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The Upside of Defensive Pessimism: The Potential Benefit Anxiety
Defensive Pessimism
Defensive pessimism is a strategy used by people who are anxious about an upcoming event. They set unrealistically low expectations before going into a situation and take steps to avoid poor performance. Defensive pessimism involves over-preparation.
For example, someone preparing for a job interview might convince themselves that the interview is going to be a disaster. The anxiety of this likelihood helps to prepare them for the job interview. The result is that they do exceptionally well.
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Defensive Pessimism
Defensive pessimism is a strategy used by people who are anxious about an upcoming event. They set unrealistically low expectations before going into a situation and take steps to avoid poor performance. Defensive pessimism involves over-preparation.
For example, someone preparing for a job interview might convince themselves that the interview is going to be a disaster. The anxiety of this likelihood helps to prepare them for the job interview. The result is that they do exceptionally well.
Self-handicapping
Self-handicapping is where an individual will create obstacles for themselves before an ability-evaluating event. If it turned out poorly, the obstacles became an excuse or explanation for the failure. If it turned out positive, the obstacles became conquered hurdles.
Self-handicapping involves expecting the worst and self-sabotage.
Benefits of Defensive Pessimism
When comparing defensive pessimists to anxious people who do not practice defensive pessimism, the defensive pessimists show these benefits:
- Their self-esteem and satisfaction increase over time.
- They perform better academically
- They form more supportive friendship networks,
- They make more progress in their personal goals.
Defensive pessimism or strategic optimism
- Research found that defensive pessimists will do best when they can think through possible negative outcomes.
- Strategic optimists will do best when they avoid thinking about possible negative outcomes.
Pessimism can have positive effects. If you are an anxious person, try both strategies and see what works best for you.
Defensive pessimism vs pessimism
- Pessimists only expect bad things to happen. And this leads to increased anxiety and decreased perceived goal importance.
- Defensive pessimists tend to reflect about, or plan for, their performance. This leads to increased perceived goal importance, increased levels of effort, hope and personal goal initiative.
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Defensive Pessimism
- While normally pessimism means blaming yourself for the negative outcomes, defensive pessimism takes this at a whole new level, harnessing the negative feeling and using it as a step...
Setting Low Expectations
Having a defensively pessimistic strategy can help one chart out a course of action to ensure that the mishaps that are envisioned do not turn into reality.
Example: Having a low expectation of an interview, along with brooding about what all could go wrong can help one practice harder and plan to avoid those outcomes.
Pessimism As Insurance
While waiting for a piece of important news, being pessimistic has better health benefits than being overly optimistic.
If the news is not in one’s favour, the optimists take a bigger hit on their wellbeing, experiencing great disappointment, while the pessimists do not suffer as much, as they were already ready to take the hit.
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Reconsider the positive thinking mindset
"Looking on the bright side" is advise that is seldom helpful.
When people think negatively, they can turn their anxiety into action. They take more time to prepare for the worst-c...
2 types of people
- Strategic optimists: They will perform better if they do something positive before they complete their tasks.
- Defensive pessimists: They are more likely to perform positively if they visualize failure before they complete their tasks.
These two groups succeed best under different circumstances.
Positive and Negative thinking
Thinking positively can hinder people from realizing their goals.
At the same time, pessimists can become paralyzed by stress and fail to take action while those who are overwhelmingly positive are unlikely to experience stress or anxiety.
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Learned Optimism in Psychology
This is a concept that suggests that we can always change our attitude and behaviour, be aware of our thoughts and stop our negative self-talk.
Learned Optimism is a positi...
Pessimism Vs Optimism
Pessimism is defined as the anticipation of good or bad things to happen in the future, while optimism is generally considered the opposite. Optimism can be defined as the individual difference variable reflecting the extent of which we hold positive expectancies for the upcoming event.
The ways in which we think affects our health, well-being and success, even though the situations are the same.
Benefits of Optimism
- A positive impact on many aspects of physical and mental health.
- Provides motivation to work harder.
- Greater career success in life.
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Burnout is not the same as tired
Burnout is job-induced depression.
When you suffer from burnout,
- you become chronically exhausted;
- you become cynical and detached from...
3 Secrets to avoid burnout
- Be Optimistic. Confronted by a bad situation, optimists perceive it as a challenge and try harder.
- Find Meaning In What You Do. When you find true meaning in your work — when it’s not a job, it’s a calling — you don’t burn out.
Double Down On Relationships. Those who increase their social activity when things get hard handles stress the best.
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Unrealistic Optimism
The tendency to over-expect the probability of good things happening while negating the likelihood of anything bad happening is a common human trait.
Studies consistently ...
The Advocates for Pessimism
Pessimism, or having a bias towards a negative outcome, has a fan base too, as it seems that pessimists are immune to disappointment.
Their view of life already considers the worst possible outcome as the default one, and anything better than that can only improve it.
Loss Aversion
Losing something we already have is twice as much pain than gaining the same. This skewed feelings towards loss is known as loss aversion.
Expectations always dampen the feelings of happiness, always setting us up in advance for a dose of disappointment.
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Elements of well-being
Well-being can be broken into five elements:
- Positive emotion
- Engagement
- Relationships
- Meaning
- Accomplishment
If you improve ...
Wired for pessimism
Pessimism comes naturally to people because thinking about the bad stuff that could happen helps us to prepare for survival.
The problem is that pessimists think bad events are permanent and unchangeable. "I think my interview is going to be a disaster." We need to learn to recognize what we're saying to ourselves and then argue against it. "I've done many interviews in my life, and they generally turn out well."
The need for hope
Meditation - mindfulness, focusing on the moment - is an excellent anti-anxiety, anti-anger tool..But accepting suffering and finding contentment in that means you can't move into doing something good in the future.
One important idea is hope. Positive human future doesn't come about by accident - it needs hopeful people who plan for it and make it happen.
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Pessimism vs optimism
While we may have many good reasons to be pessimistic, we don't have to resign ourselves to it forever.
Optimism can be learned. Research reveals that optimists earn more money, have b...
Visualize your best possible self
Studies show that imagining your ideal future can increase your levels of optimism. Focusing on your dreams coming true turn your focus away from worrying about the worst possible outcome.
Imagine your ideal life in 10 years - what it would look like and how you would feel. Spend time considering family, career, romance or health. Now write it down once a week for the next two months.
Accept disappointment
When we expect the worst, we might be trying to protect ourselves from disappointment.
Disappointments are inevitable. We might as well have positive expectations that are occasionally proven wrong than negative expectations that are sometimes proven right.
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Emotions
They are basal responses that begin in the subcortical areas of the brain responsible for producing biochemical reactions to environmental stimuli that have a direct impact on our physical state.&n...
Feelings
Feelings are preceded by emotions and tend to be our reactions to them. Emotions are a more generalized experience across humans, but feelings are more subjective and influenced by our personal experiences and interpretations, thus they are harder to measure.
Negative Emotions
They can be defined as unpleasant or unhappy emotions evoked in individuals to express a negative effect towards something.
Although some are labeled negative, all emotions are normal to the human experience. And it’s important to understand when and why negative emotions might arise, and develop positive behaviors to address them.
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