Building joy when you feel pessimistic
Pessimism can often feel like cloak of grey has been put over the future. Where you were once hopeful, excited or content in life, when pessimism strikes it can feel like life is never-ending series of painful events. Pessimism often involves the expectation that things will eventually go wrong, be it in work, finances or interpersonal situations.
Pessimism doesn’t mean that you are like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh and are sitting in the corner crying. In fact often it can have more of an anxious flavour it, and can often be characterized by chronic worry or indecision.
Pessimism can have many origins. Examples include having bee through major tragedy or tragedies, having a disability that impacts your ability to live life to the fullest or experiencing a series of failures in life. Other times it might have been modelled to you by caregivers (who always saw catastrophe around every corner).
Here are four strategies to start to build joy and hope:
1) Create a list of things that bring you joy and schedule more activities for fun. Life isn’t meant to be about avoiding pain, but finding joy and sparkle. On this list I want you to put anything that makes you feel hopeful about the future or feel joy in the present. Examples might be the smell of a wood fire burning, noticing the colours in the sky of a sunset, laughing till you cry with a loved one, planning a trip away, accomplishing a goal or connecting with a new person. Life is not about avoiding ‘bad things’. It’s about getting ‘good things’.
2) Examine the evidence. Yes, negative things may have happened in your life. However, start to notice how often you predict things will go wrong. Try an experiment for two days where you write down everything thing you think will go wrong, and see what actually happens. Did you predict the store would be closed, that there wouldn’t be a seat on the bus, that the meeting at work would go badly, that your friend wouldn’t want to hang out? Also examine your bigger predictions for the year. Are you worried you will be scammed financially or will get cancer or your partner will leave you? Assess what percentage actually end up happening.
3) Notice how much you complain. All of us need support, and need to vent at times to loved ones. It’s insincere to be ‘happy’ all the time. However, if complaining is the main way we connect with others to elicit sympathy, it can be draining for other people and people may start to avoid us. Notice how you feel when you complain a lot.
To experiment with this, try for one afternoon not to complain with a friend. Notice how much the urge to say something negative comes up. Notice how you feel for not having complained. Learn to ask more directly for care (e.g. ‘can you pick up a bottle of wine before you come over to dinner?’ rather than ‘there are no stores close to me, it’s going to be so hard to get to the shops, I don’t know if I’m going to have time to finish dinner and go to the bottle shop as well’).
4) Calm your own inner worried child who may not have been taught how to self-sooth when you felt anxious as a child. This is something that a psychologist can help guide you with.