Optimistic about the Outcome, Pessimistic about the Path

Optimistic about the outcome:  "I'm going to make it.  I know I've got the skill, the strength, and the patience to find a way to succeed."

Pessimistic about the path:  "I'll succeed, but it won't be easy.  I may find myself in some very difficult situations.  I might not always know at first what I should do next.  I might slip at times and might get scared.  I'll have to tap into my reserves of endurance, patience, and courage before I finally reach the top."

In his book The Undefeated Mind, Alex Lickerman describes his ideas for strengthening your ability to handle adversity.  One of his recommendations is to "expect obstacles".  He describes research showing that people who expect tasks to be difficult tend to persist when things to wrong while those who expect tasks to be easy give up easily.  He recommends what I see as a delicate balance between optimism and pessimism.  In some of his chapters he talks about making vows about your important goals.  In these chapters, I see him advocating optimism--confidence that for most of these vows you will prevail somehow, even if the outcome isn't exactly what you expected.  And in the "expect obstacles", I see him advocating pessimism at least about what he calls "task difficulty".

I think this is a brilliant and all to rare balance of being positive and being negative.  Most authors these days seem to push for nothing but positive thinking.  The worst cases, to me, are the ones who tell you to just visualize things the way you want them to be and then wait for the mysterious power of the universe to manifest your dreams.  Lickerman, instead, tells you to dream but then plan on a very tough road to reach that dream.  Better to be pleasantly surprised when you reach that dream easily than to get discouraged and give up the first time anything goes wrong.

Your Mission, If You Choose to Accept It . . .

According to The Undefeated Mind, by Alex Lickerman, defining your mission at work and at home can lead to more resilience in the face of life's upheavals.  Dr. Lickerman defines your mission as whatever you feel most excited about contributing to the world around you.

This mission will be different for everyone.  For me, when I'm at work, the "mission" that turns me on the most is to improve morale for the technicians who operate our production lines.  This ISN'T my job description.  I'm supposed to improve production results to improve profits, not morale.  But there is enough overlap that I can put a lot of my energy into reducing frustration and tedium for factory workers, into making them feel confident and skilled and in control, and this makes my work feel more meaningful and important to me than it would if I focused solely on manufacturing cost.  And having this sense of purpose makes it easy to cope with the inevitable project failures, budget cuts, difficult people, and other obstacles that we all encounter in our jobs.

I have different missions for the other roles I play in life outside of work.  My missions are unique for me, but they aren't special.  They are no better than what another person might choose for their own lives.  Alex Lickerman's advice is that, for each role you have in life--each context you find yourself in daily such as work and home--you think through the question "What is my mission here?   What way of contributing to the world outside myself is most fulfilling for me in this part of my life?"  And then keep reminding yourself about that mission every day.

The Undefeated Mind

When we moved my son into the University of Chicago a couple of weeks ago, one of the speakers at a session for parents was Professor Alex Lickerman, author of "The Undefeated Mind".  Professor Lickerman was discussing Student Health and Counseling Services at the University, but he also spoke about his"Resilience Project", a training program offered to all students that has been correlated to greater success at school and better results in several measures of well-being and happiness.

Because Professor Lickerman was a great speaker who even made College Health Insurance sound fascinating, I decided to buy his book.  I love it.

The core idea is that we can remain relatively happy as we experience the ups and downs of life if we never allow ourselves to be defeated.  If we never stop trying.  If we never stop looking for a new strategy to overcome adversity, even when every other strategy has failed, then we have not been defeated.

I've had some hard times at work in the last year.  I've tried different strategies to manage the people who are making my job so difficult and unpleasant.  Every new approach has failed.  At times I think I let myself feel defeated, as if with some of these people nothing was ever going to work.  But then I'd try a new strategy until I finally found something that seems to be working.

As I've read "The Undefeated Mind", I realize that I was most unhappy when I gave up hope, when I allowed myself to think that there was no way around these people, that I'd have to cave in and do work that was less than I was capable of and deliver results that were less than what mattered.  I was most unhappy when I was close to having a "Defeated Mind".  But when I kept thinking, "What if?" and kept brainstorming up more ways to get around the people who were holding me back, I eventually found some techniques that started to work.  I can see that this is what it means to have an "Undefeated Mind".  As long as I keep struggling, I haven't been defeated.

As Lickerman writes, "possessing an undefeated mind means never forgetting that defeat comes not from failing but from giving up."