Watch: Module 9 – Pilot-In-the-Plane Principle (40:59)

 

In this chapter, we’ll focus on Entrepreneurial Principle #7 – Pilot-in-the-Plane. In a chaotic unpredictable world, the entrepreneur can’t really plan or control what’s going to happen. You fundamentally can’t control whether or not someone else hires you, buys from you, goes to your website, or falls in love with you. Instead, you can only control your own actions and focus on those actions that most directly affect the final outcome. In this video I give you an overview of the most important thinkers and schools of thought over what is, and what is not, under your control – especially the things you can control that affect your happiness and well-being.

There really is not all that much that we can fully control. We cannot control the weather, disease, time, death or other people. But we can control our own thoughts, attention, behaviors, emotional responses and character. It starts with getting your hands on the wheel and focusing on what you want to change.

You can drift along on auto-pilot or cruise-control through most of your life. But to take charge of your life and make decisions or change course, you need a pilot with their hands on the wheel. Do you have an Internal Locus of Control with your conscious mind in charge of your life, do you primarily drift along on auto-pilot or do you have an External Locus of Control where the course of your life is dictated by your genes, fate, destiny, determinism, society, cultural programing, God or the stars?

The Primary Action – To Focus or Drift on Auto-Pilot

There is one primary action that controls all your other actions. That is the decision of whether or not to focus your conscious attention. This decision to focus conscious effort or not is the essence of Free Will and exerting Agency over your life with an Internal Locus of Control. Cognitive psychologists call this “deliberate self-regulation”.

The blockbuster book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman condenses the current state of the art in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics and happiness studies. He explains that humans usually drift along out of focus and base their actions on habits and subconscious thinking processes – what he calls “Fast Thinking” or “System 1 Thinking”. This mode of thinking usually works pretty well for people who have developed good habits and he provides numerous examples of how and why people tend to act following these fast and mostly automatic thinking patterns. He also shows how System 1 thinking can get things terribly wrong and why we absolutely need System 2.

System 2 (“Slow Thinking”) takes active effort and mental focus to bring all your brain’s resources to bear on any given action or decision. As a simple example consider the question “What is 6 x 7?” Most people can quickly answer “42” based on fast System 1 processes formed by memorization and retained in the subconscious. But how about answering the question “What is 13 x 36?” Notice how your brain can’t automatically give you the answer and how you must apply conscious effort and focus and time to answer using slower System 2 processes. System 1 is automatic pilot; System 2 requires active executive intervention and the deliberate self-regulatory choice to focus attention and effort on the task at hand.

Go ahead, take some time right now to figure out what 13 x 36 is in your head without using a calculator. Experience what this deliberate focus feels like. Don’t just give up. Practise grit and perseverance.

Observe your thinking process and how you have to apply deliberate conscious effort, break the problem down into smaller bits, and then recombine into the final answer (hmm, 10 x 36 = 360, now I only need to calculate 3 x 36, should I break that down too or simplify it by calculating 3 x 40 and subtracting 12?).

Your System 2 requires effort and energy. A chess master consumes more calories playing chess (just thinking) than most athletes consume during their sport! That’s why most people don’t use their System 2 very often. Your System 2 is lazy and most people just don’t exercise it or practise. Good luck running a marathon if you haven’t become accustomed to it. The same is true with thinking if you don’t practise.

The big key (the Primary Action) is whether or not to deliberately self-regulate by focusing your System 2 consciousness on your actions. The default operation is System 1 where you follow emotion, impulses, habits and subconscious processes – thinking on autopilot. Switching to System 2 requires deliberate conscious choice and effort – self-regulation to think or not.

In an excellent book called “The Executive and the Elephant: A Leader’s Guide for Building Inner Excellence” Richard Daft describes your System 1 as a careless but powerful elephant that goes wherever it wants and does whatever it wants regardless of consequences, and needs to be controlled and guided by your System 2 inner executive. Your lazy elephant likes to eat outside of your diet, sleep in, skip going to the gym, show up late for class, and fail to follow through on the goals that your executive set last week!

