A few days ago, I filled out a VIA Survey of Character Strengths by Martin Seligman (Positive Psychology) and the results showed I was moderately optimistic. This gave rise to the topic ‘50 Ways To Build Your Optimism’.
Optimism is simply anticipating the best possible outcome in any event.
In no particular order here are ‘50 Ways To Build Your Optimism’.
- Be realistic about your expectations.
- Accept the past, manage the present and work hard towards the future.
- Seek for a ray of light/hope in a negative situation. It’s a bit difficult considering all you are going through, but there’s always an opportunity lurking somewhere in the dark.
- Utilize what you have for now and aspire to grow in every area of your life, remembering you can only swallow food in bits and pieces before taking another big bite.
- Be authentic, be yourself and stop hiding behind the MASK of pretence.
- Get infected by being in a network or company of constructive people, because optimism is positively contagious.
- Have a dream, believe in it and do everything possible under the sun to run with it.
- Accept you are human with imperfections.
- Express love towards other people.
- Be selective of what you read, hear or watch from the media. Excessive media influence could dampen your spirits.
- Develop the habit of using positive affirmations constructively.
- Listen to music. It has the ability to make your mind wander a bit. Come on!!! dance to the groove; sing even if it won’t get you auditioned for XFACTOR.
- Exercise regularly. Taking care of your body mind and soul builds courage and resilience to face the pressures of the world.
- Avoid living in self denial.
- Try as much as you can to stay calm when overwhelmed with the issues of life.
- Be thankful for everything you have, who you are, the people around you…..
- Develop a sense of humour. Cultivate the habit of laughing or cracking jokes.
- Spoil yourself and make sure you enjoy doing so. Go on vacations, get a massage, eat out……..
- Improve yourself at the slightest opportunity you have. Your capacity to succeed in life will depend on your personal drive to take each opportunity as stepping stones to fulfilling your life long dream.
- Be gracious enough to accept things you cannot change. There will always be things you cannot change no matter how hard you work at it.
- Reflect and focus on the good things that have occurred in your life.
- Create a positive attitude.
- Don’t harbour any form of resentment particularly with issues from the past.
- Know when to call it quits. Some things aren’t just worth the effort and time you put into it.
- Occupy yourself with things that bring out the best in you i.e. family, children,friends, travelling, reading etc
- Focus on creating solutions and not drowning in problems.
- Be a positive role model to your children, friends, family etc. Be a source of inspiration to people who look up to you.
- Be good at your job demonstrating your useful skills.
- Have a hobby to keep you occupied. It could be a form of sport, reading, writing etc.
- Improve your physical appearance when necessary.
- Get some rest because it is required to put things in perspective.
- Learn something new in order increase your knowledge.
- Be passionate. Embrace life and everything it stands for with love and passion.
- Show persistence in all your endeavours because it’s one of the keys to happiness.
- Worry less because it reduces the level of your anxiety..
- Celebrate the successes of other.
- Be determined and motivated to excel in all you’ve set out to do.
- Learn to try out new things.
- Maximize your success and give attention to your failures remembering that failures are learning experiences that yield positive results if handled properly.
- Set a goal so that you will have something to look forward to when the going gets rough.
- Practice the habit of forgiveness.
- Avoid clutter. Be organized not only with your things but also with your thoughts and your plans.
- Create a positive environment in your home or office.
- Read several motivational stories, blogs,quotes….
- Think positively about who you are.
- Develop a strong ambition.
- Visualize happy thoughts. Imagine a picture in your mind what you want to achieve and how you can achieve them. Oftentimes, what you create in your thoughts give birth to what happens in reality.
- Walk tall, with your head high up exhibiting confidence.
- Smile as often as you can. It has a way of showing your sincerity.
- Have a blend of optimism in the way you pick, choose and say your words.
I look forward to your suggestions and comments.
Subscribe to CYT and
receive a FREE copy of
Volumes 1 & 2 of
The Best of CYT
Ayo, I might be a little biased but I love this article and I am glad you put it forward as a guest post, thank you.
Great article! This is an excellent list of ways you can build your optimism and I appreciate you sharing it here!
.-= Positively Present´s last blog ..celebrating awesome bosses =-.
Great post. Provides some food for thought. Dr. Seligman’s site (and questionaire) are interesting and personally enlightening, based on his 10+ years of research into Positive Psychology.
