Happy Monday and welcome to your mental health mini. Today we have a solo episode with yours truly and we are talking optimism. Being optimistic, you're almost tricking your brain into believing you have more control, you have more autonomy, you have more of an ability to change your life. In fact, non depressed individuals tend to overestimate the control they have on their lives, whereas depressed individuals tend to accurately estimate their control. This is a delusion working to
your benefit. We've all seen on TikTok, like in my Telulu era, like what makes you believe that illusion? Being really optimistic allows you to feel like you have more control and feel like you have more hope. And so many people with depression and anxiety feel like they don't have control. They don't have control over their moods. They don't have control over their thoughts. They don't have control over
their behaviors. It's almost like their mind is running wild and their emotions are running wild without their consent. And that lack of control is incredibly distressing and incredibly overwhelming. And I think understanding how a mindset of optimism, even if you like artificially introduce and you're like, I'm going to be optimistic from now on can help counteract that and kind of being anecdote to those really distressing feelings of being
out of control. There's also something that happens in the mind of the pessimists and, and people that have negative moods and people that struggle with their mental health, which is that when bad things happen, you think it's a shortcoming of you, You think it's your fault if you do bad on a test, it's because you're a bad student, It's because you're stupid, It's because you are not good enough.
The healthy way to interpret that and the optimistic way to interpret that is that you say I wasn't accurately prepared. I could have studied more. I wasn't prepared for those questions on the test. I didn't understand the material. And you can kind of understand the difference of like I did something versus I am. And if you're struggling with yourself esteem and you were experiencing a lot of shame, you are probably also doing that.
You're attributing these things to yourself and your character and you as a person rather the environment or behaviors you have chosen to make your thoughts, your emotions and your behaviors, they're not you. They are things you experience. And having that separation and having that cognitive dissonance from your emotions in your mind can be really helpful,
especially with depression. And I think that is something to be really aware of and that enforcing yourself into those self-serving biases and rewiring those thought patterns. I am to. I did. This is incredibly powerful for yourself, esteem and your mental health. So we talked about optimism. It has a lot of benefits. It makes us feel like we're more in control. It helps us with the self-serving bias. It helps us have better moods.
But how do we become optimistic? One way that you can start that process and start reframing your thought process is beginning to perceive the world is fundamentally good. And I've noticed that since I've been in recovery and left treatment and continue to maintain my mental health, I've noticed a mindset shift to really having the belief of what's meant to happen will happen and things work out for
the best. And kind of like lucky girl syndrome, I really do believe that things will work out for the best. If they don't work out the way you want them to, it's because it wasn't meant to be. It wasn't meant to happen and that you are moving in the right direction, you are on your journey and things are happening for a reason and that people are inherently kind and compassionate and that the world is a good place. I think having that mindset is not used to be really
pessimistic. What causes people to be optimistic? It's when they're in situations that they believe to be positive and that they have a natural tendency to heal and flourish and improve. And so if you are approaching your mental health as a situation where you are going to heal, you are going to feel better, you are going to improve your ability to regulate your emotions and cope with things and have healthy relationships,
you become more optimistic. So how can we perceive our environments as positive and as a container for us to heal Fluorescent improve, It requires two things. It requires believing that you are capable of changing your life and perceiving your life as variable.
You not only have to have the skill set and have the confidence in yourself that that skill set exists, and that happens when you continuously build that muscle of changing your life, but also truly and genuinely believing that the world and the environment you're living in is improving and believing that it has the potential to change in a
positive way. If you believe the world is completely fixed and that no matter what you deed, nothing will change, you're not able to move forward and you don't have that belief that you can change your life. And similarly, when you believe the world is improvable and has the capacity for positive change, but you don't see yourself as having the skills to do so, you're at an impasse.
When you have the self efficacy and the confidence in your skill set and you perceive the world as improvable and with potential for positive change, that is when you can make changes and improve your life.