Saturday, August 27, 2005
Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
© 1998 by Martin Seligman
The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. Optimists believe defeat is temporary setback, and its causes are confined to one case. They believe defeat is not their fault and that circumstances, bad luck, or other people brought it about. They are unfazed by defeat. When confronted by a bad situation, they perceive it as a challenge and they try harder. Optimists do much better in school, at work, and on the playing field. Pessimistic prophecies are self-fulfilling. Individuals contrive the way they think. Habits of thinking need not be forever.
What if we can unlearn pessimism and apply the skills of looking at setback optimistically? What if optimism or pessimism matters as much as talent or desire? Two principal concepts, "learned helplessness" and "explanatory style." Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter. Explanatory style is the manner in which you habitually explain to yourself why events happen. If people could be taught to be helpless in the face of a trivial irritation such as noise then perhaps we will see that people experience incidences when their actions are futile, experience a serious shock for being thought helplessness too. Some people don’t prevail like helpless dogs they crumple up and some do prevail they pick themselves up, they manage to go on and rebuild. Some people call this a triumph of the human will or the courage to be it was not an inborn trait it could be acquired. The way people think about the causes of failure was what really matters.
Who never gives up? Explanatory style is permanent pervasiveness and personalization. People who give up usually believe the causes of the bad events that happened to them are permanent. People who resist helplessness believe they are temporary. If you think about bad things in always and never and abiding traits you have a permanent pessimistic style. Permanency is about time pervasiveness is about faith. The permanent dimension determines how long a person gives up for pervasiveness.
People make permanent and universal explanations for their trouble and tend to collapse under pressure. No other single story is as important as you hoped for. You are probably achieving less at work than you had counted for your physical health is poor and your life is not as pleasurable as it should be. Pessimistic explanatory style is misery. Normal depression is extremely common it’s the common cold of mental illness. I have repeatedly found that about 25 percent of us are going through an episode of normal depression at least in mild form.
Learned helplessness was caused by experience in which the subject learned that nothing they did mattered and that their responses do not work to bring them what they wanted. Learned helplessness can be cheered by showing the subject to go in action would now work. Subject learns that his actions made it different, though earlier in life, which mastery was learned to more flexibly immunize against helplessness. People give an inescapable noise or unsolvable problems through report that a depressed mood descended on them.
Helpless people blame their failure to solve problems on their lack of inability and witlessness. I always believe that what others thought of this deep neurotic conflict is simply bad thinking, stupid behavior on the part of non-stupid people. He would demand that his patient stop thinking wrong and start thinking right. Surprisingly most of his patients got better. Emotions come directly from what we think. Think I am in danger in feeling anxiety. Think loss and you feel sadness. How you think about your problem will either relieve depression or aggravate it. Women are twice as likely to suffer depression as men are, because on average they think about problems in ways that amplify a depression. Men tend to act rather than reflect. Psychologists call this process as obsessive analysis rumination or what is first meeting is chewing the cud. Ruminations combine with pessimistic explanatory style is the recipe for severe depression. In optimist the failure produces only brief demoralization. The active ingredient in cognitive therapy was a change in explanatory style from pessimistic to optimistic.
People who mourn for bad events are called ruminators. A ruminator can either be an optimist or a pessimist. Ruminators who are pessimists are in trouble. She brooded about her marriage, her children and her depression itself. Ruminators kept the chain going all the time. Working wives are less depressed. When trouble strikes, women think and then act. Women thought and analyze their need. Men distract themselves. In overwhelming proportions the women focus on and kind of express their emotion and the men distracted themselves or decide not to be concerned about their need. Cognitive therapy uses five tactics. First you learn to recognize the automatic thoughts spinning through your consciousness at the times you feel worst. Second you learn to discrete the automatic thoughts by marshalling contrary evidence. Third you learn to make different explanations called reattribution and use them to dispute your automatic thoughts. Fourth you are going to kind of distract yourself on suppressing thoughts. Fifth you learn to recognize and question the depression feeling assumption covering so much of what you do.
Success requires persistence, the ability to not give up in the face of failure. It is just the lack of these three characteristics. Life insurance agents are more optimistic than the people from any other walk of life we have ever tested. Every business is struck with some pessimist. They always tell me what I cannot do. They only tell me what is wrong. I believe that most of them would be better off if they were more optimistic. Can you think a person who has had 30 or even 50 years of practice, thinking pessimistically and changing him to an optimist. The answer is yes.
