RKT Krishnan is a Coach and a Senior Executive in the Insurance industry. He talks about the role Faith and Optimism has in our lives today, as we undergo a sense of the unknown.

 Imagine the good old days when the sea was the main route between countries and the passengers were confined to their bunkers, enjoying the books they brought, or the entertainment provided by the travelling jesters, and all they could see was the enormous blue sea around.

What made them enjoy the journey the most? It was the belief that their feet would touch the solid ground in a few days, the looking forward to the better times once they reached their destination – in short, an inbuilt optimism.

 The effect of Covid 19 does leave us in a similar situation to a sailing passenger driven by the “this too shall pass” mantra. Optimism and Pessimism are lenses through which we look at the events in our life – this is what makes the human race interesting. I am here today partnering with you to understand the role of faith in building up the optimism muscle of our mind.

A pessimist thinks everything is wrong about the world, s/he is responsible for it, and nothing will change. Imagine a triangle, and these three thoughts as the sides of the triangle. For us to not be a pessimist, only one these sides needs to break – Personal, Permanent or Pervasive.

 In our lives, we, unaware of our actions or thoughts, use different methods to break on these sides. For example, being self-compassionate will help us personalise something that has gone wrong. We say “I did my best” or “It was not my fault” to break the Personal side of the triangle. We think “I had a bad day” or “things will change” to overcome the Permanence side. We synthesize what went wrong into parts and conclude “only one bit did not work, rest all is fine” – to win over the pervasive nature of pessimism.

Faith, by far is the key method by which we stay optimistic – faith has an in-built attribution to another force, call it God, parents, teachers or even our leaders. It has taught us to move forward – to not take things personally or permanently. Think of what our parents did to imbibe faith in us – they told us stories; tales where good won over evil, where values were taught, where we were told to hope and surrender. Faith relates to three planes – Self, People and Systems around us and a force which is beyond human comprehension.

The connection between faith and optimism was studied way back in the last century – a research by Martin Seligman and Sheena Sethi published in American Psychological Society in 1993 (Vol 4; July 1993) studied 623 adherents across nine religions, which were categorised into three groups – Fundamentalist, Moderate and Liberal – for their levels of optimism. The conclusion states that, “people who subscribe to more fundamentalist religious beliefs are on average more optimistic than people who hold more moderate beliefs. Moderates are in turn more optimistic than liberals. We believe that the more optimistic explanatory style present in fundamentalist religious services as well as greater religious hope, involvement, and influence all combine to cause greater optimism in fundamentalists.”. This, in essence, is the level of faith on Judgement Day, call it by whatever name.

The current adversity is enormous in impact that it has brought physical human interaction to a halt, and we are forced to find newer methods to work, to keep fit, to entertain ourselves, to maintain relationships and even to shop. It is natural that at this time we seek to go to the unknown force or God, but we find the shrines closed. This is a test of faith for most of us. Imagine the places of worship that never turned back the faithful for thousands of years doing it now.

We are now seeing a resurgence of the true faith – finding God virtually and in our own virtues. What we need is to increase our faith quotient – in self, people around us, those who fight for us and in that unknown power that can help us tide over the rough path of our life – the Corona Times.