Entrepreneurs are unique in many ways but one common aspect we share is the choice to take the “entrepreneurial path.” We create our own futures and generate our own successes.
Researchers in the field of positive psychology have discovered that the factors such as personality, IQ, family, work background, experience, etc., have less of an impact on success than previously thought. Instead, one factor, optimism, has been shown to be a key determinant and predictor of success.
Dr. Martin Seligman, referred to as the “Father of Positive Psychology,” defines optimism as reacting to problems with a sense of confidence and high personal ability. As with many things in life, optimism and its counterpart, pessimism, exist on a continuum. No one is purely optimistic or pessimistic but cumulatively each of us has an overall tendency toward optimism or pessimism.
A key factor that determines our level of optimism or pessimism is referred to as “explanatory language.” Dr. Seligman’s research discovered that there three primary factors that determine how we make sense of challenging events:
- Permanence: How will this impact me over time? To an optimist bad events are temporary bumps in the road that won’t last. Contrast this to a pessimistic explanatory style. Pessimists see negative events as being more permanent, whereas with good events they see the causes as random and nonrecurring.
- Pervasiveness: How much will this adversity impact every other area of my life?When something bad happens, optimists compartmentalize the negative event and when something good happens, optimists let the good event spread through and impact the rest of their thinking and lives. For pessimists, when something bad occurs it takes over their thinking about every other aspect of their lives.
- Personalization: To what degree am I personally responsible for this adversity?When a bad event occurs, optimists see an external cause that is outside of them. When there is a good outcome, optimists internalize the event and feel good about having been the reason why things went well. Pessimists search for the ways in which they contributed to or totally caused the bad event to occur. When things go well they don’t look for or find the connections and are likely to externalize the cause of a good outcome.
Taking these three factors together, they reveal a dramatic difference in how optimists and pessimists react to the amazing successes in life as well as life’s many challenges and setbacks.
Optimists see bad events as being temporary, isolated from other areas of their lives, and due to causes outside of themselves. Pessimists see bad events as being more permanent, impacting every other area of their lives, and due to their own failings.
Knowing what we know now about explanatory language, here are some practical tools to think about in your business and your life:
- Recognize that we each have our own explanatory language. Language is powerful and creates our world. If we want to change our situation we need to start with our language that gives us the context for the challenging event or situation.
- Our current explanatory language is a result of our genetics, our early environment growing up and our moment-by-moment choices about how we explain the good and bad events in our lives. New awareness provides us an opportunity to transform our language and thereby transform our level of optimism.