Optimism and Hardiness | 6 Weeks to a Happier Healthier You

Foreign like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on integrative behavioral health. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. And today we're talking about cognitive restructuring, optimism and hardiness. Optimism is means that you're accepting your feelings and reactions non judgmentally when you're optimistic. It doesn't mean that you believe that everything is always going to be okay. That is by very definition a cognitive error. There is going to be distress, there are going to be hiccups along the road. But the beginnings of optimism mean that you can accept your feelings and reactions as valid, accept them non judgmentally, and then decide what to do with them. So optimism says, you know, thank you brain body for notifying me of this potential problem. Now I have the ability to take active steps to adjust it to improve the next moment. So even distress we can look at optimistically, we can look at, look at it as a learning opportunity if you want. So anyway, the first step in optimism is to accept your feelings and reactions non judgmentally. The second one, like we talked about yesterday, is to ensure you are safe. Before you can be optimistic, you don't want to be blindly optimistic. You want to look around figuratively and literally, make sure that you are physically safe. If there is something that is telling you that there's a threat, make sure that there is not actually an imminent threat to your safety and well being. Once you've done that, once you know you're safe and you still feel that anxiety, that anger, that sense of powerlessness and depression, whatever you're feeling, okay, then you identify where it's coming from and how to improve the next moment, what parts of this are within your control. So in terms of, you know, current events, I will just be as general as possible. Whether, if you don't like what's going on right now, if you don't like what's going on in your world, in your neighborhood, in your community, you, you may feel angry, you may feel anxious, you may feel depressed and powerless. Okay? So accept those feelings as your brain's way of notifying you that there might be a problem, that you might need to be doing something differently. Then ensure you're safe. Obviously you want to make sure that you are physically and emotionally safe to the extent possible and then figure out, how can I improve the next moment? What parts of this situation that's going on currently is within my control? What can I do to keep myself safe? What can I do to feel more empowered? What steps can I take to feel more empowered in my current situation? You know, Some things may not be out be within your control, but some things are, even if that something is just your reaction to it. So, for example, you know, some people really don't like wearing masks. And that is right now, something that we have to do. It's not really something that we have control over unless we choose not to go to the gym, we choose not to go to the store, we choose not to do things. But if we choose to go out in public, then, then we have to wear a mask. So how do you improve the next moment? What can you do to feel more empowered? Well, you can recognize that you do have a choice. There are things you can do. You can get delivery for most things. You may feel like a hermit, but it's important to really step back and get outside of the box and say, all right, what do I have control over right now, immediately? And what things can I do that may improve this situation in the future? Live in the present moment. Don't live in the future where there's a lot of anxiety and ambiguity and you don't know what's going to happen next, or you're waiting for something to happen. When you get that job, when you earn X amount of money, when you, you know, find the love of your life, then you'll be happy. Well, let's look at the present moment and see what is going on in the present moment that there is to be happy about. And that's that attitud of gratitude. Living in the present moment, recognizing as you know, the serenity prayer. I've said it multiple times to y'. All. I'm gonna say it again. Surrender. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This really helps us focus on what's going on. We can focus on being grateful. I've mentioned before that when you're in distress, you tend to notice the stressful, threatening, negative stimuli and you tend to ignore the positive. It's important with optimism and hardiness to be willing to look at the big picture, to force yourself to acknowledge the distress, acknowledge what you don't like or what's threatening, but also to recognize the other things that are going well in your life at that point in time. It helps balance out the distress. It helps you recognize that the belief that you have, quote, no control over anything ever, is not an accurate statement. Living in the present moment really helps you recognize that there are things that are important to you that you're committed to in using Hardiness lingo that are still going well, that you can use your energy to nurture. Maybe the thing over here, like we talked about yesterday, with distress tolerance, maybe this thing over here, there's not much you can do about it right now. But when you're living in the present moment and recognizing all of the things that are important in your rich and meaningful life, grateful for the things that you have, then instead of taking that energy and using it to stew in your own anger or to exact vengeance, you can use that energy to nurture the things that are important. Explore what you can learn from the present experience. There are a lot of things we can learn about, you know, when a situation happens. When Covid happened, you know, and yeah, I said the word, so YouTube will probably get after me