Actually, you don’t need to shift the curve. That would be an impossible task to shift an entire population from, for example, pessimism to optimism. Rather, all you need to do is shift where you are on one of the curves, from left to right – from pessimism to optimism. “Shift the curve” is a phrase to keep that in mind.

Emotions Dictate Beliefs

Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on decision making, says that our emotions dictate our beliefs to an extent of which we are not aware. In his book “Thinking Fast & Slow,” Kahneman divides thinking into system one, the fast, intuitive system, and system two, the much slower reasoning system. System two. Kahneman says, mostly endorses what system one whispers.

Our intuitions determine our judgments. Intuition and emotion affect our belief system. Fast, intuitive, and easy takes precedent over slow and rational. The brain alters the circuit board so that faster system one, the intuitive emotional belief system, overrides system two, rational, but much slower.

Examples of the brain changing the circuit board and subconsciously taking over controls include chess players, wine tasters, bird and airplane spotters, and experts at medical diagnosis, all who routinely make instant evaluations. Once the brain learns the bits and pieces over time, the process goes on with split-second accuracy below conscious awareness.

Genes Load the Gun, Environment Pulls the Trigger

Not all adults who had poor attachment, abuse, or partook in war combat missions will have PTSD or be adversely affected in later years. Though poor attachment and maltreatment in very early years increase the chance of impulsive, aggressive crimes in men, most maltreated children do not become delinquents or adult criminals. Even soldiers with the same genetic makeup who experience virtually the same combat trauma will not all end up with PTSD.

Genes load the gun and environment pulls the trigger. Whether obesity, heart failure, or violence, genes tell only the nature part of the story. The extent to which a gene is turned on and expressed is strongly affected by environment or nurture. Just because you have a gene for obesity, heart failure, or violence does not mean that gene will be expressed.

The MAOA the Better

A key genetic component of bad behavior is a gene on the X chromosome that produces an enzyme called MAOA, monoamine oxidase A. MAOA metabolizes neurotransmitters including serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. The more MAOA enzyme, the more efficiently these neurotransmitters are broken down. The long form of the gene produces lots of MAOA to metabolize the neurotransmitters and so keep them in balance. 

There is a short form of this gene, though, that produces low levels of the MAOA enzyme, so the neurotransmitters that are between the synapses of nerves in the brain do not get broken down. This is associated with antisocial personality, aggressive behavior, and violent criminality. If you have the short form of the MAOA producing gene, you are more likely to act aggressively and get into trouble with the law.

At least that was believed until a 2002 New Zealand study went through criminal records of hundreds of men to determine who had exhibited antisocial or criminal behavior by age twenty-six. They found no significant statistical association between low MAOA gene status and antisocial behavior. 

What they found is if a man with a low-activity MAOA gene had been abused as a child, he was extremely likely to exhibit antisocial behavior. But the men with the low-activity MAOA gene that had a secure attachment as a child had no greater risk of antisocial or criminal behavior than those men with the high-activity MAOA gene. By turning genes on or off, different environments change identical genomes into different people.)

Learned Helplessness

The brain does not care whether the subconscious processes it creates are helpful or harmful. Learned helplessness is a subconscious, wordless process whereby a person or animal learns to behave helplessly. Understanding how learned helplessness comes about began with a series of experiments by American psychologist Martin Seligman, then a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.

Seligman, together with fellow graduate student Steven Maier, conducted a series of experiments on three groups of dogs. The first group of dogs received a shock. By pushing a panel with its nose, a dog in this first group could turn off the shock. This group of dogs would have control because one of its responses mattered.

The second group of dogs received the shock at the same time as the first group. But they had no control because no matter what they did the shock would be turned off when a dog from the first group pushed his nose against the panel and shut off the shock for both groups. A third group received no shock at all.

Once the dogs went through this first part of the experiment, they were taken to an enclosure where they could easily jump over a low barrier and escape. When they were shocked now, the first group leaped right over the barrier. When the third group of dogs was shocked they also leaped easily over the barrier. But the second group lay there as they continued receiving shocks. Though they could have easily escaped, they had learned to be helpless. These dogs learned that nothing they could do would matter. Seligman coined the term “learned helplessness.”