Human species has been selected by evolution because of the optimistic illusion about reality. Depressed people see reality correctly while non-depressed people distort reality in a self serving way. It is disturbing idea that depressed people see reality correctly while non-depressed people distort reality in a self serving way. Maybe truth and happiness antagonize each other. Non-depressed people often believe they have much more control within than they actually do, particularly when they are helpless and have no control at all. Optimistic people will distort reality.
The pessimist seems to be at the mercy of reality whereas the optimist has a massive defense against reality that maintains good cheer in the face of a relentlessly indifferent universe. Sometimes distinctive pessimism works. Typically we are more depressed when we wake up and as the day goes on we become more optimistic. The genius of evolution lies in the dynamic tension between optimism and pessimism continually correcting each other. Explanatory style developed from childhood. If your child is over seven he has probably developed an explanatory style.
Preadolescent children are extremely optimistic with a capacity for health and immunity to helplessness. They will never again test after puberty when they lose much of their optimism. There are three major hypotheses for the origin of explanatory style. The first is the child’s mother. Everyday hearings from mother make permanent pervasive and personal analysis of unsorted events that happens around the house. The way your mother talks about the world to you when you were a child had a marked influence on your explanatory style. Mother’s level of optimism and a child’s level were very similar. We are surprised to find that neither the children’s style nor the mother’s style bore any resemblance of a father’s style. If the child has an optimistic mother, this is great but it can be a disaster to the child if the child has a pessimistic mother. Mother’s is similar to both the sons and daughters. The father is similar to no one.
Optimists recover from their momentary helplessness immediately, very soon after failing they pick themselves up, shrug and start trying again. But then defeated the challenges and they are set back on the road to inevitable victory. They feel the defeat is temporary and specific not pervasive. The children of divorce do badly by and large. These children are much more depressed than the children from intact families. They have lower self-esteem and they worry more. Any marital fights are unproductive but I do not advise you on how to fight productively. I believe in some form beyond this and to be aware from more make to choose to fight, that your fighting may harm your children. As far as your children are concerned there is very little to be said in the favor in regards to fighting. Being angry and fighting are not the human rights. Consider swallowing anger, sacrificing pride, putting up less than you deserve from your spouse, set back before provoking your spouse and before answering the provocation.
Psychological traits, particularly optimism can produce good health. Optimism should produce good health concern, sticking to health regimes and seeking medical advice. Optimists are more likely to take action that prevents illnesses. Optimists have more social support. Wealth at age 20 does not guarantee health or success. Health at age 60 will strongly relate optimism at age 25. In religious material of the Russian Jews were noticeably more optimistic than the Russian orthodox material, particularly in the permanent dimension. If the cost of failure is high optimism is the wrong strategy. If the cost of failure is low then use optimism.
Distract yourself when they occur, dispute them. Disputing is more effective in the long run. Some people ring a loud bell; others carry 3 x 5 card with the word stop in enormous red letters. Other people find wearing a rubber band around their wrist and wrap it hard to stop their ruminating. This is called attention shifting. Write the troublesome thoughts down the moment they occur. Write them down instead of at times think about them. They no longer have any purpose and purposelessness lessen their strain. Make your disputations convincing, evident, alternative implication, usefulness.
No organization filled with optimistic individual has an edge. Over 50 companies now use optimism questionnaires to identify people who have not just the talent and drive, but also the optimism needed for success. Mild pessimists do well in these fields safety, financers, technical writing and quality control. There is a company called Foresight that administers optimism questionnaires. When our explanation is adversely external and when we believe that the adversity is a trespass against our domain we feel anger. The things we say to ourselves when trouble strikes can be just as baseless as the rantings of the drunk on the street. Any personal failure seems less internal and less pervasively undermining. Consider putting aside 5% to charity. Give up some activity, which you do regularly for your own pleasure and instead devote activity to the well being of others. Teach your children how to give things away.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671019112
© 1998 by Martin Seligman
The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. Optimists believe defeat is temporary setback, and its causes are confined to one case. They believe defeat is not their fault and that circumstances, bad luck, or other people brought it about. They are unfazed by defeat. When confronted by a bad situation, they perceive it as a challenge and they try harder. Optimists do much better in school, at work, and on the playing field. Pessimistic prophecies are self-fulfilling. Individuals contrive the way they think. Habits of thinking need not be forever.
