table of Contents
Chapter 6, optimistic and laid a successful career
"Success Magazine" (Success Magazine) heard that I made a special study group hired at the Metropolitan Insurance Company, came to interview me. In 1987, they published an article about optimism and super salesman, this article is from the introduction del began.
Del had to work in a slaughterhouse, did suddenly fired after many years, so he went to the Metropolitan clerk candidates insurers. Although he did not by the traditional insurance industry professional analysis test, but I got hired because he hired qualified special group - high style attributed his test scores, the score shows that he is very optimistic.
He later entered the Metropolitan became a super salesman, because he not only persistence but also both imagination, he can find his client where others can imagine.
Del worked for 26 years at a slaughterhouse in eastern Pennsylvania, said his former life can all work there. The job is not pleasant, but at least he's cleaning department also work better than other sectors. Later, meat oversupply, business was getting worse, at least when the number of trade union work, although his weekly guarantee, but he must be transferred to the slaughter department, that department's work made him very uncomfortable, but still have to make a living doing. Business is getting bad, a Monday morning, he went to the factory as usual, but found the front of the factory hung a sign that read "closed."
"I'm not going after the rest of my life living on the dole," he told me, "so I went to apply for insurance salesman. I've never sold anything, I do not know whether it will sell things, but I accept your quiz ...... you know, the Mets hired me. "
despite the loss of the work of the slaughterhouse, but then the factual evidence Mingsai disguise, Yan's blessing. The first year of selling insurance, his salary more than 50% in the slaughterhouse; the second year, his salary more than double the salary at the time of slaughter. In addition, he loves his work, especially the work of freedom, he can arrange a time and place of their own work.
"But this morning I feel very bad," he continued, "I spent many months of effort to pull a big business, which is the biggest since I work a single, but two hours ago, the Metropolitan underwriting department call me and tell me that they decided to reject the whole deal, so I call you. "
"Yes, Mr. Bender," I replied, but still do not understand why he was looking for me, "I'm glad you called."
"Dr. Seligman, the article told me that you pick a winner for the MetLife group, this group of people no matter what bad things happened to them, just as happened to me in the morning this, they will continue to go forward. I guess you are not free for the Mets do it right? "
" you're right. " "
Well, I think you should give something back, buy my insurance now! "
I really bought.
During a long flight, I usually choose a window seat, facing the window, avoid talking with the passenger next to me. One day in March 1982, the road from San Francisco to fly back to Philadelphia, I found that I had a strategy does not work. "Hey!" I sat next to a bald man's 60-year-old man greeted with enthusiasm say, "My name is John Leslie, what is your name?" He held out his hand for me to shake my hand. "Ah! Finished," I said to myself, "a then TB ......" I mumbled reported my name, shook hands perfunctorily with him, I hope he will understand what I mean.
Leslie is not a suggestible person. He told me his work and hobbies. This is a very casual conversation changed my research direction later. Leslie is a hundred percent optimist, never give up, he seemed to think I'd like to hear him speak, you will be attracted to his words of wisdom. Sure enough, when the plane flew over Nevada, I found that I was really attracted to him.
He said: "My hands batch of employees is the most creative group of people!"
"How do you distinguish between creative employees and general employees do," I asked?.
"They believe they can do things others can not."
And other aircraft flew over Utah, I was totally fascinated. He talked about these people exactly what I think people can resist depression.
"How do you make a person creative?" I asked him.
"I can tell you!" He replied, "but if you'll tell me what kind of job you are doing."
I briefly told him what I was doing over the past 15 years. I told him that learned helplessness and depression mode, I told him pessimistic explanatory style and how easy pessimists give up.
"You have not studied the other side of this issue?" Leslie asked, "You have not studied what people will never give up? What are people no matter what you do to him, he will not become depressed?"
"I have not thought of it." I admit.
In fact, I have begun to feel a little uneasy. Because psychology focus only on the issue, all the time and money spent on how to make little to alleviate the patient's symptoms, the day a little better. To help needy people is a kind of noble quality, but psychology seems to have the energy to make people healthy life more beautiful life. Lesley then I saw my other research.
Who is the most suitable insurance salesman
After three weeks of that trip, I came to the United States MetLife building, through the ankle-deep carpet into Creighton's office. Creighton 50 years old, is a very pleasant, discerning entrepreneurs, he was long before I learned about the importance of optimism about his business.