Donald Hiroto, a graduate student at Oregon State University, duplicated Seligman’s three-group study with humans. In place of the shock, he used a loud uncomfortable noise. All three groups were subjected to the loud noise. The subjects in the first group could learn to turn off the noise by trying out combinations of buttons to press. The second group of subjects was yoked to the first just like the second group of dogs. 

The first group was in control of the situation. As soon as they got the correct combination, the sound turned off. It turned off at the same moment for the second group. But the second group had no control to stop the noise themselves. The third group was not subjected to noise at all.

Just like the yoked dogs, the yoked human group that had no control just sat there when placed in a condition where they could easily have shut off the noise. The other two groups took action and shut off the noise.

Who Gives Up? Who Rarely Feels Defeated?

One subgroup of the subjects, both humans and dogs, did not succumb to this lack of self-control from the start. Another group, about one in ten of both humans and dogs, was helpless from the start. The helpless dogs took the shocks, and the helpless humans took the loud music, resigned to suffer without attempting to escape their suffering.

Seligman became interested in both of these subgroups. He began a seven-year journey carrying out studies to find out who readily gives up and who rarely feels defeated. What he found is encouraging. The attribute of resilience in the face of defeat is not necessarily an inborn trait. It can be learned.

Instead of shocks, we are awash in unpleasant messages, feelings, and urges generated from our brains. We take learned helplessness even further than the hapless dogs. We blame ourselves for not taking action. We blame ourselves for uninvited, unwanted messages in our heads, and urges and feelings in our bodies.

If people can learn to be helpless in so short a time in an experimental situation with a relatively trivial irritation, what about people who grow up in homes where their lives are intolerable for years on end? But not only children growing up; adults live in uncomfortable family and job situations that stress them nonstop.

Helpless to Flourish

“Learned Optimism” was a huge shift of focus for Seligman. His previous book titles included, “Helplessness: On Depression, Development and Death” (1975), “Human Helplessness: Theory and Applications “(1980), and “Abnormal Psychology” (1984 & 1985). A few years after that last publication, he concluded that focusing on the downside of life caused psychologists and psychiatrists to become depressive while focusing on optimism caused mental health care workers to become more positive. He said he never met a more positive group of people than his co-workers in the field of positive psychology. 

His books reflect the turnaround: “The Optimistic Child “(1995), “Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment” (2002), and “Flourish” (2011). These last two books and especially Flourish reflect the change from the emotion of happiness to a more broadly defined sense of well being. Well being as Seligman defines it is comprised of positive emotion, engagement, meaning, positive relationships, and accomplishment.

The first book of his series on positive psychology, “Learned Optimism, How to Change Your Mind and Your Life,” was published in 1990 and for several years positive psychology got hyped by Readers Digest, Redbook, Family Circle, and other consumer magazines, placing it into the category of pop psychology. Behind this media hype, positive psychology is a science-backed by rigorous research. It moves the focus from disease and what is wrong with us, which most of us are too aware of, to maximizing potential.

Shift the Curve a Bit from Pessimism to Optimism.

Seligman offers seven compelling reasons to work against pessimism.

1. Pessimism leads to depression.

2. Pessimism results in inertia rather than activity in the face of setbacks.

3. Pessimism results in more subjective feelings of blueness, worry, and anxiety.

4. Pessimism is self-fulfilling. Pessimists don’t persist in the face of challenges and therefore fail more frequently even when success is attainable.

5. Pessimism is associated with poor physical health.

6. Pessimists are defeated when they try for high office.

7. Even when pessimists are right and things turn out badly, they still feel worse. Their explanatory style converts the predicted setback into a disaster and the disaster into a catastrophe.

Seligman claims pessimists can learn to be optimists by learning a new set of cognitive skills that involve changing the way we explain things to ourselves. We need a set of skills, so we can talk to ourselves when we suffer a personal setback or defeat. The way we talk to ourselves determines whether we give up like the yoked dogs and humans or get up and make a positive plan and move on it.

Medicines too, work better with a boost from an optimistic belief system. Placebos are effective in part because of an optimistic outlook. Nocebos contribute to a host of ills in part because of a pessimistic belief system.

Optimism is a belief system affecting most everything in our lives. The Four-Step Method, REBT, and all of the other cognitive therapies require a shift in the scale from pessimism to optimism for them to be effective. You can read about the Four-Step Method and REBT and commit the systems to memory, but if you are a pessimist and doubt that it will work for you, it likely will not work. 

