Can You Learn to Be More Optimistic as You Age? – John Trauth

Is optimism something you’re born with, or something you can learn? John Trauth, author of Maintaining Optimism While Aging, believes that the way we process events plays an important role in how we navigate aging, setbacks, and major life transitions. In this conversation, John shares lessons from Positive Psychology, his own experiences with adversity, and a useful framework for examining negative events using 3 questions from Martin Seligiman’s work on Learned Optimism: Is this permanent? Is it pervasive? And how much of it is personal? Leaving work to retire comes with losses; the structure that organizes your day, the community that surrounds you, and a sense of purpose that has grown over decades. John explains why anticipating those losses, and deliberately planning to replace them, can make the transition to retirement more successful. He also makes an interesting case for planning ahead for some of the realities of aging: not as an exercise in pessimism, but as a way to reduce uncertainty and free yourself to concentrate on living now. John Trauth joins us from Sausalito, California. __________________________ Bio John Trauth, MBA is a management consultant based in San Francisco and the author of Maintaining Optimism While Aging.  He was born in New York, graduated from Colgate University with majors in Economics and Psychology, and proceeded to earn his MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth, majoring in marketing, finance and corporate social responsibility.  He has worked for large management consulting firms in both Boston and San Francisco.  For the last 10 years, he has run his own consulting practice specializing in strategic planning. He and his wife Astrid lived in France in the mid-1990’s, is fluent in French, and now resides in Sausalito, California. He is co-author, with Alan Bernstein, of “Your Retirement, Your Way,”  which achieved the #1 position in Amazon’s “retirement book” category , and later was rated by Consumer Reports as one of the 15 best books on retirement.  John and Alan gave keynotes and seminars around the country, counseling people on planning strategically for their retirement. In writing Maintaining Optimism While Aging, John collaborated again with Alan who provided his perspectives, guidance, and experience as a renowned New York City psychotherapist working with people in major life transitions. _________________________ For More on John Trauth Maintaining Optimism While Aging Website _______________________ Other Retirement Podcast Episodes You’ll Also Love Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy Thinking Better to Live Better – Dr. Woo-kyoung Ahn Change Your Questions, Change Your Life…in Retirement – Marilee Adams, PhD _________________________ Wise Quotes On Optimism “Some people grow up in bad circumstances but still are optimistic. So, it’s really not baked into your personality as much as it is baked into your thought process. And if you can change your thought process, you can basically change whether or not you’re optimistic, pessimistic or in the middle.” On Metacognition “If you can really think about thinking, really embrace metacognition and understand why you think the way you do, then you can change how you think. But if you don’t know the why, you can’t change the how.” On Optimism & Adversity “When you’re hit with some of these things, there’s a natural tendency to feel a sense of helplessness. That’s very normal. You need to go through that. It’s like when someone close to you dies. You’ve got to grieve. You got to go through that. It doesn’t mean it has to last forever. You’re going to get through it, but you need, mentally to process that, and to be able to then pick