"Marketing is not easy," he said, "salesman must have the indomitable courage to succeed, it is not everyone can do it. Every year we hire 5,000 new sales, we screened 60,000 people from candidates carefully we conduct tests on them, interview, also on their intensive training, but less than a year, more than half of the people left, left to the people of poor performance year after year, to the end of the fourth year their performance only 20%. we train a new clerk takes more than 30,000 uS dollars, so a single year in the employment of people we lost $ 75 million. other insurance companies like us. " "
this is not only the problem is the loss of money, Dr. Seligman, "he continued," when employees resign, I found them depressed, it is your professional - depression So we have a very important task, that It is how people and the environment with more ideal. "
"I want to know is, you can pre-screening test suitable insurance salesman, so we can save a lot of costs."
"Why resign?"
Creighton said generally about the process of resignation: "Even the best salesman, would have been rejected many times a day, and these are mostly rejected one after another, which dealt a serious blow to their morale. so the clerk will feel discouraged, once they discouraged, refused to them it more and more difficult to accept, the courage to make them more difficult to lay a telephone. so they have been dragging do not call, do not call more and more no performance, no performance once they began to consider leaving. when they encounter obstacles, when a dead end, few people would think of crossing it, around it or go through from underneath. " "
you have to remember, "he said," the most attractive in the industry is its independence nature, no people staring at them every day, they have considerable latitude. On the other hand is only by adhering to hit the tenth telephone talent will be successful. "
I explained to Creighton theory of learned helplessness and explanatory style, and then I told him about the optimistic and pessimistic questionnaire, I also told him that people with high scores setbacks pessimistic soon abandoned, and change I have depression.
But this is not just a questionnaire to identify pessimistic about it, it is a continuous score, from extreme optimism to extreme depression. The most extreme optimists should perseverance, indomitable, they are the most immune to depression.
"No one has ever studied these extremely optimistic person," I said, "They're probably capable of challenging people with success in the insurance industry in this."
"Tell me why it's useful optimistic," Creighton said. I explained that optimistic explanatory style influenced not only insurance salesman for his future customers say, the most important is not the time when his client that he said to his words. A pessimistic salesman might say to yourself: "I can not, no one wants to buy my insurance." After several such Afterwards, the clerk said, Well so far today, I go home! After this happens a few times, he'll want to gradually quit.
An optimistic salesman might say to myself, "He's too busy to answer the phone," or "He had to buy insurance, but there are eight in 10 people buy insurance is not" or "I may not You should call in time for dinner, "or simply wrong to say anything himself. For them, the second call and will not be particularly hard hit, a few minutes later, the clerk might find a person willing to buy insurance. This small achievement will immediately bring vitality to him, so he hit consecutive 10 calls and get another chance to interview, which makes his sales in order to fully play out.
I walked into Creighton's office before, he already knows optimism is the secret of success selling insurance, he just wanted to know if anyone can be measured optimism. We decided to do a simple research, look at whether the clerk has been successful is extremely optimistic. If they are, we will further study, our goal is to develop a new method of screening salesman. We used a questionnaire survey Chapter 3 and different. In this there is attribution style questionnaire describing situations in 12 problem, is about half the bad events, the other half is about good events, you're going to imagine it happening to you, then choose the most likely the reason.
Then you have to choose the cause you've just come out of the score, the score was 1-7, including dimensions externalization, internalization, permanent and universal. First, I use this questionnaire test of 200 experienced salesman, half of them very enthusiastic, very good performance, the other half more lazy, poor performance. Results good salesman optimistic than the performance scores of poor people is much higher. When we paired up test scores and sales, we found in the test was the most optimistic salesman, the first two years of sales 37% better than the pessimistic salesman.
The performance of the top 10% of optimistic salespeople more than 88% of the performance of 10% after pessimistic salesperson. Thus, our test would be helpful to the business community.
The success of the Golden Triangle
For many years, the insurance industry has developed its own set of insurance salesman screening tests. Metropolitan Life Insurance All applicants must first work through this test. Only scores 12 points or more people will be hired, about 30% of people can test to 12 points or more.
Generally speaking, there are two questionnaires can predict the potential success of all walks of staff: experience-based theory test and quizzes. Quiz experience is people have succeeded or failed in the field of man-made objects in this area, give them a lot of problems, a wide range, such as "Do you like classical music?" "You do want to make a lot of money ? "" do you have a lot of relatives? "" do you like to participate in the party? "most of these problems can not be a single distinguish the pros and cons, but hundreds of channels this title is still possible. This question becomes hundreds of forecasting the success of the quiz, suitable candidates who have a similar personality profile. In fact the experience test can not tell you why some people succeed, these problems can only happen to distinguish right and wrong people.
