles as a challenge, rather than a threat. That’s an important distinction because challenges are things that get in our way that we believe we have the capacity to deal with. Threats are things that get in our way that we believe may overwhelm our capacity.”
Are some people just wired to be more positive than others?
“When I was at university, I remember a good friend of mine had grown up in a ghetto in LA. A good friend of his had been shot in a drive-by shooting, and his mother was addicted to drugs and all these sort of stereotypic bad stories. And he was one of the most positive guys I ever met. And one day, I asked him, ‘How on earth are you always so happy and positive all the time?’, and he says, ‘Well, I got my health’. And I was thinking, well, so does everyone else in this room, but that doesn’t seem to make them happy. Clearly here’s a case where … my guess is there’s a very strong predisposition toward positivity that enabled someone to put up with a lot of difficulty in life and still retain a positive outlook.”
Could anyone, with enough effort and commitment, replace a habit of pessimism with a habit of positivity?
“[Psychologists] tend to view these things as mental habits and so, cognitive behavioural therapy, which is one of the most common forms of psychological therapy, is based on the notion that you get into these mental bad habits and you need to retrain them, and I believe that’s true. There’s a ‘negative attributional style’, ie when bad things happen you say, ‘Oh, that’s typical of me; bad things always happen to me’, and you generalise and personalise them, rather than say, ‘Well, that’s something about the situation and I’ll overcome it’.
“I also believe there’s a genetic component here and that there’s a heritability to an optimistic or pessimistic outlook on life. The key thing to keep in mind, when we talk genetics, is that this doesn’t mean genetic determinism. People think, well if there’s a genetic component then that’s just how it is. Well, genes are no more determinant of our behaviour than the environment is; both of those work together and part of our environment is our own personal desires and goals. And, so, just because our genes influence us to maybe be more optimistic or pessimistic, doesn’t mean we can’t push it around ourselves.”
How can we re-train our brains to think more optimistically?
“Martin Seligman initiated this movement toward positive psychology. He argues that this is just a process, that you need to retrain the way you explain the world – he calls it attributional style, the style with which you explain what’s going on around you. And he talks about how important it is [and] how you can, in fact, train yourself to try to choose the ways you attribute the world so that you have a more positive outlook. Inner dialogue is key. What you say to your friends matters. What you say to yourself matters. And so, the most important thing is not the optimism you profess, but the optimism you believe.”
In what ways does the media affect our outlook?
“The world gets better in lots of ways that we kind of don’t notice or think about or appreciate because it doesn’t make the news. What does make the front cover is some conflict somewhere, and we instantly know about it, or the rich and wealthy doing fabulous things. We’re having our nose rubbed in the extreme good and the extreme bad. And they both have the potential to make us feel bad.”
Does being around people who are positive or negative have a rub-off effect?
“There’s a lot of really interesting evidence for what you might call emotional contagions. We tend to mimic each other. We don’t do it consciously, but we mimic each other’s bodily postures and facial expressions. And we know that both of these feed back into your psyche, the way that you feel in the moment. And so if you have people sitting in a slumped way, they actually start to feel deflated. If they posture themselves in a happier proud way, they feel that way. And so someone who’s feeling really down, either because they’re depressed or are a habitually pessimistic type, will influence others.”
What brings us happiness?
“The things we think will make us happy we’re often wrong about. So we often pursue things, like wealth, that actually don’t bring very much happiness; once you get to a certain level, it gains you very little. And the one thing that reliably makes people happy is when you use your money to purchase experiences rather than objects. Things like holidays, for example. These purchases are ones you look back on and are pleased with even way later.”
What else can have a positive effect on our lives?
“Relationships. At the end of their life, people tend to say, I wish I’d spent more time with my children and partner and my friends. And that’s because, late in life, people do come to this realisation: it’s relationships that matter. And so the one thing that can actually make you happier and stay happier is being in good relationships. Bad relationships are costly, so it’s not like any relationship will do. But having good friends who you care about and who care about you, will actually increase your happiness and that increase will be stable, rather than being the ephemeral increase that we get if we earn a big raise.”
Do you have anything you’d like to add?
“When you radiate happiness, you attract others to you. Everybody likes to be around happy and positive people. Partially, because it makes them feel happier and more positive. I think that’s why we have that old phrase, ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you’ll cry alone’.”
Thanks, Bill!
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