Studies are proving how important optimism is to mental health. Optimism is absolutely essential in increasing your resilience.
What is optimism?
Optimism is this: the skill of believing that, unless every piece of hard evidence is pointing the opposite way, the current situation is as likely to turn out well as not, and even if it doesn’t turn out well, it can still benefit you, will still bring all kinds of insights and lessons with it, if you’re calm and eager enough to look for them. The “calm and eager” comes from optimism.
You Can Solve This
When we don’t know how to respond or solve something, and we feel our mood start to slide down the side of a cliff of “Oh crap! This is gonna fail. I don’t know how to do this”, a crucial mental step is to edit “I don’t know” into “I don’t know YET”.
Then – and this is the step you cannot do without – give yourself over to curiosity. As I’ve said to clients many times, “hundreds of thousands of people before you have solved this. You’re a people. You can solve this. You just haven’t solved it YET.”
Do you agree that Optimism is a key to mental health? When was the last situation when you could have used “I just haven’t solved it YET” ? Please comment – we want to hear from you!
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