Seligman and Schulman gave all the agents the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), a psychological assessment that offers a series of vignettes, the responses to which locate the person’s explanatory style on a pessimism-optimism spectrum…

“Agents who scored in the optimistic half of explanatory style sold 37% more insurance than agents scoring in the pessimistic half. Agents in the top decile sold 88% more insurance than those in the bottom decile,” they discovered.

Optimism, it turns out, isn’t a hollow sentiment. It’s a catalyst that can stir persistence, steady us during challenges, and stoke the confidence that we can influence our surroundings.

The more you explain bad events as temporary, specific, and external, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity.

People opened useful messages for extrinsic reasons; they had something to gain or lose. They opened the other messages for intrinsic reasons; they were just curious.

Every circumstance in which we try to move others by definition involves another human being. Yet in the name of professionalism, we often neglect the human element and adopt a stance that’s abstract and distant. Instead, we should recalibrate our approach so that it’s concrete and personal—and not for softhearted reasons but for hardheaded ones.