In “The Illusion of Determinism, Why Free Will is Real and Causal”, goal-setting guru Edwin Locke explains the difference between the subconscious and conscious and describes how most humans usually go about their daily lives primarily driven by their subconscious desires and emotions and acting on impulse or out of habit. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle called this the sensory level of life, and this is what sets animals apart from plants. Animals spend all their time living at the sensory level and most people spend a great deal of their time living at this level too.

Once you “switch on” System 2 as your “Primary Action”, Locke guides you through what he calls “consciously guided goal-directed action” which includes long range planning, creating your desires by consciously choosing your own values, and using reason to form concepts and apply principles to the task at hand.

“Aristotle calls this the intellectual level of life which includes conscious deliberation and foresight (Bandura, 1997), both aspects of the conceptual level. This sets people, despite possessing the vegetative and sensory levels, apart from animals, just as the sensory level sets animals apart from plants. Through reason people can not only adapt to varied environments, but they can adapt environments, including changing environments, to their own needs through farming, irrigation, building, manufacturing, etc.” (Locke, 2017 pp. 54).

The use of reason (e.g. planning, forming concepts, and applying principles to a given task) is a conscious System 2 level of executive thinking. You must consciously turn on your ability to reason using self-regulation. It is not automatic. It takes effort. Elephants can only operate at the sensory level, but humans are capable of operating at the intellectual level or executive level as long as they consciously switch this level on!

Note that these experts all focus on the use of your conscious mind to achieve happiness. They do NOT suggest you simply “trust your gut” or “follow your instincts” or “let your emotions guide you” or “accept yourself just as you are”. Quite the opposite – they show how this System 1 mode of thinking can lead to poor life choices, bad outcomes and unhappiness. You need to guide your elephant. (public domain from clipartpal.com)

Focus on What?

OK, your pilot is in the plane, your hands are on the wheel and System 2 is turned on. Your executive is paying attention to your elephant. What now?

This is where the fields of Positive Psychology, Happiness, Mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Positive Self-Talk are really important. Pay attention to your “inner monologue”, “automatic thoughts” or self-talk and take control of programming your own subconscious.

System 1 fast thinking on auto-pilot results in automated emotional responses based on whatever programming your subconscious happens to have. But how did that subconscious programming get there in the first place? It was stuck in there primarily by other people at a young age before you became an adult. It was stuck there by the media, authority figures, other children and the culture around you. Unless you take conscious adult control over your own programming, “just be yourself” really means “just be what other people made you to be”.

If you don’t take conscious control of your own subconscious programming, there really is no ‘self’ in being yourself.

Maybe you got lucky. Maybe other people did a good job programming your subconscious for you. You’re perfectly well adjusted and happy and don’t need to focus your System 2 on deciding who you want to be.

The odds are against you with this approach. An important book written by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt, “The Coddling of the American Mind”, reviews the important global trends affecting the current generation of students and conclude that:

“Many university students are learning to think in distorted ways, and this increases the likelihood of becoming fragile, anxious, and easily hurt.” [They identify] “six interacting trends: rising political polarization; rising rates of adolescent depression and anxiety; a shift to more fearful, protective and intensive parenting in middle-class and wealthy families; widespread play deprivation and risk deprivation for members of iGen; an expanding campus bureaucracy taking an increasingly overprotective posture; and a rising passion for justice combined with a growing commitment to attaining “equal outcomes” in all areas.” (p. 9, 264)

As I show in an article I wrote called “Empowering Students for Future Work and Productive Citizenry through Entrepreneurship Education”,

“These pronounced trends show that students are becoming less entrepreneurial precisely at a time when the future of work and social change demands that they need to become more entrepreneurial! They are becoming fragile when the world needs them to have more grit, tenacity and resilience. They are becoming more dependant when they should be becoming more independent, self-sufficient and autonomous. They are more timid, anxious and risk-averse when they should be learning agility, adaptability and how to deal with uncertainty and risk. They seek more protection, trigger warnings and bureaucratic interference at a time when they should be confidently embracing life’s greatest adventures and decisions. They are more and more setting themselves up to becoming lifelong wards of the nanny state (or their parents) just when states (or their parents) are running out of money and need them to stand tall and take their rightful places in positions of leadership.”

