This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Personality Isn't Permanent" by Benjamin Hardy. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Are you a negative person? How can you keep a positive outlook no matter the circumstances?
Life is hard and full of suffering, and there’s no way to deny this fact. Staying optimistic in the face of the tragedy of life isn’t about trying to avoid anything bad happening to you. Rather, it’s about finding a silver lining in every situation.
With this in mind, here’s how to be an optimist no matter how dire your circumstances are.
Develop an Optimistic Attitude
Learning how to be an optimist isn’t easy. When an event happens to you that you wish hadn’t, it’s easy to tell yourself narratives that frame you as a disempowered victim of bad circumstances. But Hardy argues that no event is intrinsically good or bad—they all have positive and negative aspects.
By focusing on the positive aspects of events, it becomes easier to accept them. This helps you feel motivated and empowered to keep working toward your goal when things happen that would usually make you feel unmotivated and disempowered. Telling yourself narratives that focus on being grateful for the positives in a situation helps you see the negative aspects as less important and helps you feel less victimized. As a result, you can more easily recover from a negative experience without losing momentum or hope.
For example, if your car breaks down, your gut reaction might be to tell yourself the narrative that this is an awful event that will ruin your day and get in the way of working on your goal. Instead, tell yourself a more positive narrative. You might focus on the fact that you broke down in a convenient location, and tell yourself that this lucky fact means you can still have a good day and get your work done.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Personality Isn't Permanent summary:
- How personality is not fixed, but fluid and changeable
- How the narratives you tell yourself dictate what you’re capable of
- How to change your personality to become your optimal self