Based on test theory is not the same, these tests have IQ tests, college entrance examination. The theory behind the entrance think wisdom contains language skills, mathematical analysis capabilities, as these skills are very much related to your academic performance in school, so it was assumed that the college entrance examination good results can predict your level of intelligence.
But the experience quizzes and tests are based on the theory of a few mistakes, a lot of people SAT score is not good, but entered the university after the performance is good, work is also impressive. More prominent example is the case of MetLife, a lot of people very high scores on professional analysis, but sales performance is very poor. But there is no such possibility: in professional analysis of the low score of people, but it is a good insurance salesman MetLife did not know, because they never employ these low scores of people?.
Our attribution style quiz is based on the theory test, but its success with the traditional theory point of view is very different. The traditional view is that there are two essential elements of success, the first is the ability or aptitude, IQ tests and college entrance examination are used to measure it. The second is motivation, no matter how high your ability, if you lack motivation, you will not succeed. Enough motivation to make up for lack of ability.
I think the conventional wisdom is not perfect. Even if a composer has talent and a strong motivation for success Mozart, if he thinks they are not good composer, he will not succeed. His pessimism makes him very easy to give up. Success need to adhere to a frustration not to give up insistence, I think optimistic explanatory style is to uphold the soul.
Style theory to explain the success of that to filter out people to be successful in challenging work, to consider three aspects:
1, capacity;
2, motivation;
3, optimistic.
These three make or break.
Only the most optimistic hiring people
Why is the performance of good salesman with a high score of optimism, there are two explanations. One explanation is optimistic contributed to the good performance, resulting in poor performance pessimistic. Another explanation is that a good performance makes you optimistic, pessimistic make you poor performance.
The next step in our research is to find out who is who is the fruit. Our approach is to measure the degree of optimism at the time of his first employees are hired, and then see who is the best performance next year. January 1983 we measured 104 MetLife Pennsylvania branch of the new employees, they all passed the professional analysis test, also received in-service training, and then accept the attribution style quiz. I thought to wait a year, do have performance data after the comparison, but did not think test scores has made us stunned.
Our new staff was amazed at the degree of optimism, their group G-B average score (difference in interpretation of the style of interpretation events good and bad style events) than 7 points, which is far above average. This shows that unless it is the most optimistic person, otherwise do not have to apply for it. Insurance company salesman tests than we had in other industries optimism. To validate our theory, we really picked the right industry. This is a very optimistic attitude needs to have in order to enter the industry and success.
A year later, we examine the performance of these people, and sure enough as Creighton warned, more than half of the new employees resigned --104 59 people have resigned. Why?
Attribution style quiz, the turnover rate low optimism scores of employees is twice as high as optimism scores of employees, staff turnover and the lowest score after a quarter of a quarter of the former highest score three times. The professional analysis of the poor performance of the staff turnover rate is not higher than the good results. Then their performance then?
Attribution style quiz, high score half points lower than the other half sold more than 20% of the insurance, the highest score of the first quarter of the salesman sold more than 50 after the worst quarter % of insurance. In this regard, professional analysis test is a good tool to predict, because more than half in half in the vocational profiling high score much lower selling 37% of insurance. If you merge the two tests together, we see the two test scores are better salesman than half of the difference that more than half sold 56% of insurance. So, optimistic or not possible to predict who will stay and who's better performance, it is the same with their own insurance valid test.
So this study verify that optimism can predict sales results? No. Before MetLife completely accepting attribution style quiz, there are two questions to be answered. First, the clerk accepted only 104 tests, all of them from the Pennsylvania branch, the sample may not be representative. Second, to take the test when they have entered the company, whether they are hired does not depend on the test results, it will not fraud. But if MetLife began with attribution style test as a screening tool, the candidates may be false, so the test is invalid.
The second problem is easy to solve. We did a study, subjects were told how to cheat the test (as pretending optimistic), while deceit in order to strengthen the motivation, the experimenter provided a $ 100 prize for the highest score of people. Even with this knowledge and motivation, they still did not score higher than honest answer another group of subjects. In other words, this is a very difficult test cheating.
Adventure harvest
We can now carry out a formal experiment. In this experiment, we accepted this as a test of whether or not the standard. In 1985, 15,000 candidates nationwide MetLife people to accept the attribution style quiz and professional analysis test.
