Optimism

There are many topics discussed in my MAPPCP (Master of Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology) Program. Optimism has been a matter for me last few weeks. During my studies, attention is paid to what is needed for peoples well being. This can be pursued in many different ways. For example, by looking at how resilience can be reinforced. Resilience means that you can bounce back after something bad has happened. An example is having enough support from friends and family when you are told that you have a serious illness. I think one of the most important aspects in resilience is optimism and hope. What I think is interesting is that there are two forms of optimism; Having a general optimistic view of the future and optimism as a explanatory style. The last means that you deal with things that happen to you in an optimistic way. Both negative and positive situations. Seligman (Founder Or Positive Psychology) says that more optimistic people think about a positive situation in a way that they contribute to the good thing that happened. More pessimistic people explain a negative situation rather out of themselves. An optimist sees a negative event as something as situational and a more pessimistic view is that it is thought that the negative aspect is contributing in every situation. There are a lot of benefits of being optimistic what you probably already heard about. The most important one is the lowering of stress. You will be better at identifying problems, you will see situations as a challenge not as a threat, this makes you more approach oriented, more likely to seek information about the problem, ask for help, experience more positive emotions and take better care of your body.

When it comes to me I do not know to what extent I agree with the depiction of being a pessimist or an optimist. There are all kinds of questionnaires to test whether you are the one or the other. It is clearly said that there is a Continuum is between the two. This means that there are many more places to stand between optimist and pessimist. In my opinion, this is a core of truth, but I think something is being overlooked. This came to my realization at the time I was going to consider whether I was actually more an optimist or a pessimist in different situations. I though about a negative event accrued the last two weeks. To be open about this, I will explain the situation brief. During a football match, a teammate continually told me what to do in the field, which distracted me and got me out of the game. After the game I went up to her to indicate that she took me out of my game. She told me that I have to get used to it. My message did not come through in my idea. I couldn't stop it and I burst into tears after several minutes. I walked away and I figured out all the things that didn't go well here in London and that I missed everyone, which did not allowed to stop crying. Everything came out at once and in hindsight the conversation with my teammate was the drop that caused the bucket to flow.

I do not write this previous piece because I am pathetic or because I want you to feel sorry for me. It has taught me something about being an optimist or a pessimist. After this was done, I thought a lot about why this was happening. I tried to make sense of what had happened. I didn't do this by having just pessimistic or optimistic thoughts. I was struck by the fact that I used it very much. One moment I thought that this always happened to me, but the other moment I thought about it was also a lot to do with situation, why I couldn't keep my emotions under control. I think this mix of pessimistic and optimistic thoughts can make sure that you can form a better realistic picture about it. To be more clearly what I mean by this; I see these thoughts as all different ' dots ' that overlap to give meaning in a situation. Alright and just to get back to showing your emotions. I think it is good to let them be there, also (especially) the negative emotions. But it may be better to do this in people where you feel comfortable or just enjoy yourself. How do you explain negative and positive events? What goes through your head when something bad happened? And how is your General view of what the future is up for for you? With these last questions, I would like to make you think about how you are now in life and I would like to emphasize that the positive explanation of situations has opened doors to me. When I read about this I thought: no way, so basically you can just decide for yourself have a more optimistic view against life. and still last; It's something that you can decide for yourself and it's probably not going to work if your coach says you just have to be more positive. In any case not in my case.