In this episode, Sukh has a guest on the show - Mark Gilroy. Together, they discuss the topic of optimism. It's a longer episode than normal, coming in at just shy of 1hr and 15 mins, so tuck in, it's a deep exploration!
Sukh and Mark discuss a range of related topics to optimism:
- They explore how optimism is a psychological construct, and what it helps with for a healthy mind.
- They discuss pessimism, how it's the opposite of optimism, can offer a healthy balance to being too optimistic, and how it can be a healthy way of thinking.
- They make a clear distinction that optimism and pessimism are not related to mental health disorders, and how they are useful for healthy human functioning.
- Mark shares a really useful model to identify overly pessimistic attitudes where someone may use language where the following is evident:
- They discuss how optimism can be overused and may impair quality of judgements that need to be made.
- They discuss the role of data, evidence and examples and how they either support optimism or pessismism.
This was a really good deep exploration of the topic of optimism, and Mark was really generous with his insights and sharing of research that is related to the topic.
Links that Mark has shared which are useful for people to explore further:
The book by Tali Sharot - The Optimism Bias: Why we're wired to look on the bright side - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Optimism-Bias-were-wired-bright/dp/1780332637/ref=la_B004ANWOX4_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519468999&sr=1-2
Tali Sharot's TED Talk - The Optimism Bias - https://www.ted.com/talks/tali_sharot_the_optimism_bias
The book by Dan Ariely - Predictably Irrational - The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/0007256531
Dan Ariely's YouTube video on Loss Aversion and The Endowment Effect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpiGVWO-C64
Finally, you may have noticed there's no intro music to the podcast! Big thanks and love to Mark himself for producing the piece for the podcast.
You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.
You can connect with Mark on Twitter @thatmarkgilroy and find out more about the work that TMSDI do at www.tmsdi.com.
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 50 What we’re getting wrong about praise and appreciation
The 3 Good Podcast : Episode 49 Can we be too positive?
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 47 Planning for Good Things
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 46 Apologies, Shame and Guilt
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 45 Lessons in Resilience
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 44 A Book Review of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 43 This Is Not Working From Home
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 42 On Boundaries
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 41 Geeking out with friends about the MCU
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 40 The Comfort of Avoidance and Reliance on Others
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 39 Research on Resilience
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 38 On Happiness
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 37 Why COVID-19 is psychologically hard to deal with
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 36 A Book Review of Grit by Angela Duckworth
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 35 What can you do to cultivate positivity?
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 34 The Boring, Routine Stuff for a Better Life
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 33 Why do we focus on self-awareness?
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 32 The challenge of empathy
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 31 Is it ok to be angry?
The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 30 How mental models help us understand more about being human
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