3596: Trust Yourself, Not the Experts AND What's Your Optimism Ratio? by Steve Pavlina

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[00:00:55] This is Optimal Living Daily. Trust yourself, not the experts. And what's your optimism ratio? Both by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com. And I'm Justin Mollick, your host and narrator, reading to you every day of the year to help bring more meaning and happiness to your days. Sometimes I read two articles when they're on the shorter side. That's the case today. So with that, let's get right to them as we optimize your life.

[00:01:26] Trust yourself, not the experts. By Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com. Time and time again, I've seen people rely on expert advice and find the advice doesn't work for them. Then they beat themselves up that they must be incompetent because it should work. Almost every week now, I receive at least one email telling me such a story, often ending with a line like, am I just stupid or broken or antisocial or undisciplined or weak?

[00:01:55] Don't do this to yourself. Often advice doesn't work because it's bad advice. Of the hundreds of personal development books I've read, I'd say most of them contained bad advice, meaning that the ideas and suggestions simply did not work for me. They produced zero results or even negative results. But this doesn't mean the author was lying. In most cases, I could see a reason why the advice might have worked well for the author but wouldn't work for me. We're all different.

[00:02:22] What works for one person or even a group of people doesn't always translate well to every individual. As an example, I've read many books that recommend daily affirmations. Maybe those do work for some people, but I've found that for me, they're an utter waste of time. Even when I believed they'd work, the results were lousy. What works better for me isn't to recite my goals out loud, but to shut up and get busy taking action on them. Often when I mention an idea in this blog, for some people, it'll work great.

[00:02:52] But for others, it will go nowhere. If something that works for certain people doesn't work for you, don't assume you're broken. Assume that from your perspective, it's just lousy advice. It doesn't matter how well credentialed an expert is or what studies they have to back up their claims. Unless they've studied you personally, be suspicious of any advice that comes from general findings. If possible, find out if it works through direct experience. But if it doesn't work, simply say, Next.

[00:03:21] How well do studies on average people apply to someone who isn't average? Are you average? I'm certainly not. How many studies done on the general population would apply equally to a vegan, colorblind, left-handed, blue-eyed, ENTJ, college-educated, Vegas-reciting father of two? For example, only about 1 in 500 Americans are vegan. So how could I trust any health study where my subdivision is lumped in with the other 99.8% who eat extremely differently than I do every single day?

[00:03:51] Okay, I've got to be initially skeptical that anything that applies to the 99.8% would still be true of the 0.2%. Aren't you unique as well? Do you completely fit the average mold in terms of your genetics, diet, upbringing, education, finances, family situation, residence, hobbies, etc.? Or can you identify some manner in which you may be different than 99.9% of the population

[00:04:16] to such a degree that what applies to 999 random people will probably not apply to you? Don't worry so much about what the so-called experts say. Decades from now, their advice will probably be proven wrong anyway. Study yourself as an individual and use expert advice only as a general guide for new experiments of your own. Notice what works for you and what doesn't. Trust your senses. If the experts say one thing but your personal experience suggests the opposite,

[00:04:45] put more faith in your own experience. That will take you much farther down the road of personal development, certainly a lot farther than beating yourself up. What's your optimism ratio? By Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com In his famous book, Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman points out how our present use of language can be a fairly accurate predictor of future success.

[00:05:14] Seligman explains how he was able to predict outcomes of sporting events with reasonable accuracy by comparing the language used by the coaches and players in interviews before the event. Basically, what he did was count all the positive words and the negative words in published pregame quotes from the players and coaches, and then he calculated the ratio of positive words to negative. The team with the higher ratio was the one picked to win. There is some subjectivity in deciding whether a word is positive, negative, or neutral,

[00:05:43] but if you try it yourself, I think you'll find that most of the time it's fairly easy to classify words. Seligman also explains using a similar process to predict the winners of political elections. Try this for yourself. Here's a sentence I grabbed from Yahoo News on February 23rd. Scientists fear the avian flu that has killed 46 people in Asia could be the strain that will cause the next global pandemic, but said more evidence is needed about how infectious it is in humans.

[00:06:13] How many positive and negative words do you count? I count zero positive and four negative. Fear, killed, pandemic, and infectious. So this sentence has a ratio of zero to four, which is zero. Let's try the same process on all of the headlines from Yahoo News. I'm using the February 23rd version. I count six positive words, eases, adds, new, found, right, and wealthy,

[00:06:39] and 15 negative words, denounce, fight, die, soak, death, somber, slain, fears, concerns, dismissed, defiant, avoids, risk, pandemic, handouts, for an overall ratio of six to 15, which equals 0.4. My picks are subjective, of course, so yours may be different, but try it for yourself on any news site. If you're fine with a ratio above 1.0, please tell me about it. Try this on yourself as well.

[00:07:08] Go over some texts you wrote recently, emails, forums, posts, whatever. What's your ratio of positive to negative words? Seligman would argue that this is a powerful predictor of future success. Some personal development experts believe that by intentionally choosing more optimistic words in the language you use, you'll start to become more optimistic in your thinking, which will, in turn, lead to better results. Tony Robbins has a whole chapter about it in one of his books. He refers to it as transformational vocabulary.

[00:07:38] Have some fun and try this on your friends and coworkers. Grab something they wrote and compute their ratio. Is their language predominantly optimistic, greater than 1.0? Or pessimistic, less than 1.0? Who has the highest score, the lowest score? Any interesting patterns? What kind of boss do you work for? What about your company's brochures? If you run your own business, how's your marketing material, your website, your business plan? Are you projecting confidence or self-doubt to your customers?

[00:08:07] What about your journal entries, your to-do list? You'll often see a pattern where like attracts like. Pessimistic news sources will attract pessimistic readers, partly because those are the best targets for advertising. Negative people are more likely to believe that buying products will change their emotional state. A pessimistic company will attract and breed pessimistic employees. The high-energy positive people will go where their enthusiasm is welcome. So there's a good chance you'll see similar ratios to your own when you look around your environment.

[00:08:41] You just listened to the post titled, Trust Yourself, Not The Experts, and What's Your Optimism Ratio? by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. This show is sponsored by Liquid IV. Hydration isn't just chugging water, it's about absorbing it effectively. That's where Liquid IV shines. Their formula combines allulose and amino acids for efficient absorption, keeping electrolytes in your system for up to four hours. It's clinically studied,

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[00:11:08] I thought that last one was super fascinating. I think you can tell this was written a while ago because he references Yahoo News, which is less popular today than it was before, and forums as opposed to Facebook posts or groups. I think analyzing yourself is a lot easier now with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the like. So try it out. I'd love to hear your results and see what your ratio is. And I really liked that first article because it sort of sums up the purpose of this podcast. We hear a lot of different opinions on this show.

[00:11:37] I don't pick only what I agree with. Sometimes I don't agree with the authors or don't even approve of something they've done, but that doesn't mean there isn't some value in what they're saying or that someone listening, maybe you, might find value in it. So we hear from many different authors with different perspectives and differing opinions, and we're allowed to pick and choose what works for us and experiment with it. But that's just my opinion, of course. And that's enough from me for today. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you in tomorrow's show

[00:12:06] where your optimal life awaits.