I wrote this book to help you combat these social ills affecting you and your generation. Positive Psychology, Mindfulness, Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) are useful and proven techniques for helping you program your own subconscious to train your elephant with good habits and beliefs and positive self-talk that will lead to increased well-being and happiness. I also draw from recovery-oriented cognitive therapy (CT-R), an adaption of CBT which emphasizes strengths, personal qualities, skills and resources that strengthen and maintain positive mood and behaviors (rather than overcoming negative mood and behaviors).

I should point out that I’m NOT talking here about just telling yourself how great you are. You’ve probably already been exposed to too much of that meaningless notion “everyone is the Most Valuable Player” that arises from the self-esteem movement within early childhood education and bogus self-help books. You need to earn your own respect and be honest with yourself. You know if you are lying to yourself. You can’t fake your way into having self-esteem! You have to own your failures, but be kind to yourself and be growth-oriented.

ECLD Tool #10 will give you some suggestions for helping you craft your own Positive Self-Talk Statements. I’d like to give you a bit more theoretical research and ideas and language first.

Core Beliefs – What are they and how did they get there?

Whereas the career counselling literature does a good job of revealing your strengths and weaknesses and helping identify potential careers of interest, the psychology, self-help and happiness literature really gives us tremendous insights into your values and beliefs. These are even more fundamental and important to your long-term well-being and happiness than just finding a job.

While having a great career may be necessary for achieving happiness – it is not sufficient for achieving happiness. In fact, the research shows that building your attitudes of resiliency, hope and optimism (which are entirely within your control!) is more important for your happiness than money, promotion, career, marriage, age or health (none of which is entirely within your control)! So helping you build these attitudes is actually more important than helping you get a job!

As we previously discussed, the two most robust models of human behavior (the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)) both demonstrate that your beliefs (both conscious and subconscious) drive your attitudes (such as values, resiliency, optimism, self-efficacy, internal locus of control) which drive your intentions (goals and hypotheses) which drive your behavior (actions) that result in emotional consequences. So before we can discuss which values or goals you would like to achieve, we first need to help you understand your beliefs.

Core beliefs are typically held at the subconscious level and are created over many years through interaction with many different people while you are growing up. Your mind, especially when you are a child, is like a tape recorder, simply storing things directly into your subconscious without you taking conscious control over what is going into your long-term storage system. This means your subconscious beliefs are essentially put there by other people such as parents and relatives, other children, religious leaders, teachers, and the media, long before you reach adulthood. For example, it is widely recognized that body image beliefs (e.g. you’re beautiful, fat, ugly, skinny) are impressed upon children at a young age by their exposure to media images of the so-called perfect body in advertisements and movies.

Core beliefs such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism and internal/external locus of control include your most basic value judgments about how you view yourself, others, the world and the future. Even though you probably never consciously chose your core beliefs, once they get in there, they normally become surprisingly rigid and inflexible because they subconsciously guide you to focus on information that supports the belief and ignore evidence that contradicts it.

In some cases, you may be aware of which conscious beliefs agree with your subconscious beliefs. However, in other cases, your conscious beliefs may not agree with your subconscious beliefs. For example, you may consciously disagree with the media’s depictions of the perfect body, but subconsciously continue to accept their standards and feel badly about your own body. Unfortunately, most people don’t know what their subconscious beliefs are, or what caused them, much less whether they are actually true, or if they are beneficial or detrimental to their happiness. In most cases, you can discover your own subconscious beliefs through introspection, journaling, mindfulness or meditation. In other cases, therapy can help people sort through their subconscious beliefs and how they are affecting their behaviors and emotions.

Even though core beliefs are normally subconscious, they exert tremendous control over our values/attitudes, and consequently our intent (goals), behaviors (actions), inner self-talk and emotional responses. They also dramatically affect our emotional feedback mechanism causing us to feel guilty or unhappy, for example, when we shouldn’t.

