Learning Optimism and Faith
Greetings to all my friends out there in blogger-land. This post marks my return to blogging after several days off. As you may have read in my last whine post my wife has been out of town and I've been playing Dad and Mr. Mom and moonlighting as a pastor over the past week. Something had to give in my schedule and it had to be blogging. But the parousia of my lovely wife has taken place, times of refreshing and the restoration of all things has taken place and I am again walking in newness of life. Life is jolly again.
I thought that, with this post, I would share something of a more personal nature, than I usually do, as it relates to a struggle and an area of growth (hopefully) that I have been working through. I'm hoping that, as I share my own struggle, it will help me process a few things and be encouraging to you. This may get a bit rambling, but I hope it will be helpful.
In all of the busy-ness of the last week I found time to read a book I have been meaning to read. Awhile back I was reading one of Stephen Shields webpages. He has several - his blog is called Emergesque, and he also has a site called Faithmaps and Shieldsplace. I can't remember which site I was on at the time (so if Stephen or one of his friends happens to see this and can identify the site, please feel free) but he recommended the book Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. I checked it out on Amazon and it looked interesting and I put it down in the "to buy someday" category of my mind.
Maybe its because my wife was gone but I was feeling blue one day last week (yes, I'm a wimp when she's gone) and I was in Annapolis, which has a great Borders, so I stopped and picked it up. I started reading it and couldn't put it down - Seligman nailed me in the book.
The book is about optimism and pessimism, and it presents a very nuanced, sophisticated view of the whole subject, and it's not what you might initially think. We might think that optimists are the eternally happy folks and pessimists are the chicken littles of the world. It's not exactly like that, according to Seligman.
Seligman ties pessimism to two main things - learned helplessness and explanatory style. Actually, the two correlate strongly, I'll separate them just to explain them. Learned helplessness happens when you come to believe that whatever you do is futile. It was first discovered in animal experiments. For instance, put two dogs in a box and shock them. Train the first dog that he can push a lever and the shock will stop and he will push the lever and the shock will stop. With the second dog, no matter what he does, the shock won't stop. Initially, the second dog will run around and do all kinds of things to try to make the shock stop. When he figures out that nothing he does will make the shock stop, he'll just sit there and take it. He won't move a muscle. He has learned that all of his efforts are futile so he'll quit making any effort.
This is a picture of the pessimist. They believe that there efforts are basically futile and won't make a difference.
To see if you are like this Seligman came up with a test to see whether or not you are an optimist or a pessimist. Your "explanatory style" is how you talk to yourself about the events of your life, particularly the negative events of your life. An optimist explains bad events as temporary, isolated and external. The pessimist explains them as permanent, pervasive, and personal. In other words, when something bad happens to the pessimist, he or she explains it in the worst possible way.
Let's say an optimist and a pessimist are playing golf and both of them have horrible days on the golf course. The optimist might explain his poor day in the following way: I had a bad day today (temporary - it was a "today" thing), my putting game was off (isolated - it was just his putting game that was off) and besides, it was a new course and I wasn't familiar with the greens (external).
The pessimist on the other hand might explain it this way - I stunk today (very personal and pervasive - personal in that he is focusing on himself and pervasive in that he didn't say that his golf game stunk, he himself stinks) because, let's face it, I'm a lousy golfer (permanent - he didn't just have a bad day and miss some shots, he is a lousy golfer).
So, I took Seligman's test to see if I was a pessimist or an optimist. You can take the test here, but if you do you really need to get his book to interpret your score. I won't bore you with all of the details on that, but if you take it you will see that there are several different categories detailing how you explain good events and bad events. At the end there is a final score that is your good minus bad score that tells overall if you are an optimist or a pessimist. On that final score you are very optimistic if you score 8 or above, you are moderately optimistic if you score 6-8, 3-5 is average, 1-2 is moderately pessimistic and 0 or below is very pessimistic.
