Have you ever thought about taking optimism classes? If you participated in the workshops of mental fitness coach Patricia Sennequier during the EVE Africa 2022 seminar , you know that looking on the bright side of life is a superpower... And that a superpower is revealed and it becomes muscular. But don't panic if you weren't in Dakar, here are some tips to cultivate and strengthen your capacity for optimism.

Free yourself from prejudices about optimism

Optimism, a delight thing about the nursery ? A kissing bear? A state of unconsciousness and denial reserved for people who are very much in love or completely disconnected from reality? Seeing the glass half full and rejoicing that the day has risen, it's fine for 5 minutes, but hey...

But why is optimism suspected of being bathed in naivety ? Three main reasons that tickle three major prejudices :

• We underestimate emotional intelligence. Also, we are too quick to disqualify everything that refers to feelings, intuitions, perceptions, desires and impulses.

• We are not sufficiently used to benevolence. As a result, what is nice, pleasant, positive seems to us to be part of a background to which it is not useful to pay more attention than that. And sometimes, we see a soothing climate in which it is easier to fool us.

• We see optimism as a privilege of the wealthy : obviously, it's easier to see the bright side of life when you're lucky enough to be on the right side ! Also, it seems more " fair " to us to take an interest in what is wrong, as if that were the best way to deal with what is going wrong.

Let's break these prejudices ! And to do this, let's identify the added value produced by emotional intelligence, benevolence and a positive outlook on things.

Training exercise: arm yourself with your small self-coaching notebook (if you don't have one, now is the time to start one : just take a small notebook that you will always keep with you and in which you will write down everything that is useful for your personal development). Draw two columns. At the top of the first, indicate " positive gestures", and in the second " impacts and effects ". All you have to do is list, as the day progresses, all the positive gestures you benefit from and the effect it has had on you. Will we hold the door with a smile ? It put you in a better mood and made you want to hold it to the next person. Have you been given some nice feedback on your work ? It made you happy, contributed to your sense of confidence and made you want to share the fruits of your labor with others. Have you been offered help ? It reminded you that solidarity is precious, and made you want to make a gesture of mutual aid later in the day. Do the exercise for 3 days and read it again ! There's reason to be optimistic, isn't it?

Taking the power to act to make things better

To be and remain optimistic, nothing beats the power to act in the face of what does not suit us. Don't suffer anymore situations that weigh down morale and undermine hope ! Make these situations your field of action with the levers that are in your hands. In other words, rather than exhausting yourself listing everything that depresses you and all the good reasons to despair of a situation that will never change, direct your energy towards the field of possibilities. To do this, you need to identify reasonable goals and what your means are to achieve them. A reasonable objective is one that combines two qualities :

1/ It commits you as much as it engages the other stakeholders from whom you will ask efforts to change ;

2/ It is possible for the parties involved to measure the effects of the efforts made. For example, if you're fed up with your colleague's bad mood, you can set a reasonable goal to limit the impact of that bad mood on you (which is not the same as asking them to change their personality. That would not be reasonable at all) with a view to significantly improving your relationships, the way you work together, your performance when you cooperate.

Training exercise : Identify three things that happened in the past day that left you feeling discouraged. For each one, identify what, deep down, generated your annoyance, your frustration or your sadness. Now, think of one thing you could have done differently in each of these situations. Make a commitment with yourself to do things differently the next time you're in a similar situation. And when this happens, observe what this change in the way of acting has had on yourself, on others, on your environment.

Raise happiness hormone levels!

Optimism has an important cognitive and behavioral dimension, but it is also promoted and reinforced by the " happy hormones", mainly endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. The first protects us from sadness and negative thoughts, the second boosts our motivation, the third allows us to stabilize our mood and the fourth plays on our socialization and attachment capacities.

We can " boost " the secretion of these hormones by getting moving : doing physical activity to raise endorphins and dopamine levels, handing out compliments and giving signs of attention to others to raise oxytocin levels, celebrating our successes and showing kindness to ourselves and others to release the flow of serotonin...

Training exercise : concoct a small optimistic strengthening program. Practice at least one action every day to stimulate the happiness hormones. Want ideas for action ? Bursting out laughing, eating chocolate, cuddling, sunbathing, listening to music, relaxing, singing, playing board games...