WHY OPTIMISTICALLY VALUE YOURSELF?

How optimistic are you? Do you value yourself optimistically when experiencing a setback? What does it mean to value yourself optimistically when going through a major life negative experience? What meanings are you giving to the setback?

All of these questions, and many more, highlights the core missing ingredients to become resilient—optimism. The good news is that a deeply fixed pessimistic and helpless outlook can be changeable at the setback so that you can optimistically value yourself to become resilient.

Martin Seligman defined this essential resilient quality as “optimism,” referring to a mental frame of mind or attitude to “optimistically valuing yourself.” This outlook provides you with a means to efficiently understand negative, painful, upsetting, and stressful things that happen to you. For the purpose of resilience, the dictionary’s definition of “optimist” poorly categorizes what is the essence. Michael Hall clarifies it further for what it means to the core of being resilient as a “self-validity that claims full ownership of self, space, and time” optimistic attitude.