A famous study focusing on optimism levels of insurance sales recruits was conducted in the 1980s. Two years into the study, those who scored as optimists were outselling by 57% those who scored as pessimists in the profiling test. Incredibly, those who scored in the top 10% of the optimist group were outselling the bottom 10% of optimists by 88%. In 1995 a comprehensive study was conducted across a wide range of sales industries and the results were similar across the board.

Researchers found that optimists treated obstacles as temporary setbacks and typically ascribed them to either internal or external factors that could be changed. Pessimists, on the other hand, tended to see setbacks as inherent, unchangeable roadblocks. What optimists saw as fleeting and localised, pessimists saw as permanent and pervasive. They tended to take setbacks personally and were twice as likely to quit in the first two years on the job.

There is, however, a flip side to optimism. When researchers zoomed in close to look at each individual sale, it was the pessimists who rightly predicted whether the sale would happen or not. While the pessimists were more in touch with reality, the optimists were more irrational. Over the years of counselling, I have often heard clients say that they prefer to be a pessimist because it protects them from being constantly disappointed. The problem is that their pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps them stuck in a cycle of taking setbacks personally. What if there was another more helpful stance?

Admiral Jim Stockdale spent eight years in a brutal POW camp in Vietnam. He had no rights, no release date and no way of knowing if he would ever see his family again. How did Stockdale cope with the horrific conditions with no idea how the story would end? In an interview, Stockdale said that he never lost faith at the end of the story. He never doubted that he would eventually be free and would turn the experience into the defining event of his life. Surprisingly, Stockdale made the comment that it was the optimistic prisoners who didn’t survive. The optimists were the ones who said they’d be freed and home by Christmas. Christmas would come and go, so they changed their prediction to next Christmas. Another Christmas would come and go, and then another. The optimists would lose hope and die of broken hearts. Stockdale said, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Optimism may bring success in the business sector, but it may fall short when we face personal difficulties. Stockdale had hope-timism, a mindset that acknowledged the reality of his circumstances while holding on to the belief that the situation would not ultimately defeat him. Pessimists live in a continual state of hopelessness; optimists ultimately lose hope; hope-timists are realists who find ways to keep hope alive.

Linda Gray
 linda@relationshipsanctuary.com.au
 0401 517 243