In the field of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and its more positive-oriented sibling Recovery-oriented Cognitive Therapy (CT-R), three main categories of dysfunctional beliefs about the world and oneself have been identified by the world’s leading expert Judith Beck:

• Helplessness: being ineffective in getting things done, self-protection and/or measuring up to others using self-talk such as:
  • “I’m incompetent, ineffective, useless, needy…”
  • “I’m powerless, weak, vulnerable, a victim, trapped, out of control…”
  • “I am inferior, a failure, a loser, defective, flawed…”
• Unlovability: having personal qualities resulting in an inability to get or maintain love and intimacy from others using self-talk such as:
  • “I am unlovable, unlikeable, undesirable, unattractive, boring, unimportant…”
  • “I am different, a nerd, bad, defective, not good enough, have nothing to offer…”
• Worthlessness: being an immoral sinner or dangerous to others using self-talk such as:
  • “I am immoral, morally bad, a sinner, worthless, unacceptable…”
  • “I don’t deserve to live”

Most people will catch themselves saying things like this occasionally, when they make a mistake or forget something. However, whereas healthy people forgive themselves for their lapses, a depressed person may allow these thoughts to dominate their lives, interactions and emotional responses. One of the core principles of CBT is to help people identify these dysfunctional beliefs and automatic self-talk and remind themselves of their strengths, resources and past behaviors that refute these beliefs (e.g. by recalling a time when they did something competently or remembering that they do, in fact, have friends/family who care for them).

Empowered people have the choice over whether or not to take control of these subconscious beliefs rather than leaving them to chance. As an adult you have the capacity, if you take the time to do it, to bring your subconscious beliefs into line with your conscious beliefs. You can choose your conscious beliefs and then use Positive Self-Talk (and/or CBT and CT-R) to slowly, over time, re-write your subconscious beliefs to be in harmony with your conscious beliefs.

So what are the conscious beliefs that are within your control? Four of the primary categories of beliefs, defined and measured by psychologists and shown to positively impact happiness and well-being are: self-esteem (also called core self-evaluation), self-efficacy, optimism/hope and Internal Locus of Control. Self-esteem is a measure of your belief that you like yourself and are worthy of happiness and love. Having positive self-esteem is essential to happiness, but out of control self-esteem, an overly inflated ego or being inappropriately absorbed with yourself results in narcissism – a dysfunctional belief. Self-efficacy measures your belief in whether or not you are competent and capable of achieving your goals and optimism/hope measures whether or not you have a positive view of the future and expectations that things will improve.

A critically important core belief (directly related to the Pilot-in-the-Plane principle) is whether you primarily have an Internal Locus of Control or an External Locus of Control. Someone with an External Locus of Control might, for example, believe they are helpless due to fate, destiny, astrology, the system or some form of determinism. Do you control your life or are you helpless because some external agency dominates your outcomes like God, society, your genes or the stars? People with an External Locus of Control primarily act out of duty, obedience to authority or hedonistic whim (doing whatever they please since it doesn’t matter anyway).

Empowered people have a strong Internal Locus of Control (ILC) – they are in charge of their own lives and they decide what to believe, what goals to set and what actions to take. They don’t do things merely because others tell them to. They do things because they believe they are worthy (self-esteem) and capable of making their own decisions and bringing about the positive changes in their lives that they desire (self-efficacy). They have Agency. They are the Pilot-in-the-Plane with their own hands on the wheel.

Having positive self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism/hope and ILC is a foundation for long-term well-being and happiness, but how many times have you heard or even thought to yourself the following? “It’s a dog-eat-dog world.” “Life sucks and then you die.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “I’m only human.” “What’s the point?” “What’s your sign?” or “I’m stupid/lazy/fat.” All these thoughts, so prevalent throughout society and reinforced by the media, reduce your self-esteem and self-efficacy at the subconscious level. If you don’t want to have these beliefs, then you should consider taking steps to immunize yourself from them.

In the words of the professional psychologist Ruth Welsh, “Core beliefs form the foundation for your life. They underpin how you live life and they directly affect how fulfilled your life will be. It’s worth making sure that your core beliefs offer a true picture of yourself, others and the world around you. Your happiness really does depend on it…. Thinking through some of these questions, and others which you can consider for yourself, you can begin to recognise some of your inner, deep seated core beliefs.”

“To further uncover your core beliefs you need to begin listening to the views you hold about yourself and others. Notice your ‘self-talk’ as it is called in counselling circles. Are the words you use about yourself and others largely negative or positive? Do you celebrate your victories or focus on your failures? Do you look truthfully at what you are doing in your own life and what others are doing?” (These quotes are from Dr. Welsh in “Be Your Own Counsellor & Coach”).

