Positive Psychology Column for 5-4-03 By Tom Muha, Ph.D. Taking Optimism to New Heights Would you like to be much more influential with the people in your life?  Would you like to know how to motivate yourself to accomplish your goals?  Now you can dramatically increase your ability to help yourself and others to be able to reach higher levels of success.  The new science of happiness has found a method of supercharging the effects of using positive reinforcement.  Everybody knows how important it is to give other people praise.  It’s the main mechanism for encouraging positive results that parents use with their children, bosses use with their employees, and spouses use with each other. It also makes sense to give yourself words of encouragement when you’ve done well.  But how you package the positive reinforcement can make all the difference between it’s having a short or long-term effect. To help you understand how to upgrade your skills in this area, analyze the following statements to determine if you think they are optimistic or pessimistic: “Thank you for helping me clean up yesterday.” “You did a great job on that project you completed last week.” “You looked fantastic at the party last Saturday.” “Nice job getting the order from that customer today.” By definition, these are all pessimistic statements. Pessimism is a way of thinking in which good events are explained in temporary and specific terms.  All of these examples include references to explicit times frames and exact behaviors.  These are not negative comments.  They’re just limited in their effectiveness.  Using optimism is a much more powerful way to communicate to someone when they’ve done something well. Optimism about good events consists of seeing permanent and pervasive explanations regarding why the positive results were achieved.  But what is it about an accomplishment that would make it permanent?  And how is it that a particular achievement could affect many areas of a person’s life? Optimistic positive reinforcement involves recognizing the underlying character traits that led the person to the successful outcome.  Let’s go back to the examples and revise them using this new approach that is designed to build character in addition to reinforcing behaviors: “You are such a kind person, always willing to help others, like helping me to clean up yesterday.  That’s what it takes to have lots of friends in your life.” “Your level of perseverance and ability to learn is outstanding - no wonder you did so well on that project last week.  You’re going to be successful at whatever you set your mind to do in life.” “You’re one of those people who has a real appreciation of beauty, and the way you dress reflects your skill at coordinating colors and styles.  You obviously have an artistic side to your life.” “I appreciate how well you can deal with people.  Your ability to listen to the customer’s needs is a big reason for your getting that nice order today.  Your people skills will help you to advance quickly in this organization.” Notice how the person’s behavior was identified as a being reflection of their character strengths.  By pointing out those strengths and noting how they will produce positives in the long term, the person will be much more likely to draw upon their best traits in the future. Having a heightened awareness of your best traits is a major source of self-satisfaction.  It gives you confidence that you have a set of strengths that will always work for you to create a positive outcome. It is one of the most important the strategies that successful people use to meet the challenges in their life.  People usually have 5-6 traits that comprise their “Signature Strengths.”  Those who know their signature strength’s love finding ways to use them because it gives them a feeling of excitement and invigoration, a sense that “this is the real me,” and an attitude of “try and stop me.” To learn about your best traits, take the VIA Signature Strengths Test at www.authentichappiness.org. ***SIDEBAR*** Positive psychology researchers have found that there are 24 character strengths that are found in people in every culture on earth.  There are six groupings of these character traits:   Wisdom and Knowledge                                1. Curiosity 2. Love of learning 3. Judgment 4. Ingenuity 5. Social Intelligence 6. Perspective Courage 7. Valor 8. Perseverance 9. Integrity Humanity and Love 10. Kindness 11. Loving Justice 12. Citizenship 13. Fairness 14. Leadership Temperance 15. Self-control 16. Prudence 17. Humility Transcendence 18. Appreciation of beauty 19. Gratitude 20. Hope 21. Spirituality 22. Forgiveness 23. Humor 24. Zest   Tom Muha is a psychologist in Annapolis. He welcomes your comments and questions. To contact him call (443) 454-7274 or email him at tom@achievinghappiness.com.