Although
evidence shows that happiness often makes us more successful by
fostering energy and creativity,
it can backfire for defensive pessimists. When strategic optimists and defensive pessimists
threw darts, they did equally well overall, but were most effective under opposite conditions.
...
If you want to achieve a major goal, conventional wisdom says to think positive. Picture yourself delivering the perfect presentation, and absorb the energy of the audience. Envision the ideal job interview, and imagine yourself on cloud nine when you get the offer.
Although these strategies sound compelling, it turns out that they often backfire. Many of us are more successful when we focus on the reasons that we’re likely to fail.
....
Strategic optimists and defensive pessimists succeed under different circumstances. If you’re a defensive pessimist, or you’re attempting to motivate one, the strategies that prove effective are often the reverse of what you expect.
...
“Before long, I began to realize that they were doing so well because of their pessimism…
negative thinking transformed anxiety into action.” By imagining the worst-case scenario, defensive pessimists motivate themselves to prepare more and try harder.
...
If you’re the kind of person who’s always telling other people to look on the bright side, you might want to reconsider. Whether people succeed is not a matter of thinking positively or negatively,
but rather whether they choose the strategies that match their thinking styles. As psychologists Heidi Grant Halvorson and Tory Higgins write in
Focus, “It’s the fit that counts.”
...
And if you’re a defensive pessimist, when preparing for a performance that really matters, you might want to
list your weaknesses instead of your strengths, and drink a glass of anxiety rather than a shot of confidence.
Ultimately, both styles are deadly at their extremes. Pessimism becomes fatalistic, and optimism becomes toxic. The key is to find the sweet spot, the more moderate ranges that combine the benefits of both approaches. In the words of Richard Pine, “
The best chief executives—and that includes presidents—know that too much optimism is a dangerous thing, that wise and productive leadership means striking a balance between optimists’ blue sky view of the world and pessimists’ more clear-eyed assessment of any given situation. Take one part salesman, one part inventor, one part lawyer, one part safety engineer, stir gently and you’ve got a great chief executive.”
Optimists tend to thrive in jobs that require resilience and perseverance. For example, in
insurance sales jobs with high rejection rates, optimists sold 37% more than pessimists over a 2-year period.
At the same time, we need pessimists to
anticipate the worst and prepare us all for it. On average,
research indicates that people who never worry have
lower job performance than those who worry from time to time. Studies also show that when entrepreneurs are highly optimistic, their
new ventures bring in less revenue and grow more slowly, and when CEOs are highly optimistic, they
take on more risky debt and
swing for the fences more often, putting their companies in jeopardy. (
This may be why there are fewer optimistic CFOs than CEOs.)
