These negative emotions often lead to self-defeating actions or to no actions at all. As a result, people wander off course. An experiment by Martin Seligman with three hundred freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania shows how self-talk affects college grades. Seligman also tested each of these incoming freshman to determine if their self-talk was optimistic or pessimistic. These results are consistent with other studies that show optimistic people doing better than pessimistic people not only in school, but at work, in sports, and even in politics.
Pessimists explain problems as being permanent, pervasive, and personal.
We can make valuable use of this awareness as we encounter any negative experience. You wait half an hour, but he never shows up. These sorts of pessimistic explanations are seldom based on reality. More likely, your stinkin' thinkin' reveals the self-defeating thoughts and limiting beliefs that make up part of your outdated Scripts. As such, these statements simply voice the automatic comments of your Inner Defender and Inner Critic.