By Liz Pollack, MS, ACPEC
When a door closes, a window opens.” It’s such a common saying. I grew up hearing it and I’m sure you did too, or maybe you heard “With loss comes opportunity.” Either one makes several basic life facts clear to us. First, we will suffer loss and, second, something positive lies beyond that loss.
The truth is we simply don’t want to have to go through the loss to get to the positive. But, sometimes there are necessary losses. We may not understand why, but if we learn to deal with the loss, we can move on swiftly to the positive.
What I have seen as a therapist and a coach is that it sometimes takes life changes to move us forward — to grab for new opportunities and experiences. In essence, how we respond to loss in our lives indicates whether we are optimists or pessimists.
Optimists see the good in the bad. They tend to be more resilient. Pessimists see only the negative and may even make efforts to minimize the positive they do experience. They are inclined to ruminate, get depressed, and sometimes even give up all together.
Clearly, there are drawbacks to being pessimistic. It not only affects our mental health but our physical health and our relationships. You may be saying, “Well, that’s just the way I am. It’s an automatic response and I can’t change it.” However, optimism and pessimism are learned behaviors and if you can learn one, you can learn the other. It just takes some conscious effort and patience.
Here is an exercise from positive psychology that can help:
1. Review your day and list the doors that closed on you. These may be small things like your cable went out and you can’t relax with a favorite program, or large things, like your job was downsized.
2. Now, go back through the list and identify the windows that opened because that door shut. It may be immediate, like I can finish that book I started, or off in the future, like I can go back to school part-time.
3. Once a month read back over all that’s happened and you’ll begin to see the positive. Before you know it, you won’t have to write it down; you’ll see it the minute it happens.
If all else fails, remember the words of some of the great optimists:
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill
“I’ve never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.” – Paul Harvey
“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”
– Helen Keller
And my personal favorite by Albert Camus, “In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
Struggling with change? Need some assistance — everyone does! Contact Liz Pollack, MS, ACPEC, a certified life coach, and owner of Leg Up Services. For more information, call 309-370-4492 or visit www.legupservices.com.
Sources available upon request
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