"The more positive a person's expectancy is for an outcome,
the more motivated she is to achieve that outcome."
"Positive expectancies-optimism-increase motivation and
effort, whereas negative expectancies-pessimism-decrease motivation and
effort."
"Optimism leads to increased well-being because it increases
engagement with life's goals, not because of some miracle happy juice that
optimists have and others don't."
"Your important and meaningful goals form part of what
it means to 'be yourself' and, especially to your best self."
"Expecting success is a self-fulfilling prophecy."
"Optimism helps people see beyong the immediate road-block
to a potentially positive future, whereas perssimists see only more roadblocks,
problems and failures."
"Positive expectancies keep people working on difficult
tasks in the lab when it would be easier to just give up and a positive
vision of a beautiful garden will keep the weeder digging when it would
be easier to go insde and take a nap."
"One guideline for entrepreneurs is to expect hard times
for at least 3 years before it's clear whether the business is going to
succeed or not. And success is not guaranteed by any means: 50% of
new businesses fail within 4 years."
"In general, people are happier when pursuing goals that
help them grow as people, have meaninglyful relationships, and contribute
to society and they are less happy when they're pursuing goals that help
them to be more atrractive, rich, popular or famous."
"Goals mean gaining resources, feeling authentic, defining
yourself and giving meaning to life and the way optimists approach their
goals is likely to be the key to those benefits."
"Knowledge of the inevitability of death provides motivation
to attach ourselves to things that will outlive us, providing vicarious
immortality and reducing our anxiety about death."
"Compared with pessimists, optimists experienced a reduction
of depression, less negative preocccupation with the death, and greater
capacity for emotion, particularly positive emotion."
"Money doesn't make us happy, but relationships do."
"Having abundant friendship capital and social resources
is a healthy place to be."
"People who have more social relationships have all kinds
of better health outcomes, from lower susceptibility to the common cold
to lower risk of death."
"A classic experiment in social psychology showed that
beliefs about what someone is like actually creates those qualities in
that person."
"Optimism is self-fulfilling if you act to fulfill those expectations."
Written by Suzanne C. Segerstrom PhD
How
Optimists Get What They Want from Life - and Pessimists Can Too