I scored a -8 which should earn me a place in the pessimism hall of fame. I thought to myself, maybe I've just got a case of the blues, having a bad day. So, I took the test again online a couple of days ago. I knew for sure on that day that I was in a better mood than the first time I took it and figured this would give me a better read. I came out with -9 this time.
I told this to a good friend of mine and he was shocked to find out that I am off the charts when it comes to pessimism. Those who know me know that I am not the chicken-little type and don't walk around with a doom and gloom mentality. For the most part I'm a pretty happy fella and its not just an act. But this little test and the book also helped me understand a few things about myself.
I have always been a good starter and a lousy finisher. For years I have explained that in one of two ways. On optimistic days I have said that I am an ideas man, not a details man. Hence, great visionaries like myself can't be expected to know how to follow through on their visions. On pessimistic days I have explained this as just plain laziness, in ability to focus and a host of other things.
Also, I don't do real well with adversity. I have always been amazed when reading or hearing stories about people like Edison, who had how many thousands of failed experiments before he invented the light bulb. It sounded like he had a major failure once every week or so before he finally succeeded. I also have been amazed in hearing stories about all of Lincoln's political defeats before he finally succeeded. Here are guys for whom failure hardly fazes them on their way to greatness. For me, failure has always been debilitating. Edison seems to have been able to pick himself up and get going again just about every week, but for me, any significant adversity has made me afraid to try that again for a long time.
So, I have always tended to stay in very safe zones, every now and then lifting my head out of the hole to see what is going on.
Seligman says that these kinds of things are a result of our self-talk. I can't remember if he talked about the specific area of character, but I don't think he would say that these things are a direct result of a deficient character. Or, he might have been saying that character and self-talk are intertwined. But what he is saying is that it is the self-talk, the explanatory styles, that determine pessimists and optimists.
He went on to show that pessimists do worse in sports, in business, in relationships and even health than optimists. One of the fascinating parts of the book is his explanation of political elections. He and his team have been able to go back and read the nomination acceptance speeches of presidental candidates for several elections and discern their explanatory styles. Invariably the one with the optimistic explanatory style wins.
All of this has precipitated a bit of a crisis in my life because I am a pastor, a leader. Seligman does point out that pessimists do have value - they tend to see reality a little better than optimists. Hence, there are some places in an organization where a pessimist has some value - like accounting and risk management and things like that. But you don't want a pessimist as your leader.
If you have read my blog before you may have noted that I am not a big fan of psychology and you may be wondering why I am taking any of this seriously. First of all, Seligman is a cognitive psychologist and is pretty anti-Freudian. My objections against psychology have really been objections against too much Freudianism. Secondly, he goes into great detail about his research procedures. This guy has been very thorough and his findings are backed up by some strong research. Thirdly, though he does not write from a Christian perspective, he is not hostile to Christianity, or religion in general. And this brings me to the place where I found the real value in the book.
Hebrews 11:6 says:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
What I am coming to realize is that I have not been walking by faith in my life. I have always had a vague sense that something bad is going to happen to me in the future or that plans aren't going to work out, or something is going to go wrong with whatever I am involved with. I can distinctly remember walking on campus one day at the University of Florida and thinking "man, these last few weeks have been really good and really fun, I guess something bad is going to happen to me soon."
This is the polar opposite of walking by faith. I haven't expected God to reward me for seeking Him. I haven't lived as if God's plans for me are for my welfare and not for calamity (Jeremiah 29:11).
Also, being a conservative Christian and a raging Calvinist to boot I've emphasized sin and TOTAL DEPRAVITY. I know that you are depraved, but more importantly I know that I am depraved and I have tended to view life through the lens of my sinfulness. As a sinner, I have never really believed that I deserve the blessing of God. All of my talk and preaching about grace has been as much for me as for anyone else.