We have two objectives. The first test is the only professional analysis hire 1,000 new sales, with no regard to attribution style quiz results. We wanted to see 1,000 people, optimists than pessimists performance will not be good.
The second objective of the metropolis, a little bit of adventure. We decided to hire some particularly optimistic person, these people are professional analysis score of 9 to 11 points, 12 points does not meet the standards. We hired 129 people without any insurance company would be hired to do sales, but they do not know the details behind it. If this experiment fails, MetLife will lose $ 3 million training costs.
After two years, we monitor this 1129 sales performance, the following is the result of the experiment.
First year, coming in hiring people using traditional methods, optimists than pessimists perform well, but not much difference, only 8%. But by the second year, and more pessimists than optimists sold 31 percent of insurance.
Good hiring came with a special method salesman's performance was great, they like in the first year 21% hired come in using traditional methods pessimistic group, the second year, the gap increased to 57%. They even than the traditional method of hiring came in the first two years of the 1000's average sales more than 27%. In fact, they are at least as good as the performance of optimistic group of traditional methods of recruitment clerk.
We also see that group compared with the pessimistic and optimistic group has been in progress. why? Our answer is optimism caused to adhere to. At first, ability, motivation as important as persistence, but time goes by, more and more have been denied for a long time, insisted it becomes more important than the first two. Optimistic tests with professional analysis test as you can accurately predict sales.
Regain the leading position
1950, MetLife is a leading insurance industry, it's has more than 20,000 sales. After 30 years, the Mets decided to reduce the number of sales, but on the other way to sell insurance. When we finish this 1987 special recruitment of experiments, the Metropolitan position in the insurance industry has been replaced by another company, its employees reduced to around 8,000 people. To reverse this trend needs new, strong leadership, Creighton introduction of Kerry Cummings (BobCrimmins), a silver-haired, energetic, eloquent man, Christopher Cummings and the introduction of Metz (HowardMase) Ph.D., Metz had a very successful manager for Citibank trained personnel. They hope to introduce new methods of screening and training. Their goal is to increase sales of about 10 000, if the performance is good, then the next year increased to 12,000, and hope to regain the previous position in the market. They think that I hired special study may be useful, because studies have shown that optimism can predict success, accuracy far more than the traditional employment standards.
So after MetLife companies have decided to use as a standard screening test attribution style salesman. Under the leadership of Christopher Cummings and Metz, the Mets took a dual policy to hire new clerk. The company will hire high test scores but the style attributed to analyze test scores almost professional people, and these people under the old screening system is simply not considered. Although those tests by professional analysis, but very pessimistic people are not hired. In this way, MetLife achieved its goal, to expand the sales force to 12,000 people, an increase of 50% of the personal insurance market share. The company is now not only has a strong sales force, and the quality is better than before, recently heard Mets have regained the leading position in the insurance industry. Seen in this light, psychology is really very handy.
Of pessimism to optimism
I appeared again in Creighton's office, at the foot of thick carpet still soft, oak siding is still bright, but we have some old. Seven years ago when we first met, Creighton just took over as the Metropolitan's CEO, and now he has become the business leader, he told me that he was going to retire in another year.
Our past achievements, our findings - optimism can predict whether a person can be a good insurance salesman, the entire insurance industry screening of employees have undergone change.
"One thing has always haunted me," Creighton said. "Every industry has some of the pessimistic people, they may be high qualifications, may be an expert in a row, so how they can not. I'm getting old high, more and feel the power of those pessimists, they always tell me what not to do, or just tell me what's doing something wrong. I know pessimistic froze their action, imagination and initiative. I believe If they can be optimistic, they themselves will be better, will be more favorable to the company. " "
so, this is my problem now: you can not make a person become optimistic person, even if he has been 30 years, or even 50 pessimistic thinking years. "
the answer to this question is yes, but Creighton not talking about his sales force but the board of directors, especially those conservative director. I do not know how to transform a bureaucrat, you can not call these directors do tests, go to class, to accept cognitive therapy. Even Creighton can do, we teach them optimism feasible?
That night, and many nights later, I was thinking Creighton requirements. In a well-run company, whether there is a suitable person to post pessimistic? In the smooth journey of life, whether pessimism has its due role in it?
In fact, pessimism is everywhere, some even a lifetime of suffering by it. In addition to those extreme optimist, all of us have eaten its loss. Is pessimism is a mistake of nature do? It still has its existence meaning and value?
Pessimism can help us understand the truth of the matter, in some aspects of life, optimism is unrealistic. In our fall, fail, with rose-colored lenses to see things that make us feel better, but that does not change the facts. Sometimes we have to admit that we lost, change the direction of our efforts, rather than find reasons clinging tightly.
