Mental Exercise
Anyone would be forgiven for feeling a bit down as 2022 ends. With fears of a looming recession, layoffs, work burnout, and, of course, the stress of the holidays, 2022 hasn’t been easy.
But as strange as it sounds, those hardships you endured actually benefited you. To be sure, life would likely have been better if you had never experienced those hardships, but you did, so now it’s time to use them to your advantage.
What you’re going to develop falls under the umbrella of optimism. Optimism is not putting a positive spin on every experience, no matter how horrible; that’s called toxic positivity. Instead, optimism is the belief that you’re going to experience positive outcomes with the caveat that optimists expect good things to happen contingent on their active participation.
There are myriad studies on optimism, and virtually all show that outcomes are improved when people are optimistic rather than pessimistic. For example, in one study of angioplasty patients, pessimists were three times more likely than optimists to have heart attacks or require repeat angioplasties or bypass operations.
Given all that, how do you actually boost your optimism and find some benefits from a crazy year?
First, imagine that a screenwriter is developing a movie about your life story. You can’t make your life story an unending upward progression of happy events; that would be the most boring movie ever. Every good story requires hardships because a hero isn’t a hero without challenges to overcome.
From Luke Skywalker to Cinderella, from Harry Potter to Wonder Woman, every hero faces (and subsequently overcomes) trials and tribulations. So the question you need to ask yourself is, “From a screenwriter’s perspective, how would the tribulations I faced in 2022 help transform me from a boring always-happy character into a real hero that faced and overcame hardships?”
Second, now that you can see how hardships give you a far more interesting life story, it’s time to identify some specific benefits deriving from those challenges.
A concept directly related to optimism is called benefit finding; it’s when we derive positive growth from adversity or tough times. In a powerful study on benefit finding, early-stage breast cancer patients who received benefit finding training experienced increased optimism and came to see that cancer had made positive contributions in their lives. Those benefits included an enhanced sense of purpose, increased spirituality, closer relationships with family and spouses, and much more.
To start your own benefit finding practice, ask yourself a series of questions. Start by asking, “What did the hardships I faced in 2022 teach me?” For someone who experienced a layoff, for example, they might have learned how to spot signs of corporate turmoil earlier, how to prepare their resume, or how to build their personal network.
Your next step is to ask yourself, “How has that experience better prepared me to face similar challenges in the future?” The laid-off employee might be better prepared because they’ve bolstered their network, increased their visibility in the industry, or prepared themselves financially with a more aggressive savings plan.
Finally, you’re going to ask yourself, “Is there any part of this experience that I’m grateful for?” For example, did your career disruption bring you closer to your spouse or friends? Did it force you to reignite friendships outside of your employer? Did you make yourself more proactive about your career?
This isn’t an easy exercise, and there’s no substitute for fighting through the negative emotions until you find something, anything, positive that you gained from the hardships this year. But merely by forcing yourself to fight through the negativity, you’ve positioned yourself far ahead of the average person.
Again, life would likely have been better without any hardships in 2022. But there were hardships, and, ironically, with some rethinking and reframing, you can emerge far stronger as a result.
