A Lesson in Expectations

We close this introductory journey into resiliency with optimism. Optimism is more than just rainbows and unicorns. It's not enough to just hope that things will turn out well for us and our patients. This needs to be an expectation. However, we also need to know what it's like when we get it.

Primary Takeaways:

There are 2 main takeaways with optimism:

1. Increase your ability to identify good things in daily life
2. Increase your ability to feel good things in daily life

Optimism

Optimism is being able to accurately describe when good and bad things happen. Additionally, a primary skill to be developed is how we feel when gold things are happening to us (such as a compliment).

Take a moment now to see if you can make a list now of 3 good things you can remember from yesterday.

After, notice how reviewing this list might affect your mind, body, and emotions.

Explanatory Style

Dr. Martin Seligman coined the phase Explanatory Style as "the manner in which you habitually explain to yourself why events happen." He suggests that this is one of the most profound predictors of depression and learned helplessness (p.15). Thus, a key antidote to each of these two ailments to shift your Explanatory Style away from pessimism and fully embracing optimism.

You'll notice in the chart below that each of these areas are basically inverses of each other based on optimistic or pessimistic thinking.

Review this chart and see where you might fall in each of these categories.

In your workbook, you'll take more time to write out the role each of these may play in your work.

Building Optimism for Yourself

There are massive expectations on healthcare workers that you remain optimistic. You also probably started your journey in healthcare with a significant amount of optimism. However, while working in these fields can be incredibly rewarding, it can also be quite taxing. This is why building optimism for yourself is the capstone in our introduction to resiliency.

Think about a recent average day at work you had. What were a few, regular moments that put a smile on yourself.

Once you have these moments identified, make a plan in your head right now on how to slow these moments down (ever so slightly) to better appreciate and integrate this wonderful moments.

3 Good Things

1. Find a dry erase marker to write on bathroom mirror for the next 7-days. If this isn’t possible or feels too vulnerable given your living situation, feel free to get a journal, notebook, or paper to keep near your bed and adjust the next steps accordingly.

2. At the end of your day, before starting your bedtime routine, write “3 Good Things” with the numbers 1-3 below.

3. Then imagine three things from your day or life that you’re grateful for. Often we quickly turn to areas like family, friends, or health but this exercise has a greater impact the more specific we can be. For example, instead of just writing “family”, we could be more specific such as “watching my kids jump in puddles”. The more personal these are to us, the greater the feelings it elicits.

4. Once you’ve completed all three, continue with your evening routine, keeping these 3 Good Things in mind. This better primes us for a good night sleep and reduces our focus on things that cause worry.

TIP: try not to engage in technology after this exercise as it can limit the focus on good things you just completed

5. Upon waking, review the 3 Good Things from this previous day. This reminds us that there were at least 3 good things from the day before. After getting ready for the day, erase the 3 Good Things from the previous day, leaving the header “3 Good Things” and the numbers 1-3. Leaving this written increases the likelihood you’ll remember to complete the exercise each day.

Feeling into Good Things

While the 3 Good Things exercise primes the brain to expect and search out good things throughout each day, we also require the ability to take in these good feelings. This may seem obvious but it's far from that. A primary reason many need more and more is the inability to fully feel the goodness. This next exercise will help demonstrate how to get at this.

Challenge:

Choose a sensory experience to be able to separately move through the 3 parts of self awareness:

1. Noticing your physical self
2. Notice your thinking self
3. Notice your emotional self

Spend 1-2 minutes in each of these parts of your self, seeing how well you can explore this experience.

A few examples of a sensory experience to savor might be:

• Enjoy a small amount of chocolate or ice cream. Mints work well too.
• Quieting watching the sun set.
• Listening to one of your favorite songs in stillness.

Which of the three feels better than the others in this moment?

Spend an extra 1-2 minutes in this part of awareness to prime the ability to notice this more readily.

Building Optimism with Patients

For the most part, you come into contact with patients because something is wrong. This can clearly set a negative tone for an encounter which means it can take a conscious effort to build optimism with patient. This does not mean we avoid or minimize a patients concerns in any way. Instead we merely focus on starting and ending each interaction with something positive. The

When we start a patient interaction grounding in something positive, this pulls them out of the worry-mode that they have probably been sitting in for a while. This can be a difficult lift sometimes but it is worth the effort. Some patients (unconsciously) feel that the more they worry, the higher their chances of getting better. The science tells us the opposite is true.

Here's a list of options on how to work on this with patients:

1. Note something nice in the environment (i.e. if someone brought them flowers, picture on the wall, sun outside)
2. Note something nice about them (i.e. new haricut, smiling)
3. Start with having them tell you a couple good things
4. Often in combination with #3, reflect back ONLY the good things you heard them say
5. When departing, ask them what they are looking forward to. Try to remember to ask about this if there is a future interaction.

Which one of these options have you found success with previously? Or...

Which one of these options are you most comfortable trying in future interactions with patients?

Try to get creative on how these concepts can match your setting and your specific patients.

3 Good Things 2.0

After you've developed a nice rhythm of taking time at the end of your day to focus on 3 Good Things, you can take it to the next level. When you are ready, proceed as usual in writing out your 3 Good Things. However, afterwards, bring a high level of self-awareness to this exercise. As you look at your daily 3 Good Things one at a time:

1. Notice this in your physical self
2. Notice this in your thought self
3. Notice this in your emotional self

We too often merely sit with the mental part of our experiences and it's when we expand this to also include our physical and emotional experience is resiliency integrated.

Find the part of self where awareness is easier to notice the good. Spend some time with this awareness at the end of your day.

Take a few minutes now to review the 3 Good Things you noted earlier in this section and see if you are better able to notice how each one shows up in your physical, thought, and emotional self.

To take a deeper dive

Written by one of the foremost experts on resiliency, Learned Optimism thoroughly explains the importance and applicability of harnessing optimism to change our thinking, relationships, and success in a work environment.

View this book on Amazon

Download: Session 5 (PDF)