Belief Makers

The readers of the Belief Makers blog consist of a bunch of newbies and a group of returning "hardcore" readers. We love newbies, and if you are one, we hope this blog will inspire you to come back often and question your life and anything in it. We hope you will inspire yourself to create an most amazing future for yourself; a future better then you ever thought possible.

If you are one of our core readers then you know (I assume!) that we write a lot of our articles with specifically you in our minds. A lot of the contents of this blog requires some interest and understanding of the option philosophy and how we at Belief Makers like to support, grow and question this philosophy not knowing where this will lead us! There are things written in the hope it will inspire you to sharpen your mental skills and make a stand for your beliefs. We don't write to have you agree with us. We write to have you grow yourself and become an amazing source for yourself and others. A source that you trust. A source you feel comfortable with. A source that helps you sail the biggest storms easily and helps you glide over high waves as if there was no storm at all.

A couple of weeks ago Sree mentioned to us that a lot of our articles are so "well-done and tied up, that there is not a lot of space left for comments". In this article today I have taken this wonderful feedback in account. This article is written by me with the intent to be chewed on and to be discussed together in the comment section! So, I hope you are ready to jump in!

According to Mr. Seligman, the practical reason for doing this is that, if we believe that a bad event is temporary, we tend to do something to change it, whereas, if a good event is seen as temporary we tend to not do anything to keep it.

It did sound somewhat funny to me: if love is lasting forever, does that make me do more to keep it alive? What if love is temporary, but something I and other people can keep choosing? Wouldn't I then do more to make it possible? So, I decided that most events (good and bad) are temporary, but I can work on making them appear more frequently if I want to.


Pervasiveness
Pervasiveness is the measure for how universal things are. Do they show up everywhere all the time, or, do they just show up here and there independently of one another.

Again the test said that I was more optimistic regarding the bad events than the good events.

This time I chose to not believe in the test. I actually think that at times I am very pessimistic about bad events. A few bad events can drain my energy and 'make' me think that life in general is challenging and difficult whereas a few good events will fill me with energy.

I guess that the reason for my test results is that I tend to have just a few areas of focus in my life and they are always intertwined. For a while, I have focused on my health and my work. When something affects my health, it also affects my performance at work. When I felt stressed at work, it affects my health. Since these are my main areas of focus, I tend to see them as my whole world. So, when these are affected, I see the events as universal.

If the test were questioning anything that were not work or health related, I would give an answer reflecting my beliefs that one event did not relate to another. I can see how it could be useful for me to not bundle everything together and to have a broader and more independent perspective. For me solution is simple: meditation.

When I meditate I get a lot of energy, and I also experience everything being one and yet separate. This means I can choose for myself which events to treat separately (i.e., the bad events) and which to treat together (i.e., good events).

Personalization
Personalization is about attribution, i.e., who is to blame. If you want to be less optimistic, then all you have to do is personalize 'bad' events and not personalize 'good' events. For example, if you were to lose your job, you could decide a) I got fired because I did a bad job (personal), or b) I got fired because there was a financial crisis (not personal).

During a good event, you are going to be more optimistic if you believe that you caused or influenced it, e.g., our project was a success because I did a good job (not because the team was fantastic or not only because the team was fantastic).

Seeing this definition, I decided that I would like to be moderately optimistic regarding bad events. I would like to see the event as something that just happened AND as something that I could influence. Say, I just got fired; I would like to tell myself both that the job wasn't a good match for me (not personal) and that I could do a better job in choosing my next position (personal).

Some of the Questions
Since I told you in Optimism Test: Part Two that my friends didn't like the questions, I'll now go over a few of them:

13. You owe the library $10 for an overdue book
a) When I am really involved in reading I often forget when it's due
b) I was so involved in writing the report that I forgot to return the book

This question is about permanence. Is it something that I always do or was it an independent specific event?