I found the books and research by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, Dr. Seligman and Dr. Emmons to be interesting as well, with regard to the Science of Happiness (and gratitude).
For anyone interested, I have compiled a list of publications and links under Resources for study of Gratitude / Happiness. It does not approach being exhaustive but does offer an introduction to the resources available.
Great suggestions, Ayo! I think positive thoughts are the key to optimism and happiness, and your suggestions provide many different ways to promote positivity. For me, #46, having a strong ambition, has been a significant help in making me more optimistic.
.-= Vin – NaturalBias´s last blog ..12 Reasons Why Saturated Fat is Good for You =-.
@steve: Thanks once again for providing the opportunity to express myself. I do not take this lightly or for granted at all. Your bias: hmmh!! Am I correct in predicting you are a part of the ‘Carl Rogers Movement?’ Well I am, although in the last few months, my course of study has been on positive psychology (the new school lol!!!) so I am becoming very flexible.
@positively present: Thank you so much for your kind words.
@rick: Thanks for providing those resources. I am currently reading Dr Sonjas ‘Science of happiness’ but won’t provide any comments so the post doesn’t deviate to become an academic discussion. lol!!
@Vin: Thanks for your comments. It’s also great to know how ‘strong ambition’ has significantly made you optimisitic. I believe ambition is required to fuel our passion, drive and motivate us in order to achieve success. Succeeding in each little step we take, increases our level of optimism at each phase.
.-= ayo´s last blog ..50 Tips To Note While Dating. =-.
# Be passionate. Embrace life and everything it stands for with love and passion.
# Celebrate the successes of others.
I found these two to strongly apply to me. Whenever I am passionate about something, I develop a strong feeling that I’m also going to be successful about it. Also, celebrating and being happy about the success of others makes you more able to celebrate your own achievements without the approval from others.
Thanks for the nice article, Ayo.
Zoli.
Great list. I think my favorite is #6. When you’re just starting out on a path to becoming more optimistic, it helps to be surrounded by like-minded people.
.-= Nea | Self Improvement Saga´s last blog ..What It Really Takes to Achieve the Impossible =-.
Great list Ayo. I think optimism is the key toward a happy life. We all can use some hope to look forward in life. And this list is certainly a great help in achieving it.
.-= Karlil´s last blog ..Finding The Courage To Act: The Happy Idiots =-.
Ayo, good to see that there are so many easy things to do (and I guess this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many more). Great list for selecting one thing to do each day. I decide to focus on Nr. 9 today.
.-= Patrick @ unwrapyourmind.com´s last blog ..This Article Is Dead – Awaken It from Death =-.
There are some great tips here Ayo and I think that this can be a tricky subject because of the duality of optimism with pessimism too. Both of these perceptions about our worlds I believe have evolutionary value, however extreme optimism is just as ecologically unhelpful for the individual as extreme pessimism. I hear the military for example train some of their leaders to recognise and avoid the sort of ‘I can walk through walls blind optimism’ that sometimes results in excessive risk taking.
As John McWhirter of Sensory Systems says , the idea is surely to ‘develop safely’. I agree that optimism certainly opens your mind to alternatives and choiced and this has to be good. At work we use the notion of Appreciative Inquiry to underpin our meetings. This is an optimistic mind set that seeks to emphasise the helpful and creative rather than the negative and destructive as we workk together. Your readers can see more in this wikipedia article – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appreciative_inquiry
Anything that helps people has to be good!
.-= Paul Johnston´s last blog ..Does Business School Thinking Affect Marketing Action? =-.
@paul johnston: thanks for your contribution paul, i couldn’t agree more.I believe extreme optimism is dangerous because you lose sight of reality. It is important we understand that a little bit of pessism wouldn’t hurt because it aims to create a balance in the cycle of life. This is my grouse with a lot of positive thinkers/life coaches. The same goes for self esteem, from research(i agree with it), excessive self esteem in itself is dangerous.
I think John McWhirter summarized it best by saying ‘develop safely!!!!’
@Patrick: You’ve made a great choice for the day, it would be great to have your feedback on it.
@Karlil: Thanks for acknowledging the list. erik erikson states ‘Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.’
@nea: Thanks for your comment. Being surrounded by likeminded people not only builds your optimism, but also improves your confidence, challenges you and some times causes you to examine certain actions you’d want to take.
@zoli: it’s a good practice thinking positively, being motivated & working hard towards our passion once we’ve discovered it. It keeps us strong when we go through roads of failure on our journey to success.