When Creighton asked if I could change MetLife directors of pessimism, I'm not worrying if I could do it, but doing so will not have any harm. Perhaps some of his pessimism directors are of some use, and really need someone to splash some cold water fanatical plan. These pessimistic people can climb the highest levels of the enterprise, certainly have their merits.
Why pessimistic
That night, think back to Creighton complaints, I once again thinking about a long-standing problem that bothers me carefully: Why human evolution will allow the existence of pessimism and depression? Optimism is clearly its role in evolution. Tiger (Lionel Tiger) in his book: (Optimism: The Biology of Hope ) " optimistic hope of biology" in the proposed human beings to survive in evolution because humans have an optimistic illusion of the real world. I believe will become a reality than it had better hope that drives human beings to transcend themselves, to develop their potential.
So, what is the role of pessimistic? Perhaps it can correct some of our mistakes so that we can correct understanding of reality.
But this is a disturbing idea, depressed people do not see the world even greater than the depressed people more real, more correctly, implying that depressed people do not see the world is distorted. As a therapist, I was trained to believe that my job is to help those patients with depression, let them happier, more aware of the world, but perhaps the truth is unpleasant. A good therapist might just let the patients with depression had a beautiful illusion, allow patients to think the world is beautiful.
In fact, there is some evidence that depressed people, albeit sad, but more intelligent.
10 years ago, when a graduate student Alois (Lauren Alloy) and the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson still, they did an experiment: subjects for the room lamp does not shine bright with varying degrees of control, some people have full control over them by the switch, the light on the light, they do not bright lights on time; another group is not having full control, and sometimes they do not press the switch, the lamp will light up, of course, this is sometimes group also have control over the press switch, it will light up.
Then let these two groups of people as possible to accurately judge how much they have control over the lighting. Depressed people in the experimental situation and have no control over the control of the judge are more accurate. Not depressed person's performance makes us shocked. When they have the right of control, their judgment is very accurate, but they do not have full control over (ie helpless situation), they did not give up, still think they have a great deal of control.
For fear of lights and buttons for humans too insignificant, so Alois Abramson and increased the temptation of money. When the subjects were able to correctly control the lights you can win money when they press the button and the light does not shine they will lose money. Even so, not depressed subjects exaggerated their control characteristics also did not disappear, but more pronounced. There is a experimental situation is this: everyone has some control, but the experiment is designed so that everyone is losing money. In this case, not depressed people judge their control is less than the actual. If they are winning experiment changed, depressed people do not think they have a lot of control over more than actually have. Depressed people regardless of winning or losing, very quiet, and relatively more accurate judgment.
These are very consistent over the past 10 years of discovery. Depressed people, mostly pessimists, they can accurately judge their control. Rather than depressed people, most of optimists, believe they have more control than they actually are, especially when they are in a helpless situation, but they overestimate their own control position.
Many years ago, "Newsweek" (Newsweek) reported that 80% of American men regard their social skills. These people are not necessarily depressed American men, because the University of Oregon psychologist Luyin Sen (PeterLewinson) do something about research. He's depressed and non-depressed people scheduled to speak at a seminar, then let them assess how you did, whether convincing, whether popular. Please also observer to score. It was found that depressed people are less convincing, less popular, very poor one of the symptoms of depression is social skills. Depressed people can correctly judge their own lack of social skills. Surprising discovery is still not depressed from that group: they significantly overestimate their social skills, their own persuasion and popularity rating are higher than the evaluation of the observer.
Another evidence is related to memory. In general, depressed people bad memories of events better than good memories of the event. Subjects without depression is just the opposite, they are a good memory of the event better. So who is the more accurate it? If we can really know the number of good and bad events in the world, then we will know who is more accurately viewed later.
When I first became a therapist when senior told me that would like to know the exact life of the patient and ask the patient himself is of no use. You hear is that their parents do not love them, their investment failure, and so on. Is it possible these patients is telling the truth then?
This recurring patterns of behavior in our interpretation of research style that depressed people are not biased judgment, and depressed people judge relative accuracy. There are tests in Chapter 3 in half a bad thing, a good half of the event, you can choose A or Option B as the cause of these events. You will get a G-B score, your score and depression compared to those who happen? Regardless of good or bad events of events, depression in explanation of the style are similar. In other words, G-B's near depression scores of 0, he is impartial.
