Overcoming Adversity! Optimistic People Have Better Luck

Editor’s Note:

If you are a pessimistic person, you may now be stuck in a gloomy cloud, but do not despair!

The key to whether one can grow after adversity lies not in the optimistic mindset itself, but in the fact that optimistic individuals are more likely to find meaning in events.

If you can devise a way to interpret the meaning of adversity for yourself and draw positive experiences from it, you can benefit from it.

It is difficult for us to accept the fact that bad things can happen to good people. Life is unfair, we all understand this truth, but we often approach the world with the mentality of “good deeds will be rewarded, and bad deeds will be punished”. Therefore, it’s not surprising at all when bad things happen to bad people (from our biased and moralistic perspective), as they deserve it. However, when misfortune befalls a good person, facing such tragedy can be truly perplexing.

In Lerner’s experiment, people often come to erroneous conclusions in order to find meaning in tragic events (such as falsely attributing blame to the victim). However, discovering the meaning of tragic events and benefiting from them is actually the key to achieving post-traumatic growth.

During times of tragedy, some people may find the key to post-traumatic growth with the help of others, while others have to figure it out on their own.

Psychologists have put a lot of effort into understanding which people will grow in adversity and which will be overwhelmed by it. The research results reinforce the statement that “life is unfair”: optimistic individuals are more likely to emerge victorious from adversity than pessimistic ones.

Optimistic people are like winners of the “cerebral cortex lottery”. They have longer-lasting happiness, tend to focus on the bright side of life, and easily find a silver lining in everything. Happy people will be happier – similar to how wealthy individuals tend to become wealthier.

When faced with a crisis, people generally respond in three ways: facing it head-on (taking direct action to solve the problem); reassessing (clarifying their thoughts first and then finding a solution that benefits them); or avoidance (denying or escaping from the event, or resorting to substances like alcohol or drugs to numb their emotional reactions).

Individuals with a fundamentally optimistic personality (first level of McCrae and Costa’s personality traits) develop coping mechanisms (second level of McCrae and Costa’s personality traits), alternating between facing challenges proactively and reassessing. Because optimistic people expect their efforts to be effective, they immediately take action to solve problems.

If they fail, because they always anticipate the best outcomes, they instinctively look for the positive side, and once they find the desired result, they will write a new chapter in their life story (third level of McCrae and Costa’s personality traits) – a story of continuously overcoming adversity and achieving personal growth.

Conversely, individuals with negative thinking live in a threatening world, lack confidence in their ability to face adversity, and develop coping mechanisms focused on avoidance and other psychological defense mechanisms. They primarily concentrate on controlling their inner pain rather than solving external issues, leading to the worsening of problems.

Once they acknowledge that life is unfair and beyond their control, and that things often lead to the worst outcomes, they incorporate these dismal life experiences into their personal story, becoming trapped in a tale of misery.

If you are a pessimistic person, you may now be trapped in a gloomy cloud, but do not despair!

The key to whether one can grow after adversity lies not in the optimistic mindset itself, but in the fact that optimistic individuals are more likely to find meaning in events.

If you have read James Pennebaker’s book “Opening Up,” you will understand how to interpret the meaning of various life events.

Pennebaker began by examining the relationship between different traumas, such as childhood sexual abuse and subsequent health issues in adulthood. Trauma and stress usually have negative effects on people. Pennebaker believes that expressing oneself – talking to friends or mental health professionals – can not only heal psychological trauma but also alleviate physical stress.

Pennebaker’s early research hypothesis was that traumas that induce intense shame, such as sexual assault (compared to non-sexual violent attacks) or partner suicide (compared to partner death in a car accident), often leave victims reluctant to speak out, resulting in more illnesses in the future.

Whether a victim can recover or grow afterwards does not depend on the type of trauma they experienced but on how they cope afterwards: victims willing to confide in friends or be part of support groups are more likely to reduce health issues caused by trauma.

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