You Are What You Think
And if you change your mind—from pessimism to optimism—you can change your life
Claipe Safran
[ 1 ] Do you e the glass as half full rather than half empty? Do you keep your eye upon the doughnut, not upon the hole? Suddenly the clichés are scientific questions, as rearchers scrutinize the power of positive thinking.
[ 2 ] A fast-growing body of rearch—104 studies so far, involving some 15 000 people—is proving that optimism can help you to be happier, healthier and more successful. Pessimism leads, by contrast, to hopelessness, sickness and failure, and is linked to depression﹡, loneliness and painful shyness. "If we could teach people to think more positively," says psychologist Craig A. Anderson of Rice University in Houston，" it would be like inoculating them against the mental ills."
[ 3 ] "Your abilities count," explains psychologist Michael F. Scheier of Carnegie Mellon Uni
versity in Pittsburgh, "but the belief that you can succeed affects whether or not you will." In part , that's becau optimists and pessimists deal with the same challenges and disappointments in very different ways.
[ 4 ] Take, for example, your job. In a major study, psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania and colleague Peter Schulman surveyed sales reprentatives at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. They found that the positive-thinkers among longtime reprentatives sold 37-percent more insurance than did the negative-thinkers. Of newly hired reprentatives, optimists sold 20-percent more.
[ 5 ] Impresd, the company hired 100 people who had failed the standard industry test but had scored high on optimism. The people, who might never have been hired, sold 10 percent more insurance than did the average reprentative.
[ 6 ] How did they do it? The cret to an optimist's success, according to Seligman, is in his "explanatory style". When things go wrong the pessimist tends to blame himlf. " I'm no good at this, " he says, " I always fail." The optimist looks for loopholes. He blames th
e weather, the phone connection, even the other person. That customer was in a bad mood, he thinks. When things go right, the optimist takes credit while the pessimist es success as a fluke.
[ 7 ] Craig Anderson had a group of students phone strangers and ask them to donate blood to the Red Cross . When they failed on the first call or two, pessimists said, "I can't do this." Optimists told themlves, "I need to try a different approach."
[ 8 ] Negative or positive, it was a lf-fulfilling prophecy. "If people feel hopeless, "says Anderson, "they don't bother to acquire the skills they need to succeed."
[ 9 ] A n of control, according to Anderson, is the litmus test for success. The optimist feels in control of his own life. If things are going badly, he acts quickly, looking for solutions, forming a new plan of action, and reaching out for advice. The pessimist feels like fate's plaything and moves slowly. He doesn't ek advice, since he assumes nothing can be done.
[ 10 ] Optimists may think they are better than the facts would justify—and sometimes that's what keeps them alive. Dr. Sandra Levy of the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute studied women with advanced breast cancer. For the women who were generally optimistic, there was a longer dia-free interval, the best predictor of survival. In a pilot study of women in the early stages of breast cancer, Dr. Levy found the dia recurred sooner among the pessimists.
[ 11 ] Optimism won't cure the incurable, but it may prevent illness. In a long term study, rearchers examined the health histories of a group of Harvard graduates, all of whom were in the top half of their class and in fine physical condition. Yet some were positive thinkers, and some negative. Twenty years later, there were more middle-age dias—
hypertension, diabetes, heart ailments —among the pessimists than the optimists.
[ 12 ] Many studies suggest that the pessimist's feeling of helplessness undermines the body's natural defens, the immune system. Dr. Christopher Peterson of the University of Michigan has found that the pessimist doesn't take good care of himlf. Feeling passi
ve and unable to dodge life's blows, he expects ill health and other misfortunes, no matter what he does. He munches on junk food，avoids exerci, ignores the doctor, has another drink.