Re-Evaluating My Own Core Beliefs

I went to Catholic school for 13 years from kindergarten through till the end of high school – all my most formative years. I received “a good education” in that I learned English grammar, math, history, physics and other important subjects. But it was lousy for my sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy. I was taught that I was born evil. I had the Stain of Original Sin on my soul and there was absolutely nothing that I could do to remove it through my own actions. I was taught “ashes to ashes and dust to dust” and that nothing I did on this earth was important. Regardless of how kind I was, or how many people I helped, I could not earn my way into heaven because I had to be forgiven for my evil nature. Humanity is inherently wicked, cast out of the Garden of Eden, and cursed to suffer on earth. Humanity is so corrupt that God’s son, Jesus, had to brutally suffer and die on the cross for our sins so that God would forgive our sins and allow us back into heaven. Before Jesus’s sacrifice, not one single human being was ever allowed into heaven. Anyone not baptised (i.e. most of humanity) is condemned to hell and eternal torture.

I learned that the sole purpose of my life is getting into heaven – the purpose of life is death. It was certainly not my own happiness, or meaning, or love, or anything from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Values. This was bad for my self-esteem.

It was even worse for the girls at my school. They were taught that they were the cause of all this wretchedness. Original Sin was a woman’s fault after all (based on the Biblical story of Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge) and the Catholic Church doesn’t even permit women to become priests. This didn’t help their self-esteem either.

Not only was I bad, but, not surprisingly, I was also taught to have a poor view of humanity in general. I was taught that “nothing straight from this crooked stick was ever wrought” and because of humanity’s inherent wickedness, we need the church authorities to keep us from hurting each other by following its commandments and other authoritarian rules like weekly attendance at church, tithing 10% of our earnings and going to regular confessions. Homosexuality, sex outside of marriage and a woman’s reproductive rights were all condemned. “I’m only human” meant “I’m flawed”. We are all immoral sinners – the very definition of one of the three primary dysfunctional beliefs in CBT!

I later learned that the stated purpose of this kind of education was to “break the child’s will and make it subservient to God’s will”. The Catholics claim they do this out of love for my immortal soul and the best way for me to get into heaven would be to have low self-esteem, low self-efficacy, and a strong External Locus of Control. Obedience was good. Duty was good. Pride was one of the seven deadly sins. Corporal punishment is encouraged because “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” [In the spirit of truth and reconciliation I suggest you read about the Canadian Residential School System to learn how the Catholic Church treated the 150,000 indigenous children entrusted to their care over the years.]

I learned all this stuff right along with math and physics and straight it went into my childhood and adolescent subconscious beliefs. At the conscious level, I never really entirely bought into me being evil and all that. But I couldn’t help noticing the many contradictions between what different priests, nuns and other teachers were telling me about the subject of God, my life, the purpose of education, and getting into heaven. It appeared there might be some good ideas associated with Judeo-Christian philosophy buried underneath all the bad things, but organized religion seemed to be a real source of misery on the planet with its crusades, inquisitions, hatred of homosexuality and witch-burning not to mention the scandalous scourge of abuses committed by the ranks of the clergy and its cover-up.

Clearly my Wheel of Life included an important design challenge around my spiritual beliefs and the impact on my self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism/hope and locus of control. I had many serious disagreements with Catholicism, but were there other religions or spiritual beliefs that might be less offensive or might work better for me? Or none at all? Every religion seemed to offer certainty but they couldn’t all be right if they all contradicted each other. Perhaps they were all wrong? I was too busy to deal with this challenge while at university, but I started reading and asking other people about this and it was certainly on my radar screen as part of my portfolio of challenges.

Many years later, after finally taking adult control of my life and my conscious beliefs, when I consciously decided that I was no longer a Catholic, I still had all those lingering subconscious core beliefs in my head. Those didn’t magically disappear as soon as I consciously stopped believing in Catholicism.

My subconscious beliefs were not in harmony with my conscious beliefs and this was a cause of contradiction and personal unhappiness despite my significant career-related success.

