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? You Are What You Think ? And if you change your mind --- from pessimism to optimism --- you can change your life ? Claipe Safran ? Do you see the glass as half-full rather than half empty? Do you keep your eye upon the doughnut, not upon the hole? Suddenly these clichés are scientific questions, as researchers scrutinize the power of positive thinking. ? A fast-growing body of research-104 studies so far, involving some 15000 people --- is proving that optimism can help you to be happier, healthier and more successful. Pessimism leads, by contrast, to hopelessness, sickness and failure, and is linked to depression, loneliness and painful shyness. “If we could teach people to think more positively,” says psychologist Craig A. Anderson of Rice University in Houston, “it would be like inoculating then against these mental ills.” ? “Your abilities count,” explains psychologist Michael F. Scheier of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, “but the belief that you can succeed affects whether or not you will.” In part, that’s because optimists and pessimists deal with the same challenges and disappointments in very different ways. ? Take, for example, your job. In a major study, psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania and colleague Peter Schulman surveyed sales representatives at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. They found that the positive-thinkers among longtime representatives sold 37-percent more insurance than did the negative-thinkers. Of newly hired representatives, optimists sold 20-percent more. ? Impressed, the company hired 100 people who had failed the standard industry test but had scored high on optimism. These people, who might never have been hired, sold 10-percent more insurance than did the average representative. ? How did they do it? The secret to an optimist’s success, according to Seligman, is in his “explanatory style”. When things go wrong the pessimist tends to blame himself. “I’m no good at this,” he says, “I al