You want to be that person, don’t you? Facing storms, facing cold you look forward with determination and resolve and exclaim in the face of it all, “the cold never bothered me anyway.” Those lyrics from the song, “Let it Go,” have been popularized by the Disney smash hit, Frozen.

An important EQ quality, optimism, speaks to this kind of forward looking, determination and outlook. Optimism is “remaining hopeful and resilient, despite occasional setbacks. It assumes a measure of hope in one’s approach to life………it is a significant component of well-being” (Student EQ Edge, 207).

Psychologist Martin Seligman has noted three major attitudes that distinguish optimists from pessimists. They are:

• They view difficulties in their life as temporary. They see obstacles as delayed success, not ultimate defeat.
• They view the difficulty as situational and specific, not as indicative of some long-standing or inescapable doom that affects their entire life. A bad experience can be dealt with individually in the mind of the optimist.
• Optimists don’t assume all responsibility for difficulties. They recognize contributing factors to the temporary setback and don’t blame themselves entirely for the problem.

Healthy optimism is not a “blind” optimism. I meet many young people who seem to know they should be optimistic, so they try to be optimistic, but they can’t explain why they are optimistic.  They just act optimistic but deep inside they don’t really feel it or think it. Healthy optimism is built on a healthy understanding of ourselves and that our approach to life will eventually work.

Want to grow in your ability to face storms and exclaim, as Elsa did in the movie, Frozen, “The cold never bothered me anyway?”  Open this additional resource.