Pessimists do the exact opposite.

If I've got a friend that's a pessimist or a partner or a husband or whatever it might be, how do I get them to become more of an optimist?

First of all, about 30% of how optimistic we are is genetically determined.

This has been shown from twin studies, but that still leaves two thirds, right?

I think the best studies on this comes probably from Martin Seligman, where he got people who were somewhat pessimistic, even slightly depressed.

The approach that he took is to change the interpretation style.

So optimists, this is what they usually do.

If something happened and it went well, you sold your startup for a lot of money, you had a project and it was successful, they usually interpret that as meaning it's something about them that caused this positive outcome, right?

And it is something in them that's quite permanent.

Let's say my project went well because I'm a hard worker, maybe I'm intelligent or whatever.

And then they say, well, if I have those skills, that means that a lot of other things are going to work well in life, right?

If I'm in a hard work or if I'm a good with people, that also means that I'll be a good dad, for example.

When something negative happens, they tend to do the opposite.

They tend to see it as circumstantial, right?

This negative thing happened.

Okay, I didn't put a lot of effort in this, but not because I'm not a hard worker.

I just didn't put enough effort because I was distracted by something else or, you know, this other person just happened to have a better proposal.

So it's circumstantial.

That means that they don't take that as evidence of how am I going to perform in the future, right?

So it's really different interpretation of negative outcomes and positive outcomes.

And then pessimists do the exact opposite.

When something bad happens, they say this bad thing happened because of me, because of a trait that I have.

And because I have this trait, let's say I'm bad with people, that's going to affect all the rest of my life and all these future projects.

When something good happens, it's circumstantial.

Good thing happened.

I got the job, but really because they didn't have any other candidates.

So what Martin Seligman did is he taught people this interpretation style.

He taught them whenever something good happens, this is how you have to think about it.

You have to think about what is it about you that caused this positive thing to happen?

And how is that positive trait or whatever skill, with everything you did, how can it affect other parts of your life and other future outcomes?

And the opposite for negative.

If something negative happened, I don't mean it don't take responsibility, but are there circumstantial, right?

It could be something that you did, but it doesn't have to be permanent.

You happen to be in a really bad state because something else, your parent was sick or something.

So he teaches them, the people, to kind of interpret this, to find these reasons for the positive and negative, and it seemed to work.