Jan 19 Class

Today we talked about optimistic versus pessimistic thoughts. The most striking discovery is that some negative thoughts are also optimistic. Rather than just going around pretending that everything is wonderful, optimists acknowledge negative events, they just think about them as temporary and specific rather than permanent and pervasive.

We also discovered that not all positive thoughts are optimistic. When we explain positive events as being temporary and specific, rather than permanent and pervasive, we are actually being pessimists.

Activity: We each wrote a description of a recent event and included explanations about why things happened the way they did. Then we identified some positive and negative statements in each person's story and talked about how they could be rewritten to be more optimistic. Finally, we rewrote our stories from a more optimistic perspective.

Example: Negative statement - "I am so lazy!" - permanent and pervasive = pessimistic
               Negative statement - "I didn't get much done today" - temporary and specific = optimistic
               Positive statement - "I succeed because I am a hard worker" - permanent and pervasive = optimistic
               Positive statement - "I got lucky today" - temporary and specific = pessimistic

We found that it was easier to move from a pessimistic negative statement to a pessimistic positive statement than it was to really be optimistic.

Homework: Work on changing pessimistic thoughts into optimistic thoughts.