Building Your Self-Efficacy

First of all, what is self-efficacy? Self-efficacy has been defined as an individual’s belief in their ability to accomplish a job or certain set of tasks. More specifically, it includes “… beliefs in one’s capabilities to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and courses of action needed to meet given situational demands.” (Wood & Bandura, 1989, p. 408)

Self-efficacy beliefs regulate human functioning through cognitive, motivational, affective [emotional], and decisional processes (Bandura, 1997). They affect whether individuals think in self-enhancing or self-debilitating ways, how well they motivate themselves and persevere in the face of difficulties, the quality of their emotional well-being and their vulnerability to stress and depression, and the choices they make at important decisional points. (Bandura & Locke, 2003 p. 87)

The message is clear – beliefs are important! If you don’t believe that your actions matter (e.g. due to belief in fate, destiny, God or determinism) then you won’t try or persevere. If you think you are bad at something, then you give up more easily and don’t try as hard.

A person’s self-efficacy is one of the best predictors of future performance. If you think you are good at something you will try it more often, stick with it longer, exert more effort, and accomplish the goal more frequently than someone who does not believe they are good at something. If you value something and find it desirable, and you think it is feasible or possible to achieve, then you will more likely intend to take action. This might seem pretty obvious, but this stream of highly validated management research stands in stark contrast to other theories which hold that your actions are determined or caused, for example, by your genes or your environment. For a more explicit refutation of these deterministic ideas see Locke’s book “The Illusion of Determinism, Why Free Will is Real and Causal”.

You can’t just talk yourself into having improved self-efficacy through positive self-talk. Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, documents the extensive research showing that the path to well-being and happiness starts with discovering your strengths. Rather than devoting too much time to trying to fix your weaknesses, you should find the things you are good at and then focus your efforts on using them more frequently and becoming better at them not only in your career, but in all aspects of your life. You may have used Seligman’s VIA questionnaire back in ECLD Tool #3. He calls these your “signature strengths” and says that the path to authentic happiness lies in doing what you are good at. By focusing on your strengths, you build your self-efficacy and self-esteem. In his two landmark books “Authentic Happiness” and “Learned Optimism”, Seligman provides a wealth of proven techniques for changing your core beliefs in order to increase your happiness and well-being.

Building Your Optimism, Hope and Positivity

The field of Positive Psychology has found that optimists are happier and have a greater sense of well-being than pessimists. Optimists experience less distress when experiencing difficulties and suffer much less anxiety and depression than pessimists. Being optimistic promotes better problem-solving, coping, humour, planning and positive re-framing. Optimists thus exert greater effort than pessimists and don’t give up as easily when confronted with difficulties. Optimists are also more productive at work, win more elections and are more successful sales people.

I’m not talking about blind optimism, carelessness, unrealistic expectations or being a “Pollyanna” who sees everything with rose-coloured glasses. I’m talking about realistic optimism or positive realism. Optimists do not ONLY expect positive outcomes, but they have confidence that even when things do go wrong, they will be able to deal with it and perhaps even find a way to turn lemons into lemonade (i.e. resiliency). Optimists must still be realistic about risk, uncertainty and their chances of success, but they have better coping skills and don’t let things bother them as much as pessimists.

Fortunately, greater optimism, hope and positivity can be learned despite whatever genetic predispositions and early childhood experiences have shaped your beliefs to date. In his bestseller “Learned Optimism”, Martin Seligman shows how to carefully monitor and recognize your pessimistic thoughts and dispute them. In the same way that you might defend yourself from a false accusation, you can learn how to self-dispute your negative thoughts by asking yourself what evidence you have for the negative belief and find an alternative (more positive) explanation that energizes you in a positive way. [In many ways this is similar to the ABCs of CBT that I show in ECLD Tool # 10, but Seligman adds D (disputation) and E (energization) components.]

Optimists and pessimists have different explanatory styles when they experience good or bad events. The optimist sees good things as being normal and arising from their general competence (“Of course I did well on that test, I’m smart and a good student who studies hard”). They explain negative events as unusual and highly specific (“Wow that test was unusually hard. I guess I need to study harder in this particular course.”). Pessimists are the opposite; their negative events are explained by their being generally incompetent or helpless or the world being a harsh place where bad things are to be expected. Good events, on the other hand, are seen as unusual or lucky and not due to their own general competence or a benevolent worldview.

