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Ep36 Micro or Macro Optimist

Hello and Welcome to the Way of the Emotional Warrior Podcast. My name is Kai Ehnes and today we will be answering the question of: Are you a Micro or Macro Optimist?

Lets start with what is an optimist?

An optimist is someone who has a hopeful outlook and typically expects good outcomes. For example: in the US, 42 to 45% of first marriages end in divorce and 60% of second marriages divorce. So, roughly ½ of marriages end in divorce. Yet: and here comes the kicker…Newlyweds believe that their marriage will survive. So, when people get married they do not believe that their marriage will end in divorce. That translates to an anticipated zero % divorce rate.

So, why marriages end in divorce is a different topic but that ½ fail while no one believes it will be theirs is our topic of investigation.

Neuroscience has some very interesting research that basically shows how we are hard wired to be optimistic. We will get to that in a second.

First, I want to explore my title of micro and macro optimism. The idea is this. A person can be quite optimistic bout the long term, like: Of course everything will be alright once everything settled down. Or, certainly I am mostly happy.

However, how optimistic are people in the short term? You might think that you are optimistic in the overall but day to day you look at various life situations only to discover that you simply don’t like most of what you do each and every day.

So micro optimistic is that in the immediate, you find yourself very frustrated. Everything is slow, not really satisfying, not allowing you to be happy. But, on a macro level when someone speaks with you, there is an overall hopefulness and belief that everything will turn out alrght.

To me this is quite strange. How can so many small non optimistic experiences still allow for a long term positive outlook?

Let’s create a plan on how to use this all to our advantage.

1. Always a good frame of reference is neuroscience. An expert in this field is Tali Sharot. Her work as a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London focuses on the crossroads of how emotions and memory play on our perceptions and behaviors. One of her favorite ideas in this field is the so-called optimism bias; the tendency of humans to be biased towards positive thinking. Worries and woe might seem like fundamental cornerstones of the human condition, but it appears that we tend to perceive our personal future with staunch optimism, even at the risk of being irrational. In that sense, Tali bluntly notes: “People are not driven by facts, they are driven by emotion” her studies showed that brain activity clearly shows a pattern of shushing negative foresight, yet livening up at the thought of positive visions. When processing thoughts about our own future, the brain effectively has a ‘good vibes only’ policy.

- Check – our brains have the predilection to push us towards optimism and positivity

2. Since we perfectly align with Macro-optimism to the neuroscience findings, we are also already good to go in this area.

3. What’s left is the micro-optimism. How can we shift our emotions and thoughts to not get locked up in negative self doubt spirals?

Answer – we become Emotional Warriors. This means that you pull yourself together and set your intentions and then move towards manifesting them. You do this best through the small steps philosophy of kaizen. Kaizen means continuous improvement. So how can you improve your micro-optimism? Think about an area that is not filled with too much doubt. Don’t immediately try to fix the worst offenders. So let’s say you find something wrong with your body image. Maybe your nose, cheeks, arms, your butt…who knows, something along these lines bothers you. Try finding something that lets you be more positive about it. Let’s say its your nose. To you its not shaped right. Maybe you can look at some pictures of people that you...