about it. But when Covid happened, we didn't know much about COVID A lot of people didn't know much about how to do research online. They didn't know much about some of these things. Interestingly, only about 12% of people in the United States are, what is considered, quote, health literate. Which means if you actually run the numbers, that a lot of counselors, nurses, doctors, medical people may not be fully health literate either. I'm hoping the doctors don't fall into that category. But that means a whole lot of people aren't really aware of what they need to do to live a fully healthy lifestyle. So one of the things we were able to learn from the virus was about how to do due diligence. In our own research, we were able to learn sometime for some people, how to adapt. When, you know, we are, especially those of us who are judgers, we really like structure. And, you know, that kind of went out the window when the virus started. And so we learned how to be more flexible. We learned how to tolerate. Maybe that's not the word I'm looking for, but being on lockdown with other people, we learned a lot about our own strengths. And that is one of the blessings that's come out of the virus, is a lot of people have learned a lot about their own resources and their own strengths. Instead of looking at something that is not what you want, that's making you anxious, angry, or depressed as something that is horrible in totality, explore it as a challenge, Explore it as a learning opportunity. Explore it as an ability to strengthen yourself. Because a lot of people will tell you they never thought that they could endure something like what we've been enduring over the past, you know, year and. But they've realized that they keep Putting one foot in front of the other, and they've realized they've learned that they're stronger than ever thought they were. In terms of optimism, you can also explore similar or worse situations that you've coped with. You know, I. I remember repeating to myself repeatedly during the height of the virus that, you know, I've. I've dealt with worse things. You know, I have. I've been through a lot worse than this. You know, yes, this is making me angry because I'm a control freak and I don't like being told what to do or what not to do. But I have lived through so much worse in my. In my lifetime. That has made me stronger, that has given me the tools that I need in order to keep on keeping on. Visualize optimistic outcomes. And this is one of those that's really important for optimism. Visualizing what life is going to be like when we get back to normal or new normal. Visualizing how you can embrace a life that is rich and meaningful in what you envision. You know, even three months from now, you don't need to get too far out. But visualizing optimistic outcomes, like, you know, eradicating the virus so we can go back to, you know, how things used to be. And that is really important. Along with visualizing optimistic outcomes, it's important to avoid things that trigger pessimism. For me, I find it very pessimistic and very disheartening to watch certain television shows that indicate that henceforth and forevermore, we may be adjusting to this altered way of life. And yes, I'm choosing my words carefully now. I don't like that idea. I don't want that to necessarily happen. Could it happen? Yeah, it could. Is it going to be my choice? No. But what do I have the ab. The choice for? Well, right now, I don't know what's going to happen three months, six months, 18 months from now. So I can still visualize optimistic outcomes. I can still have hope. I can still be optimistic that, you know, the vaccines will come out and everything will just be hunky Dory in 18 months. That may be foolhardy, but it helps me with optimism in the moment. Talk to optimistic people. Talk to people who have a positive outlook on life and tend to embrace these beliefs, tend to embrace these behaviors, where they are again, ensuring they are safe, identifying how they can improve the next moment, and then viewing challenges, viewing things that make us upset as challenges instead of the worst possible thing ever or obstacles that keep us from achieving our goals. You know, sometimes when Somebody throws up an obstacle, it just means you got to stop, step back, and do a little MacGyver, and figure out, okay, well, how am I going to proceed with this obstacle in my way? I can go over it, I can go around it, I can go under it. Who knows, Maybe you can go through it. But optimistic people tend to have that attitude and regularly recite positive, empowering mantras. It's important to remind yourself what you do have power and control over. Remember we talked earlier about the fact that there's a lot of things going on that people feel pessimistic about, that they feel disempowered, that they may feel angry or threatened by. And it's important to put those things into context and regularly remind themselves what powers they do have, what they do have control over in their life in order to improve the next moment, whether that's dealing with the virus or their job or their relationships or anything else. Optimism is one great tool for cognitive restructuring because it takes something that's kind of unpleasant and tries to repackage it, if you will, in a radically accepting manner. I can kind of give you the ex analogy, if you want to use that of zucchini bread. My son hated zucchini. Well, he hated a lot of vegetables when he was growing up. But I could package zucchini bread. I could make zucchini bread and really make it chock full of zucchini. And he would eat it. You know, it was something that he didn't like that I was able to help him see. You know, I was able to look at that obstacle and go, okay, he won't eat sauteed zucchini. So how am I going to get this in his belly? And it was a challenge. I. I learned from it. I