It’s quite tempting to give special attention to what’s wrong, on dangers and risks and problems. News media do this because it’s good for their business. If there is insufficient bad news in your own community, it’s always possible to find distressing stories from elsewhere. Remember that by definition, what constitutes news is the exception to reality. Community-as-usual is not newsworthy. What will you focus your attention on in the year ahead? It matters. Time spent on negative news media is associated with increased stress and anxiety, further exacerbating fear and pessimism.
Reading the news can be so demoralizing: climate change, war, fires, epidemics, rogue AI, mental health challenges, authoritarianism, extreme partisanship. But humans need hope. In order for us to create a positive future, we need to be able to have hope that there can be a positive future. What is the “Case for Optimism” over the next decades? What can we look forward to and hope for to help us strive for a more positive future?
In this series, we aim to explore and highlight the positive aspects, potential breakthroughs, and reasons for optimism that lie ahead in the coming decade and beyond. We are talking to authors, researchers, entrepreneurs, scientists, futurists, and other experts who can shed light on the exciting advancements, innovations, and opportunities that await us. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing William Richard Miller.
William Richard Miller is an American clinical psychologist, an emeritus distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Miller and Stephen Rollnick are the co-founders of motivational interviewing.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I grew up in a small Appalachian coal mining town in Pennsylvania. My father and both grandfathers worked for the railroads (the Reading and Pennsylvania lines, like on the Monopoly board), so unlike the miners they could work above ground. My mother worked in clothing factories, though she stayed home while my sister and I were young. In high school I played trombone in concert and marching bands, and had teachers who really took the time to help me learn.
What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.
I actually went to college intending to become a Methodist minister and I majored in psychology thinking it could be useful for a pastor. As I studied and was a teaching assistant for religion, I found that it was not so simple as my childhood understanding and it took a few more years for me to develop an adult faith. Consequently I pursued my major and went to graduate school in psychology.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?
That would be Dr. George Shortess, who chaired the psychology department at Lycoming College. He took me in as a research assistant and mentored me in general psychology. We also had long talks about life, science, and religion. There were many other professors who encouraged and mentored me along the way, too, in English, philosophy, literature, biology, and religion.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
My most recent project is a book about hope. I enjoy diving deeply into a universal human experience like ambivalence, change, hope, or lovingkindness, reading widely to understand more about it, then pulling together what is important for everyday people to understand and use. This book is called Eight Ways to Hope because I found that hope is not monolithic, but a family of inter-related human experiences all of which have to do with envisioning a brighter future.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Clearly the skill of empathic listening is vital for leaders. I aspire to a servant leadership approach and I guess a related trait is humility, which I just acknowledging the truth. A third? I would say curiosity, an interest in people and in learning, discovering what is true.
Ok, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about the case for optimism. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. When we refer to being optimistic about the future, what exactly do we mean?
Optimism is a patterned choice to expect the positive. In life we can choose to expect that in general people and situations will work out well, or be pessimistic or cynical and see the worst possibilities. Both have a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies: what we see if what we get.
Why is it important to have an optimistic outlook about the future?
Hope in general and optimism in particular is associated with many measures of mental and physical health. It has been called the “velcro trait” because so many other psychological characteristics stick to it. People who are high in hope are more creative and better problem solvers, more resilient and persistent, and experience a higher quality of life even in the fact of adversity. They are higher achievers in school and at work, and find more meaning and purpose in life. High-hope people show better outcomes in psychotherapy, and regain more functioning after a disabling injury.
What are some reasons people might feel pessimistic about the future, and how do you suggest we address these concerns?
Certainly life experience plays a role. Martin Seligman’s research with “learned helplessness” shows that repeated experiences of failure — that there seems to be nothing you can do to influence what happens — can foster belief in futility so that you stopstrying even when action could make a difference. His more recent work on “learned hopefulness” illustrates the opposite, that experiences of agency encourage trying, which in turn can yield success experiences. In other words, what we choose to believe matters and can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Reinhold Niebuhr’s “serenity prayer” is also pertinent here: “Give us courage to change what must be changed, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.”
Fantastic. Here is the main question of our discussion. Can you please share with our readers your “5 Reasons To Be Optimistic About The Next Ten and Twenty Years?” (Please share a story or an example for each.)
