Use optimism for better outcomes in sales, at work, and in life. It also helps you feel happier and less stressed at work.
Most of us know someone who is constantly having problems, often sick or injured, frequently or almost always complaining about something. Most of us also know someone for whom things almost always go well. At work and in life, things just seem to go their way.
Does optimism–or pessimism–result from events or could our outlook on life be a cause of events? Recent research suggests that how we explain events to ourselves leads to actions that can promote better or worse outcomes for the future, perpetuating lifelong trends.
As it turns out, optimism is more than having a sunny outlook on life. Optimism and pessimism are ways of explaining the world in ways that profoundly influence what we think, do, and say. Our habitual ways of explaining events in life, particularly adverse events, can either enhance successful outcomes or undermine our every effort.
If you tend toward optimism, when a small adverse event happens like stubbing your toe, you think: Oops, that darn rock! Oh well, it’s just a little bump. It will go away soon. Optimists see problems as external and temporary.
If you tend toward pessimism, though, when a small adverse event happens like stubbing your toe, you think: Rats! Why did I do that? I’m always the one who gets hurt. Pessimists see problems as personal and pervasive.
Over the last 40 years, research has found that an optimistic explanatory style is a deeply embedded, personal world view that profoundly influences our life and how others respond to us.
How to Use Optimism For Better Outcomes
How can your level of optimism or pessimism determine your future, you might wonder. The person who can answer that best is Martin Seligman, who has been studying this very topic since the 1980s. His groundbreaking book, Learned Optimism, first published in 2006, revealed over 20 years of careful, documented, and astounding findings about how the automatic thoughts in your head that explain why something happened, which he calls your explanatory style, determines the way you act, which then leads to how you overcome and succeed, or to ruminate and fail, in the future.
These beliefs and the behavior they initiate have important implications for our lives. His research has since been replicated and expanded on by many others. A study published in Harvard Business Review in 2019 found that:
- Optimists make more money than pessimists.
- Optimists sell more goods or services than pessimists.
- Optimists save more money for a rainy day or major purchase than pessimists.
- Optimists are more likely to be promoted than pessimists.
- Optimists are six times more likely to be engaged at work than pessimists.
- Optimists are five times less likely to be burned out than pessimists.
- Optimists experience less stress than pessimists.
A Clinical Definition of Optimism
From a clinical point of view, an optimist thinks that adverse events are not their fault. When something bad happens, they aren’t fazed by defeat. They think that nearly any obstacle is temporary and can be overcome. Optimists see problems as challenges and try harder. Optimism leads to better outcomes because optimists try harder.
A pessimist thinks that there is nothing they can do about adverse events. For a pessimist, events—both bad and good—simply unfold, and they accept the outcomes that first present themselves. They don’t think they can change them, and they don’t try much. They often give up rather than try again.
People on the far end of the pessimist spectrum believe that outcomes are:
- Personal: “Bad things happen to me.”
- Permanent: “Bad things always happen to me.”
- Pervasive: “Every bad thing always happens to me.”
People on the far end of the optimistic spectrum believe that outcomes are:
- Not their fault: “It was bad luck or bad timing or the wrong way to go about it.”
- Temporary: “Next time will be better.”
- An isolated case: “It was just that one. The next one will be better.”
When bad things happen to a pessimist, their worst fears are fulfilled, and they tend to stop trying. Their effort goes down. As they spend time ruminating, they spend less time learning or trying. When they have not tried to fix things, other poor outcomes accumulate, and their pessimism deepens. Seligman called this “learned helplessness” and demonstrated its connection to depression.
When bad things happen to an optimist, they double down their efforts, figure out what went wrong, and try again better and smarter. They experiment until they find what works. They keep going until they get the outcome they want.
Perhaps the most important finding that Seligman discovered is that individuals can change the way they think. He showed how, with careful training and support from a psychologist or coach, most people can break the grip of pessimistic thinking and start improving their lives and outcomes by changing their thinking habits.
Optimism in the Sales Cycle
One of Seligman’s most influential business studies was his work with Metropolitan Life. Insurance agents at Met Life find one customer out of every ten cold calls, so there is a lot of rejection. Their process selected just 5,000 agents out of 60,000 every year. Still, after four years, 80% of them would quit, costing the company millions of dollars in termination and recruitment.
When they hired Seligman, he helped them select star agents based on their explanatory style for events. The agents who scored in the top half for optimistic explanatory style sold 37% more insurance. Agents who scored in the top ten percent for optimistic explanatory style sold 88% more insurance. And the optimists continued to improve outcomes over years of selling. The findings were so significant that the company embedded Seligman’s selection for optimism as the core of their hiring process.
Many other organizations started using emotional intelligence as a basis for choosing sales agents, and found significant benefits.
- At L’Oréal, sales agents high in emotional intelligence sold $91,370 more annually than average salespeople did, for a net revenue increase of $2,558,360. Salespeople selected on the basis of emotional competence also had 63% less turnover during the first year than those selected without EI assessment(Spencer & Spencer, 1993; Spencer, McClelland, & Kelner, 1997).
- The Air Force found that by using emotional intelligence to select recruiters, they increased their ability to predict successful recruiters by nearly three-fold. The immediate gain was a saving of $3 million annually. (“Military Recruiting: The Department of Defense Could Improve Its Recruiter Selection and Incentive Systems,” submitted to Congress January 30, 1998.)
In the decades since, assessing emotional intelligence has become a standard part of the sales process for many organizations, particularly in sales but also for many leadership positions.
The Downside of Optimism
To be sure, optimism can go too far. Some studies have found that entrepreneurs who are optimists earn 30% less than pessimistic ones. It turns out that optimists have a higher threshold for risk-taking than pessimists, who are more realistic in their risk assessment and make wiser choices.
Every company needs a balance of optimists, pessimists, and people who fall more toward the middle of the spectrum in order to find the right balance. A little caution helps people remember to put some work into reality testing, risk assessment, and cautious trials before flinging themselves headlong into new ideas.
As a fast-rising client of mine told me recently, “For me, optimism is a survival tool. I literally couldn’t get out of bed and go to work if I didn’t think I could try or learn to do it better tomorrow.”
Three Tips to Raise Your Optimism for Better Outcomes
- Read Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman and discover the years of research and his proven method to develop more optimistic thinking.
- Check your Automatic Thinking: when something bad happens, stop when you start thinking the event is personal, permanent, and pervasive. Think consciously: “It’s not my fault. Next time will be better. I can figure out a better way.” Even if you have to force yourself to say these things to yourself, try to change your thinking and see how new ideas can motivate you to try harder for a better outcome.
- Try coaching. You can raise your optimism in as little as three months with coaching, and focused attention to finding what works for you to become a more resilient and optimistic thinker.