Organizing: What's Holding You Back?
By Randy Ingermanson
I recently discovered something about myself that
surprised me. Something that makes me take a lot longer
to get things done than I should. Something that
sometimes keeps me from finishing tasks. Something that
occasionally even keeps me from trying in the first
place.
I'm a pessimist.
This came as quite a surprise. After all, I'm not
nearly as pessimistic as "Joe," a guy I used to work
with. Every time I suggested a new idea to "Joe," the
first thing he'd say was, "Now be careful! There's a
lot of things you haven't thought about yet." Then he'd
shoot the idea down with rocket-powered grenades.
After a while, I learned not to run ideas past "Joe"
because apparently, all my ideas were bad.
I haven't seen "Joe" in years, and I'm pretty sure I'm
not as pessimistic as he is. But somewhere along the
way, I definitely went over to the Dark Side. I became
more like him than I ever imagined possible.
That's the bad news. The good news is that pessimism is
not forever. You can quit being a pessimist and start
being an optimist.
But should you? Aren't those pesky pessimists more in
touch with reality than those annoying optimists?
Yes and no.
Yes, pessimists generally do have a better grasp of the
hard realities of the situation. "Life sucks" and all
that. You can prove in the lab that pessimists are
better at recognizing reality.
But no, no, no, because in very real ways, you make
your own reality. We all know about self-fulfilling
prophecies. Those work both ways. Optimists are
happier, healthier, and get more done. Because they
expect to. Pessimists are less happy, less healthy, and
get less done. Because they expect to. Again, you can
measure that difference in the lab.
If you're a pessimist and you want to know what's
holding you back in life, just go look in a mirror.
It's you. But you already knew that, and you were
already down on yourself, and now you're mad at me for
blaming you, but realistically, you secretly believe
it's your own darned fault, so you're really just mad
at me for telling you what you already knew.
Sorry about that. I feel your pain. Remember, I'm a
pessimist too, and I'm probably a bigger one than you
are.
I'm a pessimist, but I'm going to change. Which is
actually an optimistic thing to say, and it means the
cure is already working.
What is pessimism? And what is optimism? And how do you
know which you are?
I'm not the expert on this. Martin Seligman is the
expert, and he has been for a long time. Recently,
somebody recommended Seligman's book to me. The title
is LEARNED OPTIMISM.
I grabbed a copy off Amazon and began reading. Seligman
hooked me right away with his account of how he and a
number of other researchers broke the stranglehold on
psychology that had been held for decades by the
behaviorists.
Behaviorists taught that people were created by their
environment. To change a person, you had to condition
him to a new behavior. A person couldn't change himself
merely by thinking differently, because thinking didn't
matter. Only conditioning mattered.
What Seligman and others showed was that the
behaviorists were wrong. The way you think matters.
Thinking optimistically, you could change things for
the better. Thinking pessimistically, you could change
things for the worse -- or at best just wallow in the
"life sucks" mud.
There's a test you can take in LEARNED OPTIMISM that
helps you figure out your particular style of thinking.
There are three particular aspects to measure:
* Permanence -- if things are good (or bad), do you
expect them to stay like that for a long time?
* Pervasiveness -- if one thing is good (or bad), do
you expect everything else to be like that?
* Personalization -- if things are good (or bad), who
gets the credit (or blame) -- you or somebody else?
Optimists think that good things will continue on but
that bad things will go away soon. Likewise, they think
that good things are pervasive whereas bad things are
merely aberrations from the norm. When good things
happen, optimists are willing to take a fair share of
the credit; when bad things happen, they're willing to
let others take a fair share of the blame.
Pessimists are the opposite on all of these.
I took the test and discovered that I'm somewhat
pessimistic in two of these aspects and strongly
pessimistic in the other.
That's not good. But (having now read the book) it's
not permanent. I can change if I want to. Furthermore,
that pessimism is in my head, it's not a pervasive
feature of the universe. Most importantly, my pessimism
isn't entirely my fault, because I can see now who
taught it to me.
The above paragraph is a model of how to change from
pessimism to optimism. Both optimism and pessimism are
driven by your beliefs, which are driven by what you
tell yourself.
When you change your self-talk, you change your
beliefs. When you change your beliefs, you change your
behavior. When you change your behavior, you change
your life. Chapters 12, 13, and 14 of LEARNED OPTIIMISM
teach you the techniques you need to change your
self-talk.
Let's be clear on one thing. Optimism is not about the
alleged "power of positive thinking," not about making
those wretchedly gooey self-affirmations, and not about
telling lies to yourself.
Optimism is about looking for alternative plausible
explanations that might lead to improving your life.
Pessimism is about looking for alternative plausible
explanations that might lead to disimproving your life.
Which of those is likely to make you happier,
healthier, and more productive? Bringing this home to
the topic of fiction writing, which of those is likely
to help you get your novel written, get it read by an
agent, and get it published?
Research shows that optimism is an invaluable tool in
dealing with criticism and rejection. If you've ever
shut down for three days after a tough critique, or
stopped sending out query letters for three months
after getting a rejection from that perfect agent, then
you can see the value of learning optimism.
Optimism will keep you going through the hard times as
a writer. And you are going to have hard times. That
will never change. What can change is how you respond
to those hard times.
There is no way I can explain in 500 words exactly how
it all works. The best I can do is to point you to
Martin Seligman's book and tell you that I think it's
gold. I expect this book is going to revolutionize my
life in the next year. I hope it changes yours too.
Here's my Amazon affiliate link to LEARNED OPTIMISM.
About The Author
Randy Ingermanson
is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels.
He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and
publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.
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