.-= Ayo Olaniyan´s last blog ..50 Tips To Note While Dating. =-.
i think that optimism is the key toward happiness!
A lot of wisdom in your list, Ayo. Thanks so much. This is a list not to simply read, although reading it brings an upbeat feeling, but to actually put into practice in life. I especially like your suggestions to let go of the past by forgiving and not carrying resentment. If we truly let go of these old stories, there is so much more space to be optimistic.
Hey Ayo, great list. I really resonated with #36. Something wonderful happens when we can truly celebrate, from the heart, the success of others. Joy that is shared is a powerfully positive force.
.-= Jonathan – Advanced Life Skills´s last blog ..37 Ways to Improve Your Life Right Now! =-.
This article did me a lot of good. Not for reasons you might think. I tend to always be optimistic. To the point that I’ve been called a “Pollyanna” (in a sarcastic way) many times. It used to hurt when I was younger, but now that I’m older it doesn’t bother me anymore. Even though intended sarcastically still see it as an indirect compliment. For me being optimistic is simply a bi-product of my joy over being alive, truly alive. I see all of Life as as an astounding journey, a learning experience, a grand unknown adventure….even when it’s challenging or deeply painful, I am still madly in love with Life. I may only pass this way once and I hardly want to blink as I don’t want to miss a second of it.
So many beautiful and potent suggestions here Steven, just wonderful.
I really appreciate that you did this post.
Bless you my friend; I’m grateful.
Robin
.-= Robin Easton´s last blog ..Five Perspectives on Death =-.
Thanks for the list. In The Difference by Jean Chatzky, there was an exercise on how to build optimism. It was tested on a group of Harvard students and it worked well.
Create a “Very Best You” list. For thirty days write down the best image of you that you can think of. Write your goals for the next 20 years, and how you plan to accomplish them. Do this everyday and you will begin to align your decisions to match what you’ve written down. The unexpected result in the exercise was a greater sense of optimism by the participants.
HI Ayo,
But i do hope we can all get there….and if the intention is right…then the goal is usually not far behind 
Love the list. Each and every point is so practical in its approach, that following the list doesnt seem like it will be difficult. But, being all the 50 points at once would in its totality be superhuman
Thank you for this very thoughtful list.
.-= Zeenat{Positive Provocations}´s last blog ..Explore Dream Discover{Inspirational Quote} =-.
Hi Steve and Ayo. I took one of Seligman’s test recently and I stunk! I really needed this I guess
Thanks!
.-= Stephen – Rat Race Trap´s last blog ..Helping Others While Helping Yourself =-.
Great list. A keeper. Follow suggestions and build a solid foundation for character, strength & compassion. When that occurs the mind becomes clearer and we will become more joyful, content…. & optimistic.
Ayo, I really enjoyed your list. I may just print it out and keep it. There’s so many ways to maintain an optimistic spirit. As someone pointed out, there’s a need for a little pessimism as well – or realistic thinking!
Good job
Douglas
51. Begin every day with a smile!
How do you like this one, guys?
Hi,
I agree with all your suggested ways specially this line,
“Accept the past, manage the present and work hard towards the future”
Because met lots of people in past,in fact some are from mine relatives and friends.
When I met them all time they discussed past mistakes,problems.
And sure I will try mine level best to remember and follow this rule in all conditions in life.
Thank You Very Much!!
.-= Nurit´s last blog ..Ear Acupuncture Points Benefits – Cure Back and Pelvic Pain in Pregnancy =-.
Great tips! I especially like #33 – “Be passionate. Embrace life and everything it stands for with love and passion. ” Having a passion for life and love is enough motivation to be optimistic about something. Being passionate will make you LIVE MORE.
.-= Nikka´s last blog ..The Youth and Financial Literacy =-.
My two personal favorites from this list come from habits that I am working on through habitforge.com: creating a positive and organized environment. Long time ago, I remember taking a test which showed that I have a high need for order. Then, I was reflecting on some of the high achievement friends of mine, and what their work spaces look like: both positive and extremely neat and organized. And, they are very optimistic
.-= Steve-Personal Success Factors´s last blog ..Who Else Wants the Secret of Self-Confidence? =-.
Awesome post…I love the idea of having such a great list to pick from. I am going to use the list as a pool of ideas to keep myself optimistic.
Thanks!
Manon recently posted..How to Implement the “Socializing” in Your Social Media Strategy