Hope is closely related to optimism, but slightly different. Here are some thoughts from experts on the subject:

“Rick Snyder, one of the leading specialists in hope, represents it as an ability to conceptualize goals, find pathways to these goals despite obstacles and have the motivation to use those pathways (Lopez, et al., 2004). To put it more simply, we feel hopeful if we: (a) know what we want, (b) can think of a range of ways to get there and (c) start and keep on going.” (quoted from Boniwell’s “Positive Psychology in a Nutshell: The Science of Happiness” pg 27.)

“Snyder’s research supports the idea that hope is a cognitive or “thinking” state in which an individual is capable of setting realistic but challenging goals and expectations and then reaching out for those aims through self- directed determination, energy, and perception of internalized control. This is what Snyder and colleagues refer to as “agency” or “willpower.” However, often overlooked in common usage of the term, but as defined by Snyder and colleagues, another equally necessary and integral component of hope is what is referred to as the “pathways” or “waypower.” In this component of hope, people are capable of generating alternative paths to their desired destinations should the original ones become blocked” (quoted from Luthens, et al., “Psychological Capital: Developing the Human Competitive Edge” pg 66.)

“Hopeful employees tend to be independent thinkers. They possess an internal locus of control… [and] need a high degree of autonomy in order to express and utilize their agency. (also quoted from Luthens, et al., pg 77.)

Hope (and thus happiness and well-being) can be built by setting goals; breaking them down into detailed plans, tasks and sub-goals to achieve them; building self-discipline habits to motivate yourself; and re-framing any obstacles. [You can build hope using ECLD Tools #7, 9 and 10. I also plan to give you a short in-class exercise called WOOP – Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan based on the book “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation.]

Values, Desires and Attitudes

Whereas most people’s beliefs are subconscious (e.g. self-esteem, self-efficacy, hope, ILC/ELC, helplessness, worthlessness) and discovered by monitoring their automatic self-talk, their values/desires/attitudes tend to be more consciously held. A value is something you act to gain and/or keep. This can be something tangible such as a car, person, or money, or intangible such as achievement, love, belonging, or security. Intangible values like curiosity, alertness, resiliency, optimism, proactivity or “propensity to act” are also called attitudes.

Values can be extremely powerful motivators when used consciously. Here it is important to know that there are two completely different motivational systems – positive and negative. As shown in the figure, a value provides positive motivation that will attract you towards something and can provide you with a way to focus your attention and your efforts towards a goal. On the other hand, a disvalue provides a negative motivation that will drive you away from something but provides no guidance about where to go or which goals to pursue. These completely different motivational systems are sometimes called “motivation by love” versus “motivation by fear”.

In a career-related context, a positive motivation might be the love of working in the music industry. This provides you with a positive direction and focus for your attention – you seek jobs where creating, working with, or listening to music is involved. A negative motivation might be fear of being poor if you don’t work. This provides no direction – you need a job, but have no idea what kind of job to seek. Similar to running away from a snake, this negative motivation doesn’t tell you in which direction to run, you just flee in any random direction away from the potential harm. This is so important I’ll say it again – a positive value gives you focus and direction toward a specific goal. A disvalue is something to avoid but gives you nothing to run toward.

Striving to attain your values leads to happiness and well-being, avoiding a disvalue does not lead to anything.

The greatest source of disvalues in most people’s lives arises from a feeling of duty, obedience to authority, and/or conformity to social norms. Doing your duty is not the attainment of a positive value, it is avoiding the negatives if you don’t do your duty. Obedience is not doing what you want to do (for a positive value), it is doing what others tell you to do (to avoid the negative consequences). Conformance means going along with what you think others want, rather than living your own life.

Consider the difference between saying “I don’t want to, but I have to get a job” because of duty or obedience or conformity and “I would love to have a job working in the music industry”. In the first case, you are running away from the negative consequences of not getting a job, whereas in the second case you are making positive proactive steps towards something you value. Doing anything because you have to or because you should do it will rob you of joy and happiness. As one psychologist put it – “it’s a buzz kill”.

In some ways, this is a matter of re-framing – one of the fundamental design thinking principles. But this re-frame sets up a powerful positive motivational system that guides you and focusses your attention toward happiness and well-being.

Selecting positive values that YOU want and YOU choose is personal empowerment. Doing what other people want you to do out of duty, obedience or conformity is not being empowered.