Depressed people do not score much higher than 0 points, they are biased. For people who are not depressed because bad things are external, temporary and specific, and the reason is the inherent good, permanent and universal. The more optimistic people his judgment more to one side.
Overall, depressed people do not distort the facts of the outside world to meet their own, while depressed people see the world more precise. From the statistical point of view, the depressed person's pessimistic explanatory style, rather than depressed people tended to be optimistic. This shows that optimists twisted world, while pessimists see the world correctly. But we have to remember that this relationship is just statistically speaking, not every pessimist can accurately reflect the real world. There are a few optimists are realists.
The right to judge whether research on depression's just to satisfy the curiosity of researchers? I think not, in fact, it was the first definite clue about why there is depression. For that question in front of us to ask: Why evolution would allow pessimism and depression to stay, this is the most likely answer. If pessimism is the root cause of depression and suicide, and it will cause low achievement, poor immune function and damage to health, why it did not become extinct centuries ago?
Pessimistic benefit in the latter part of evolution was apparent. We are animals of the Ice Age, our emotions by shaping one hundred thousand years ago, the Earth's climate catastrophe, can survive the Ice Age ancestors is likely to be a rainy day, the sun will see people thinking winter. We inherited the ancestral brain, so it inherited them often see dark clouds and see the light characteristics.
For people today, in some cases, it may also play a role pessimistic. Imagine a large, successful companies, research and development, planning, marketing and other jobs that require vision and dreams, they can help companies go beyond existing capabilities and to face the future. These are the characteristics of optimists. But imagine, if the company has only optimist, everyone only see the possibility of an exciting future, and that the company will soon be a big problem. The company also needs a pessimist, a correct concept of the real world, the company's accounting, treasury, financial managers, general managers, safety engineers tube and so need the right concept.
We should be noted that these people are not completely pessimist. Most of them, if not for professional reasons, they may also be happy, hopeful, confident person. Their careers so that they have a cautious pessimists.
These mild pessimist, or call them professional pessimist, pessimism seems to be able to make full use of good judgment and not taste the pain of being pessimistic, their health nor pessimistic because paying the price.
Therefore, a successful business needs to have a dream of optimists, pessimists also requires some careful realist. I want to emphasize that every company's CEO should be a flexible wise, they can strike a balance between optimism and realism vision cautious.
Balance of Payments: VS pessimistic optimism
Successful life is like successful businesses, the need for optimism and occasional pessimism.
I just record straight for pessimism, now let me review the evidence against pessimistic, so that we can compare its benefits and costs.
- Pessimistic cause depression.
- In the event of a strike, pessimism produces inertia and inaction.
- Pessimistic subjective cause bad feelings - depression, anxiety, anxiety.
- Pessimism is self-fulfilling. The pessimist would flinch in the face of challenges, so even in sight, will become a failure.
- Pessimism and poor health related.
- Pessimist easy to defeat in the competition.
- Even pessimists are right, things are really bad, but they are pessimistic interpretation will become less unfortunate catastrophe.
Thus, this emphasis on the balance sheet should be optimistic, but occasionally at some time, somewhere, we will need to be pessimistic. Chapter 12, what people, under what circumstances should not be too optimistic are described.
Everyone, including extreme optimism and extreme pessimism of people have experienced depression and cheerful. Our mood is different at different times of day, for women, there is also a monthly period is easier to depression. Usually we are more depressed when getting up, the sun westward shift, mitigate the degree of depression, but it also affected the basic rest and activity cycle (Basic Rest and Activity Cycle, referred to as BRAC) impact. When BRAC reached its climax, we more optimistic, at low tide, we would tend to pessimism and depression.
In these gloomy periods, we can see that pessimism in our lives also have an important role. Mild pessimism makes us think twice before you do something, do not make stupid decisions; optimism to make our lives a dream, a planned future. Reality is distorted in good faith, to make room for the imagination to play. Without these dreams, we never dare to try new things and do not know how much our potential.
Evolution is very powerful place is that it uses a dynamic balance between optimism and pessimism to contain each other, correcting each other. We can choose to learn optimistic most of the time, but when necessary can also use pessimistic.
Proverbs optimism
The traditional view is not perfect success. To succeed, in addition to the ability and motivation, but also need to adhere to, setbacks and never give up insistence, and optimistic explanatory style is to adhere to the soul.
Successful life requires optimistic most of the time and occasionally pessimistic. Mild pessimism makes us think twice before you do something, do not make stupid decisions; optimism to make our lives a dream, a planned future.