Optimistically learning optimism.

The word "optimism" intrigues my curiosity faculties and I wonder where do I belong?? Do I belong in the optimists lot or the anti-optimists(pessimist) lot ?? I try and think of situations and my reactions to them, which would help me to conclude on the point. But they seem to worsen the problem in hand. Instead of helping me figure out which club do I belong in, they seem to tear me between the two extremities of optimism and pessimism. But the question is what do I advocate??? Hmmm either this or that??

Audience poll!!! :P  Looks like most of them believe optimism is the way to go:)) Okay, positive should be the outlook but what would lead me there??

The supposed answer is "Learned Optimism", proposed by Dr.Martin Selignman, the father of Positive Psychology.

Learned optimism is the idea in positive psychology that a talent for joy, like any other, can be cultivated. Learning optimism is done by consciously challenging any negative self talk. So, pessimist or and moderately optimistic person can learn optimism through the following ABCDE of Learned Optimism as proposed by Dr.Selignman.

ABCDE of Learned Optimism:

A->Adversity: This is an event that occurs. Eg: You fall sick on the day of your exam.

B->Belief: How you interpret the event. Eg: How unfair!! All my effort went in vain :(

C->Consequence: How you react based on your beliefs. Eg: My grades are ruined. It won’t help even if I do the papers well.

Keep a journal of such adversities, beliefs and consequences for some time. Then move on to the D & E of learned optimism after studying your behavior patterns.

D->Disputation: Now combat the negative thought with a positive one. Eg: I will make up my grades in other papers. It is reasonably good considering the situation.

E->Energisation: Now its celebration time, as you have successfully learned to lessen the burden of guilt on your shoulders with learned optimism.

And, if the term learned optimism sounds funny, I would like to quote Alvin Toffler who famously said, “The illiterate of the 21st century, will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." So, let us be literates and lets learn, unlearn and relearn with optimism.

From the nobel laureates study :)

Where the mind is without fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

This a personal favourite from the Geetanjali. I love the way freedom of thought is emphasized.

Dont be fooled by me

Hey people check this out!!! This a poem by Charles C. Finn, as read by Roscoe on WBAI, April 1967. I loved it!! So passed on. Hope it is worth the read:) 

Please don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks, masks that I'm afraid to take off and none of them are me. Pretending is an art that is second nature to me, but don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled.

I give you the impression I'm secure and that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name, coolness my game, that water is calm and I'm in command and that I need no one, but don't believe me, please don't believe me.

My surface may be smooth, but my surface is a mask--my every varying and ever concealing mask. Beneath it dwells the real confusion, fear and aloneness. Beneath lies my smugness, my complacently, but I hide this--I don't want anyone to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. That's why I frantically created a mask to hide behind-- nonchalant sophisticated facades to help me pretend-- to shield me from the glance that knows-- but such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation and I know it. That is if it's followed by acceptance. If it's followed by love, it's the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self built prison walls and from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect. It's the only thing that will assure me of what I cannot assure myself, that I'm really worth while, but I don't tell you this, I don't dare--I'm afraid to.

I'm afraid that your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love. I'm afraid you'll think less of me and you'll laugh and your laugh will kill me. I'm afraid that deep down, I'm nothing and that I'm just no good and that you'll see this and reject me.

So I play my game; my desperate pretending; with the facade of assurance without and a trembling child within. And so begins the parade of masks, the glittering, but empty parade of masks and my life becomes a front. I idle chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that's really nothing and nothing of what's everything and what's crying within me.

So when I'm through going through my routine, do not be fooled by what I'm saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying--what I'd like to be able to say, but for survival I need to say, but what I can't say.

I dislike hiding, honestly, I dislike the superficial game I'm playing, the superficial phony game. I'd really like to be genuine, spontaneous and me, but you've got to help me, you've got to hold out your hand, even when it's the last thing I seem to want or need.

You can help wipe away from my eyes--the blank stare of grieving dead. You can help call me into aliveness each time you're kind, gentle and encouraging. Each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings.

Iif you choose to, please choose to. You can help break down the wall behind which I tremble. You can encourage me to remove my mask. You can help release me from my shadowed world of panic and uncertainty. From my lonely prison.

So do not pass me by-- please don't pass me by. It will not be easy for you. A lone conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back.

It's irrational, but despite what books say about man, I am irrational, I fight against the very things that I cry out for, but I am told love is stronger than strong walls. In this lies my hope, my only hope, please help beat down those walls with firm hands, but with gentle hands--for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man you meet and I am every women you meet.