By Dr Attia Anwar
“A rainbow is a prism that sends shards of multi-colored light in various directions. It lifts our spirits and makes us think of what is possible. Hope is the same personal rainbow of mind” –Charles Snyder renowned psychologist.
I want to start New Year with a bit of optimism. Hope is a feeling that keeps you going in mid of extreme hardship. Hope is the interaction between your wishes and expectations.it is having a positive expectation about particularly favorable consequences. It motivates the person to overcome hard situations in life. If we can be hopeful or give hope to others we can survive every setback which comes in our life. Optimism is a mental attitude in which we have confidence that the future will be better. Hardships are learning experiences and they will go. Tomorrow will be probably better. By optimism, we feel that we will succeed in the challenges of life and expect things will work out in our favor.
How optimistic you are is determined by many factors. Genetics determines 25% of your optimism level. Environmental variables that are out of your control like socioeconomic status and upbringing also play a role. But this does not mean you cannot work on your attitude. You can work on it and can change it. You can cultivate optimism by being mindful, practicing gratitude, and writing down your positive emotions. You can do the cognitive restructuring by consciously challenging the negative thoughts, or self-limiting thinking and replacing it with more positive thoughts. If you start practicing optimism negative events are most likely to roll off your back and positive events will affirm your belief in yourself.
Why we are giving importance to hope and optimism, is because it has a positive impact on your physical and mental health. Research has proven that people who have this attitude have certain advantages over others like better health, less stress, and greater longevity. There is a plethora of research that shows that optimism contributes positively to health and well-being. It is believed to result in better health by lowering the level of experienced stress. Studies have shown that optimistic people have fifty percent less risk of cardiovascular disease as compared to pessimistic people. It is their thought process that makes the stressful situation manageable, so their level of stress is low. These low-stress levels have health benefits. This lower level of stress keeps them maintaining health-promoting behavior rather than seeking health-compromising behavior. They have a greater survival rate when having serious diseases like cancers. It is also linked to a lesser rate of having infectious disease, and good health and longevity. It not only affects your health and well-being. It has a clear correlation with your performance as shown by different studies, so whether you are a sportsperson or businessman you will achieve more if you have an optimistic attitude. The performance of pessimists is lower in comparison. One reason why you achieve success by being hopeful and believing in yourself is that you do not give up easily. This mindset promotes persistence, so you take obstacles as a learning opportunity, change your strategy, and achieve your goal. There is the effect of expectation on task performance as proved by different research studies, so people who expect good generally perform well whether it is academic performance or some work-related task. It is a favorable personality dimension and influences motivation and adjustment.
Research has also shown that changing your attitude towards hope and optimism is also good for your psychological health. So reframing a person’s thought process is more effective than an antidepressant in the case of depression. And it is not a short-term solution. Rather it has long-lasting impacts on handling future setbacks and failures. Hopeful people live longer with better health. Optimists also experience less stress as compared to realists. Because they always think that good things are on their way. That helps to cope with failures and setbacks. As nothing is permanent they are not paralyzed by the things which don’t go in desirable way. They keep working and ultimately accomplish what they want to accomplish. Believing in themselves keeps them active and moving. They are ready to take risks. It contributes to enhanced psychological well-being. Research shows that people with optimism use problem-focused adaptive responses in case of stressful events.
Hope is a personal experience and difficult to define in exact terms. But its positive impact on life is widely recognized. It strengthens our resolve and keeps us going in the darkest hour of life. It guides us in desperate circumstances. We remain committed to our goals and take action with the help of hope. It gives us the belief that current circumstances how bad they are will improve despite the unpredicted nature of life. Hope does not fade in the face of adversity. Hope endures in difficult situations like poverty, war, and famine. It helps us go through the most challenging circumstances. Realistic hope allows individual to observe and understand their situation, while still maintaining the openness toward that positive change is possible. Hope also helps us to live not only with difficult present situations but also with an uncertain future. Individuals who are hopeful generally achieve their goals better and experience a state of well-being.
While optimism is a great thing and it has many advantages. As balance is very important for everything, so is true for being an optimist. While practicing optimism we have to keep three things in mind. People can have an optimism bias for themselves that nothing bad is going to happen to them. So they can engage in risky behavior and then experience a bad outcome. Another thing that can happen is poor risk assessment. You have to take calculated risks to be successful but ignoring potential risks can lead to excessive risk-taking behavior. Then there is toxic positivity in which you ignore your genuine negative emotions and refuse to feel them, which will lead to poor mental health. Optimists can avoid these pitfalls by not focusing on staying positive all the time, rather they should maintain a healthy realistic approach toward positivity.
The author Dr. Attia Anwar is a consultant family physician with a postgraduate degree from the Royal College of GP UK. She is a strong advocate of health and well-being and wants patient participation in decision-making regarding health.