learned lots of different ways to sneak zucchini in. Same thing with a lot of other different vegetables and stuff. So I was. I'm still sort of sneaky like that, but recognizing that life sometimes can be like zucchini or Brussels sprouts or whatever, and not everybody's going to like the way it is. So sometimes you have to help them see, you know, how they can accept it in a way or present it to them in a way that they can accept it or present it to ourselves in a way that we can accept it. So with hardiness, there are three Cs of hardiness, commitment, control, and challenge we want to recognize. And this goes with living in the present moment, what people, things, places, and experiences are in your life right now that make it meaningful. You Know, for me, I have my farm, I have my dogs, I have my cats, I have my kids, I have my. My family, I have my job. You know, there are a lot of things that make my life meaningful that I am committed to acquire my energy on. You know, the regular, how can I use my energy to nurture all of those things? I've only got so much energy. So if I spend a bunch of energy getting triggered or focusing on the things that I have no control over, then it's going to detract, it's going to drain the energy that I could have been using to nurture my animals and my garden and my family and my friends. Meditating regularly on how you're using your energy and how or whether tying up energy in distress over the current situation is worth it or if it negatively impacts those things that are important to you. Control is the second part. You know, first you recognize with gratitude the people, things, places, and experiences that are important in your life that you have there, that you're committed to, and the. Even the goals that you're committed to. All of those things require energy. The second step is finding your power. Okay, how can I get to those things? So, you know, in terms of hardiness, what parts of the situation can you control? Whatever's making you upset and what parts of it can you not control? And how can you deal with that? What other parts of your life can you control to improve the next moment? So let's take the example. A lot of research was done on hardiness and heart disease. People who had had open heart surgery. When they wake up after open heart surgery, a lot of people are terrified that they're going to have another heart attack. They feel frustrated because they can't do the things that they used to do. You know, there's a lot of grief and stuff that goes along with recovering from a major surgery like open heart surgery. It was important for people in recovery to really take stock of the people, things, places, and experiences that make their life meaningful and how they can still use their energy to nurture all of those things. Yeah, in the next six months, they may not be going on a jog with anybody, but what else could they do to nurture that relationship? What parts of this situation? Sticking with the analogy of open heart surgery, what parts of this situation can you control? Well, if you want to have that rich and meaningful life, if you want to be able to nurture the things that are important to you, then you got to get better. So the part of the situation that you can control is following your recovery orders so you can get back to the place that or as close as possible to the place that you want to be physically in order to re engage or continue to engage with those people, places, goals, etc. What parts can you not control? Well, a lot of times you can't control how far fast you heal. You cannot control how fast you go through that recovery process. It's going to take time. And I am one of the least patient people in the whole wide world. So being patient during a recovery process, for example, is not something that I'm really good at. But it's important to recognize that after surgery, if you go out and you push it too hard, you may set yourself back and it may take you even longer to recover. So recognizing that there are some things you can't control and figuring out how you can accept that, how you can get surrender, find serenity and a willingness to accept those things you can't control. Okay, well, if you're not spending all your energy trying to control the uncontrollable, you freed up a bunch of energy. So how are you going to redistribute that towards the things that are important in your life? And how can you view the current situation like we talked about under optimism, as a challenge instead of a problem? Problems are so unpleasant, but challenges can be really exciting. And figuring out how to see it as something to conquer, as something to an a. A mountain to climb, if you will, how can this thing help you grow stronger? How can it enhance your life in some interesting sort of way? So optimism and hardiness are very closely related. There's a lot of overlap. And it's important to remember that when you feel distress over something, to take a step back. Because when you're in distress, you're in your HPA axis is activated, you're in that tunnel vision adrenaline haze. Going to be hard to think flexibly and notice the good things with the bad things. So it's important to use those distress tolerance skills so you can get out of the adrenaline haze and then step back and say, okay, what can I do here? How can I envision this resolving in a positive and helpful manner? I hope those were some helpful tips. I know a lot of people are dealing with a lot of different types of distress right now, and not every tool is going to work for every person. But it can be helpful to think about or to try out different tools to see which ones work for you to reduce your distress and free up as much energy as possible so you can dedicate it to those people, things, places and experiences that do make your life meaningful. I will see you tomorrow.