Seligman employs REBT to shift the curve toward optimism. With REBT and other cognitive strategies, you learn to recognize the automatic thoughts and pessimistic beliefs that come between an event and the emotional and behavioral consequences.

Even with aptitude and motivation, we are unlikely to succeed with a pessimistic belief system. If we believe we can’t do something we will soon give up. If we want to change our thinking and behavior, we need to work on developing a positive, optimistic explanatory style. We need to talk to ourselves in a different style.

Three Curve-Shifting Ways to Explain Events

Seligman defines three crucial dimensions of explanatory styles: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. 

1. Permanence

Permanence is about time. Pessimists believe that bad events will last a long time and will undermine everything they do. They believe that bad events are permanent. When optimists are confronted with the same bad events, they believe the events are a temporary setback. 

When Floyd Mayweather, Jr., five-divisions boxing world champion was sentenced to jail time for domestic violence, rather than let it negatively influence his upcoming fight or public image, he said, “The only thing it can do is make me grow mentally strong as a person. It’s all part of life. You have good days. You have bad days. But the main thing is to grow mentally.”

I certainly do not condone domestic violence. I am in awe, though, of his explanatory style. Nothing negative in his life is pervasive or permanent. That is part of what made him a multi-weight champion.

2. Pervasiveness

Pervasiveness is about space. Pessimists globalize failures and other bad things that happen to them. By globalizing negative events, pessimists tend to give up on a host of other things when failure strikes one area of their lives. Optimists will take these same negative events and put them in a box, so they continue to function in other aspects of their lives. If they are in the throes of a divorce, they will continue to perform in their jobs. Their misfortune does not pervade their lives.

3. Personalization

Personalization is about internalizing or externalizing good and bad events. A pessimist internalizes bad events and externalizes the good things that happen. If a pessimist loses his job, he might say I goof things up. I can’t hold a job. I don’t fit the corporate image. If he were to land a good job, he would say he was lucky he got picked.

Shift the Curve Towards Optimism

Some of us are more pessimistic when we wake and move progressively toward optimism during the day. We hit highs late mornings and early evenings. Many hit lows around four in the afternoon and very early in the morning. If you tend to wake up at four in the morning and worry about everything in your life, you know this well. Women sometimes experience regular cycles from optimism to pessimism and back during each month that coincides with their menstrual cycle. We all have cycles of optimistic highs and pessimistic lows.

If you want to move from pessimistic to optimistic thinking, you need to recognize automatic thoughts that hold you back: 

1. Bad events are permanent. 

2. Bad events are pervasive. When one area goes south, most everything else takes a hit.

3. Personalize bad events and blame them on yourself.

Self-therapy might include: 

Don’t personalize.

Instead of thinking you are to blame, attempt to place at least some of the blame on external forces beyond your control. Bad things happen. Your boss or coworker is a jerk. You are okay. (Not to blame your spouse or partner, though.)

Keep it in perspective.

Keep the bad things contained in the area of your life they most affect, even if it means putting up a front.

When things go bad, try to see it as a transient state. Perhaps you can think of the times in your life when things were a mess and you pulled it together into a different point of view.

It takes mindfulness to move along the continuum from pessimism to optimism. When you use cognitive awareness and self-talk to deal with automatic pessimist thoughts and shift toward optimism, it can feel like you are going through the motions. But there are reasons to keep at it. Even a small shift toward optimism leverages a difference. 

You can work on shifting your curve toward optimism by becoming actively aware of the three categories of evaluating events: permanent, pervasive, and personal. An optimistic outlook considers positive events permanent, pervasive, and personal. An optimistic outlook considers negative events transient, isolated, and external, not personal. Don’t blame yourself. It may be hard at first to note progress, but in time you will see the shift, maybe not as much from your progress as from observing the unchanged outlook of pessimists you leave behind. 

Find your base-level score on Selligman’s optimism/pessimism questionnaire.

It seems like a lot of extra work and time to make this change from pessimism to optimism. You have 45 bits of attention and think of the garbage you are filling it with at least a good percentage of your time. It is the proverbial garbage in garbage out. You don’t need extra time. You need to fill your 45 bits with more good stuff that will help rather than make you crazy. Nudging your explanatory style toward optimism is good stuff. Ki Breathing Meditation is good stuff. Keep an arsenal of good stuff at hand. You will change your life.

Self-help books that help:

Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus

The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body