1 . I guess the most obvious reason is that you do have a choice, and the view that you choose matters. Being optimistic or pessimistic can influence what actually happens. For example, people who fear being rejected may to behave cautiously or coldly toward others, thereby increasing the chances that they will be shunned. A student who thinks that “I’m going to fail this test anyway” may not bother to study. In contrast, hopeful people continue to try to reach their goal, perhaps in new and creative ways, and thus are more likely to achieve it. Things are impossible until they aren’t. More hopeful people are generally more successful in work and at school.
2 . Your optimism can also bring out the best in others. A few of my teachers saw possibilities in me that I did not see in myself and helped me to realize them. In one study that is described in my book, the staff in a program treating alcoholism were informed that based on psychological testing, certain of their patients showed particularly high alcoholism recovery potential. The tests were uncannily accurate: At discharge these patients were rated by staff as having been significantly more motivated, punctual, cooperative, better looking, trying harder, and having better prognoses, which turned out to be true. A year later these same patients were less likely to be drinking and more likely to be employed. However, the researchers had a secret. Unbeknown to staff, the patients who were identified as promising had actually been chosen at random and not on the basis of psychological testing. The only difference was that staff were convincingly led to expect that these people had unusually high potential to do well.
3 . Whether or not your wishes do come true, optimism is also associated with better physical and mental health, resilience, creativity, confidence, and even longevity. Choosing an optimistic perspective is generally good for you, and also for those around you. After she graduated, Annie Sullivan’s very first student was a 7-year-old girl who was totally blind and deaf. Annie believed that this girl could learn and communicate, and she undertook the demanding work required to make it happen. With time her student, Helen Keller, not only learned how to communicate but became a famous writer, lecturer and advocate for disability rights. Annie would later come to be called “the miracle worker” in a play of that name produced for television, Broadway, and film.
4 . On the dark side, there are also some very good reasons not to embrace pessimism and cynicism which are linked to depression and ill health. It’s not just that people who are healthy and happy therefore tend to be optimistic. One Harvard study that I describe followed a large group of initially healthy men for 35 years measuring their physical and mental health. A pessimistic way of thinking at age 25 predicted physical illness as confirmed by physician examinations 20 to 35 years later, even after controlling for their beginning levels of physical and emotional health. Pessimism is indeed a vicious circle, and optimism a self-perpetuating upward spiral.
5 . It’s quite tempting to give special attention to what’s wrong, on dangers and risks and problems. News media do this because it’s good for their business. If there is insufficient bad news in your own community, it’s always possible to find distressing stories from elsewhere. Remember that by definition, what constitutes news is the exception to reality. Community-as-usual is not newsworthy. What will you focus your attention on in the year ahead? It matters. Time spent on negative news media is associated with increased stress and anxiety, further exacerbating fear and pessimism.
In what specific areas do you see technology having the most positive impact over the next 10 to 20 years?
Who knows? Not long ago, talking to someone on your watch only happened in mental illness and the Dick Tracy comics. Advances in medicine now routinely remedy what were once hopeless diseases and disabilities. Artificial intelligence has great potential for both positive and negative impact.
While technology holds immense potential, it can also present challenges. How can we ensure that the progress we make in technology contributes to a more optimistic future and doesn’t exacerbate societal problems?
You’re optimistic to think that we can ensure this. The power of possibility and the allure of greater freedom propel technological progress. We need to consider together what kind of world we want to live in and what promotes or hinders such a reality.
How do you maintain your optimism during challenging times?
Practice, practice, practice. Some think of optimism as a personality trait, but it is also making one choice at a time over the span of your life. Ben Franklin is famously quoted as saying that we have been given a republic “if you can keep it.” I think the same is true of optimism, faith, hope. What will you do today to make yourself, your family, your community more hopeful?
Ok, we are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
You’re right that we may not appreciate what impact we have. In 1982 we began developing a person-centered method called motivational interviewing, hoping it might help some people with alcohol troubles. It is a way of having conversations about change that shuns domination and calls forth people’s own wisdom, motivation, and resourcefulness. We had no idea it would spread across so many fields, professions, nations, and languages. It seems to have helped humanize services, to treat those we serve as unique individuals and not objects to be fixed. I trust that in the long run we are moving toward lovingkindness and justice, though the journey is frustrating slow at times.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them 😊
I missed an opportunity to meet and talk with David Brooks when he came to Albuquerque a few years ago. I experience him as a thoughtful, compassionate person with some broad perspectives on human nature. I appreciate how he writes and thinks.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I’m not a social media person. I have written hundreds of articles and 67 books to share some of what I have learned along the way and my website is https://williamrmiller.net.
Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
William R Miller On The Case For Optimism About The Next Ten & Twenty Years was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.