17. You prepared a special meal for a friend and he/she barely touched it
a) I wasn't a good cook
b) I made the meal in a rush

This question is about pervasiveness. Am I just generally a bad cook (pervasive) or did I just not cook well this time (not pervasive)?

47. You are in the hospital and few people come to visit
a) I am irritable when I am sick
b) My friends are negligent about things like that

This question is a about personalization. Did your friends not visit you because of something that you did (personal) or did they not visit you because of something that they did (not personal).

My Answers
I'll start by pointing out that the questions we are discussing are all about bad events... I also want to point out that it doesn't matter whether or not the answers are not exactly what you would do. The question would be one of which answer is closer to how you would respond. As I mentioned in Optimism Test: Part Two, I didn't find these answers particularly relevant to me, but I did answer them anyway.

Question 13: The Library Book
Personally, I haven't turned a book in late since I was 18, but if I had an overdue library book, the reason would be that something specific came up.

Question 17: Grumpy in the Hospital
I've been in a hospital only once and I didn't stay overnight. Only two people showed up, but only three people knew that I was there. I believe that if someone didn't turn up at the hospital it would be for his or her own reasons, not because I was particularly grumpy. I mean, how would they know that anyway, if they hadn't been there to see me?

Question 47: Cooking for a Friend
I rarely cook and when I do it is often done in a rush. From my perspective, if you are preparing a special meal, then it wouldn't be done in a rush. If so, would you still call it special? I believe that I myself and most other people can prepare a fantastic meal, when we take the time to do it.

So What?
Here's what I came away with for myself.

1. Optimism and happiness are independent of each other. You can be completely happy, and yet not completely optimistic. You can also be completely optimistic (e.g., I know I can do this job) and completely unhappy (e.g., I hate this job).
   
2. I don't want to be a complete optimist. For me, being a "moderate" optimist is more useful in most cases. I believe that this helps me prepare for and prevent bad events, without fearing that they are frequent, universal or everlasting.
3. I would like to grow my belief that I can create possibilities for good events and that the good events will last. So, I will work on making good events more personal and more permanent.
   
4. Recognizing my tendency to control my environments, I do realize it might be better for me to take some good things less personally. This is a bit opposite of what the Optimism Test would say. I believe to be completely optimistic, it's useful to believe that the universe will keep providing the good events and that there is nothing for me to control. So, I blame the universe for great events in my life.
   

What About You?
Although I don't agree with everything, I found Dr. Seligmen's book and the Optimism Test really insightful and useful. After the book and the test, there are several aspects of how I interact with the world that I am going to change. I'd like to invite you to read (or listen to) his book and certainly to take the Optimism Test to see what it tells you about yourself. If you do, I'd love to hear about what you learned? What did the test say about you? Did you agree or disagree? Why did you agree or disagree? Is there anything about yourself that you would change?

Last Sunday the topic was a combination of "Learned Optimism" and "Do you act as your own best expert when you think you are ill?" Before the meeting, everyone had had the possibility to take an optimism test based on Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism. With test results as a starting point, we were to discuss whether or not:

Only this discussion never took place. Instead we had a long discussion on the questions of the questionnaire.

Question the Questions or Question the Results?
I have a tendency to question a test if I do not like the result, whereas I have a tendency of not questioning the test when I get a result I like. That's why, when I program, I love to get someone else to test my program. Otherwise, I tend to know what will be tested when I'm done and I end up with a program that meets the requirements of my test, but which hasn't really been tested!

In my Option group, we spent two hours discussing the optimism test, but I never understood who agreed or disagreed with the results they got. If they are behaving like I often do, they did not like the results. Rather than questioning the results or the reasons for the result or exploring the results had any useful implications, everyone started to discuss the questions.

To put you in the same situation as the people in the group, I will provide you a link to the test, but not an explanation of how to interpret the results (I provided an explanation at our group meeting, and I'll provide the same explanation in Optimism Test: Part One). For now, you only have the questions and the results.

Optimism Test
Let me walk you through three of the questions which ask how you would respond to a given situation.