I would never attribute such a view to pessimism, rather to seeing things through a biblical lens. But I think I have been seeing this through only one aspect of a Biblical lens. II Corinthians 5:17 says:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Yes, the Bible teaches that there is an ongoing struggle with sin and that the old man rears his ugly head, but that is only part of the story. I have viewed my life as if the old man is determinative in my life. Biblically, the old man is influential, but my newness in Christ is what is determinative, not my old man. Another way of saying this is to say that the "new creation" in Christ is the real me, not the old man.
But having lived for so long as if the real me is the old man, it has had predictable results. I have not expected God to reward me for seeking Him and I have despaired when things have gone wrong time and time again, rather than walking and living in the forgiveness and new life He gives.
This is where the book by Seligman has been so eye opening to me as a Christian. It has helped me see my own lack of faith.
For years now I have known of the Doctor's advice (Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones) to the spiritually depressed. He has said that one of our problems is that we listen to ourselves when we should be talking to ourselves.
Seligman's book has given me tools to talk back to myself. So, whereas I said above that this book has precipitated a crisis in my life, it has really given me a few signs of life that I have never had. Seligman says that one of the keys to combating pessimism is to dispute your pessimistic explanations. This dovetails very nicely with what the Doctor says. He gives an A-B-C-D-E process for disputing with yourself.
A - Adversity. The A stands for the adversity or negative events that come into your life.
B - Belief. This is the self-talk. or explanatory style, that goes through your mind when adversity strikes. It is at this point that you need to listen to what is going through your mind. Are you talking to yourself about the adversity in temporary, isolated and external ways, or in permanent, pervasive and personal ways?
C - Consequences. This is the result of your belief, or self talk. I think he said this, and I have found that sometimes you have to deal with "C" before "B." In other words, when adversity strikes the first thing you may be aware of is a feeling of uneasiness, or paralysis, or anxiety or depression or sadness, or a knot in your stomach. When you are feeling these effects they are produced by a certain kind of self-talk. If it is pessimistic self-talk you will have these negative consequence.
D - Disputation. After feeling the consequences and analyzing your beliefs or explanatory styles he says we need to dispute them. Seligman is dead set against "positive thinking" and things like that. He is not telling you to start thinking happy thoughts in place of unhappy thoughts. He offers four ways to dispute with yourself.
- Evidence
- Alternatives
- Implications
- Usefulness
Evidence is simply that, evidence to the contrary of your pessimistic self-talk. For instance, suppose someone tells me that my sermon stunk. I may be tempted to go into a downward spiral where I think I'm a lousy preacher, a lousy human being and the cause of the eclipse of the gospel in our world. Or, if 10 people said my sermon was good, I can dispute those thoughts with that as evidence.
Alternatives acknowledge that there may be more than one cause in the negative event. Maybe my sermon really did stink, but instead of assuming it is because I am such a maggot I start thinking about altermative explanations. Maybe I was up half the night with a sick kid, or maybe something happened this morning that distracted me, or maybe I dind't budget my time wisely this week and prepare as I should. Each of these explanations are temporary, isolated and correctable, so I don't have to be so down in the dumps.
Implications are how we deal with the situation when the negative things we think about ourselves are true. Keeping with my previous example, suppose this week's sermon continues my two year long streak of 104 sermons that were really stinkers. Maybe I am a lousy preacher, now what? The pessimist may think that he should write a letter to God apologizing for thwarting His plans on earth and then go crawl under a rock and die. But, in reality the implication may be the realization that God has not called me to preach and there is another calling out there for me where I will be very successful, happy and fruitful.
Usefulness - sometimes we just have to ask ourselves if it is useful to dwell on the negative. Maybe my sermon stunk and I can mourn it all I want, but how will that help me get next week's sermon ready.
Anyway, those are just a few of the examples he gives. You can probably come up with more.
E - Energize. After you have disputed with yourself this is where you look to see how you have been energized by your disputation. It may be simply feeling better about a situation or it may be a renewed energy to keep going.
I'll stop there and say thanks for sticking with me and reading this whole thing through. I hope this is helpful to some of you. I have a feeling that I am not the only one who struggles in these ways.
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