Are you more of an optimist or a pessimist? It’s important to realize because as a leader, it can affect not just you and how you think, but also the culture you create and what the people you lead focus on. We can all be pessimistic sometimes, in that certain situations tend to make us think more negatively. The difference with pessimists is that they just tend to think negatively much more often. So, what determines how much of a pessimist you are—and is there anything you can do?
Brain science and your pessimism
Neurological studies show that the degree to which we are prone to pessimism is written into the structure of our brains. Different parts of our brains activate when we think negatively, and in pessimists’ brains, those parts are much more well-developed. The strength of these pessimism pathways is partially determined by genetics. So, there is a degree to which we inherit pessimism from our parents.
However, the biggest determinant of our pessimism is the family environment in which we grow up. It’s there, in our childhoods, that our brains develop. And the context that families provide can change how our brains develop. For instance, if we grow up in a family where we feel many positive emotions, the neural pathways involved in feeling positive will develop more strongly than those feeling negative emotions. It’s a bit like developing muscles; the ones we exercise most are the ones that grow strongest.
With this in mind, ask yourself the questions below. Studies show six experiences can lead people’s brains to develop negative, more pessimistic pathways.
- Were your parents pessimistic? Perhaps predictably, research shows we tend to adopt a similar level of optimism or pessimism as our parents.
- Did your parents often appear anxious? Children of anxious parents tend to grow up to be worriers and more focused on what might go wrong. This is one of the earliest-forming tendencies within us, as children as young as four months old who have anxious mothers are more sensitive to threats.
- Did your parents argue a lot? Children exposed to parents who argue frequently are more likely to grow into adults who are sensitive to risk and tend to be less likely to see opportunities.
- Were you punished a lot as a child? Children who were punished a lot—especially physically—tend to grow up to be more pessimistic.
- Were your parents strict or controlling? When mothers have an authoritarian parenting style, their children tend to be more optimistic. The effect of fathers is different. Strict fathers tend to have pessimistic sons, but their daughters tend to be optimistic.
- How affectionate and sensitive were your parents to your emotional needs? Having parents who are warm and sensitive to your emotional needs tends to lead people to develop into optimistic adults. But where these things are lacking, children tend to develop more pessimistic attitudes.
The more any of these experiences apply to you, the more likely you will have developed strong pessimistic pathways in your brain. You’ll be more sensitive to risk and more likely to assume things will go wrong. And all that long before you ever step foot in a workplace. The question is, what can you do about it?
3 things to consider
The first thing to do is question whether you need to do anything about it. Because pessimism’s bad reputation isn’t always deserved. There are certain roles in which being a pessimist can be a huge strength. Ask yourself: Would you really want an optimistic as head of risk or compliance or chief legal officer?
So, mild pessimism can be useful in many roles, especially when making critical decisions. But if you are strongly pessimistic or persistently so, it can be a drawback. It can make seeing opportunities and encouraging initiative more difficult, and you may struggle to motivate optimists and create resilient teams.
Where this is the case, you need to try to mitigate your pessimism. We say mitigate rather than change because the degree to which you are pessimistic is written into your brain, and changing neural structure can be very difficult—if it’s possible at all. But just because you can’t fundamentally change something doesn’t mean you can’t learn new things. And so there are three things you can do to mitigate pessimism.
Interrupt the pessimism: First, you need to learn to recognize and interrupt your pessimism. If you feel yourself being pessimistic, change what you are thinking about or discussing. It can help here to have a simple action or phrase you use to do this. Something as simple as standing up or saying to yourself, “This is just my pessimism talking.” Whatever it is, have a routine that physically interrupts the pessimistic thought.
Practice optimism: The second thing here is to try some optimism. Essentially, force yourself to think about what an optimist might say or do. It may seem odd or silly, but every time you do this, you strengthen the optimistic pathways in your brain, thereby improving your ability to think optimistically.
Use others to create balance: Finally, use the people around you to balance your pessimism. We tend to surround ourselves with people who think similarly to us. After all, optimists can find pessimists exhausting, and pessimists can view optimists as unrealistic. But if you’re a strong pessimist, seek out the input of optimists to balance your natural pessimism.
None of these three techniques will fundamentally change you from a pessimist to an optimist. But together, they can help you make the most of the advantages that a little pessimism can bring while balancing it out to ensure that optimistic viewpoints are also heard.