13. You owe the library $10 for an overdue book:
a) When I am really involved in reading I often forget when it's due
b) I was so involved in writing the report that I forgot to return the book

17. You prepared a special meal for a friend and he/she barely touched it
a) I wasn't a good cook
b) I made the meal in a rush

47. You are in the hospital and few people come to visit
a) I am irritable when I am sick
b) My friends are negligent about things like that

After reading these three questions, let me give you a little insight in me:

• Personally, I haven't turned a book in late since I was 18.
• I've only been at the hospital once and I didn't stay overnight. Only two people showed up, but only three people knew that I was at the hospital.
• I rarely cook and when I do it is often done in a rush, but can you actually prepare a special meal in a rush? Would you still call it a special meal?

So, for me, all the situations are somewhat hypothetical. Does this mean that I can’t answer the questions above? If I do answer the questions, would the results be valid?

Deciding to Trust the Test
This test reminded me of the tests I've done during job interviews. When I go for a job interview and they ask me to fill out a test, I do it, and I answer all the questions. I do not intend to spend the interview time on discussing the questions, and I want to help the people by giving them an impression of who I am, so I respond to the test in the best way I can. To overcome my doubts about the questions, I come up with examples of how the results apply or do not apply to my personality.

Let me show how I responded to the hypothetical situations in the Optimism test.

• If I had an overdue library book, there would be a specific reason for it, so I chose answer B.
• I believe that most people can prepare a fantastic meal when they take the time to do it. I decided to answer with B.
• If someone didn't turn up at the hospital it would be for his or her own reason, not because I was particular grumpy. Anyway, how would they know that I was grumpy not having seen me? My answer again was B.

I know that I did the test "the best I could" without expectations of the output and as a result. I hoped that the output would somehow be useful, that I would be able to recognize some areas of my life where I could become more optimistic.

Do I Trust the Results?
One of the participants with a PhD in economy decided to question the validity of the test based on "if you do not understand the question, then you do not know what will be measured." This can be true, but I believe that even though you might not know what is measured, the designer of the test knows what is measured and you can find out later what is measured! In fact, in psychological tests, the questions are often designed and organized in a way so that the participant can't anticipate what would be measured. Otherwise, people start completing answers to get a specific result, rather than to simply report on themselves.

I don't have a lot of background information about the test. I only know that it was made by a man who has dedicated most of his life to research in positive psychology and done a lot of empirical studies. And I must say, when we compared answers during our meeting, all people had chosen answers which seemed to support how they saw themselves as likely to act in general.

As mentioned previously, I tend to trust results that support what I already believe. Last week I got results for a blood test of my Vitamin D level. My doctor said it was normal, but I thought it was low. I compared it to the American Standards and those results said it was very low, and I decided to start taking Vitamin D supplements.

The first time I did the Optimism test, it showed me that I was more optimistic on negative events than on positive events, and so I chose to look into where I have a tendency to believe that positive events does not last. I found this useful, and I decided that the test did measure of how positive I saw myself on that particular day.

The Quality of the Test
Personally I do not find the discussion of the quality of the test very interesting, except from an academic viewpoint: how do we in general set up tests and validate the quality of the tests. I believe that the fact that for this test we cannot give the answers that we would intuitively write down, does not have any influence on the validity of the test.

The validity of a personality test is made by comparing the results with how a person describes himself or herself, or how a professional describes the person.

Conclusion
When I fill out a test, I do my best to answer. I trust the moment and I believe that the test will be somehow useful. I don't try to second guess the test or to feed the test in a way that will give me the outcome I'd like to see.

When I get the result, my first inclination is to find examples that support the results, and at the same time I will look for examples that do not support the result. Then I'll evaluate the results see what I want to keep and what I want to let go of.

Anyway, with all the discussion on the validity of the questions, we never had the discussion I wanted about how optimistic or pessimistic we are and how that plays out regarding health and illness. Still, I was happy to see how I responded to tests and test results!

To take the test, click here.