What if we can unlearn pessimism and apply the skills of looking at setback optimistically? What if optimism or pessimism matters as much as talent or desire? Two principal concepts, "learned helplessness" and "explanatory style." Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter. Explanatory style is the manner in which you habitually explain to yourself why events happen. If people could be taught to be helpless in the face of a trivial irritation such as noise then perhaps we will see that people experience incidences when their actions are futile, experience a serious shock for being thought helplessness too. Some people don’t prevail like helpless dogs they crumple up and some do prevail they pick themselves up, they manage to go on and rebuild. Some people call this a triumph of the human will or the courage to be it was not an inborn trait it could be acquired. The way people think about the causes of failure was what really matters.
Who never gives up? Explanatory style is permanent pervasiveness and personalization. People who give up usually believe the causes of the bad events that happened to them are permanent. People who resist helplessness believe they are temporary. If you think about bad things in always and never and abiding traits you have a permanent pessimistic style. Permanency is about time pervasiveness is about faith. The permanent dimension determines how long a person gives up for pervasiveness.
People make permanent and universal explanations for their trouble and tend to collapse under pressure. No other single story is as important as you hoped for. You are probably achieving less at work than you had counted for your physical health is poor and your life is not as pleasurable as it should be. Pessimistic explanatory style is misery. Normal depression is extremely common it’s the common cold of mental illness. I have repeatedly found that about 25 percent of us are going through an episode of normal depression at least in mild form.
Learned helplessness was caused by experience in which the subject learned that nothing they did mattered and that their responses do not work to bring them what they wanted. Learned helplessness can be cheered by showing the subject to go in action would now work. Subject learns that his actions made it different, though earlier in life, which mastery was learned to more flexibly immunize against helplessness. People give an inescapable noise or unsolvable problems through report that a depressed mood descended on them.
Helpless people blame their failure to solve problems on their lack of inability and witlessness. I always believe that what others thought of this deep neurotic conflict is simply bad thinking, stupid behavior on the part of non-stupid people. He would demand that his patient stop thinking wrong and start thinking right. Surprisingly most of his patients got better. Emotions come directly from what we think. Think I am in danger in feeling anxiety. Think loss and you feel sadness. How you think about your problem will either relieve depression or aggravate it. Women are twice as likely to suffer depression as men are, because on average they think about problems in ways that amplify a depression. Men tend to act rather than reflect. Psychologists call this process as obsessive analysis rumination or what is first meeting is chewing the cud. Ruminations combine with pessimistic explanatory style is the recipe for severe depression. In optimist the failure produces only brief demoralization. The active ingredient in cognitive therapy was a change in explanatory style from pessimistic to optimistic.
People who mourn for bad events are called ruminators. A ruminator can either be an optimist or a pessimist. Ruminators who are pessimists are in trouble. She brooded about her marriage, her children and her depression itself. Ruminators kept the chain going all the time. Working wives are less depressed. When trouble strikes, women think and then act. Women thought and analyze their need. Men distract themselves. In overwhelming proportions the women focus on and kind of express their emotion and the men distracted themselves or decide not to be concerned about their need. Cognitive therapy uses five tactics. First you learn to recognize the automatic thoughts spinning through your consciousness at the times you feel worst. Second you learn to discrete the automatic thoughts by marshalling contrary evidence. Third you learn to make different explanations called reattribution and use them to dispute your automatic thoughts. Fourth you are going to kind of distract yourself on suppressing thoughts. Fifth you learn to recognize and question the depression feeling assumption covering so much of what you do.
Success requires persistence, the ability to not give up in the face of failure. It is just the lack of these three characteristics. Life insurance agents are more optimistic than the people from any other walk of life we have ever tested. Every business is struck with some pessimist. They always tell me what I cannot do. They only tell me what is wrong. I believe that most of them would be better off if they were more optimistic. Can you think a person who has had 30 or even 50 years of practice, thinking pessimistically and changing him to an optimist. The answer is yes.
Human species has been selected by evolution because of the optimistic illusion about reality. Depressed people see reality correctly while non-depressed people distort reality in a self serving way. It is disturbing idea that depressed people see reality correctly while non-depressed people distort reality in a self serving way. Maybe truth and happiness antagonize each other. Non-depressed people often believe they have much more control within than they actually do, particularly when they are helpless and have no control at all. Optimistic people will distort reality.
The pessimist seems to be at the mercy of reality whereas the optimist has a massive defense against reality that maintains good cheer in the face of a relentlessly indifferent universe. Sometimes distinctive pessimism works. Typically we are more depressed when we wake up and as the day goes on we become more optimistic. The genius of evolution lies in the dynamic tension between optimism and pessimism continually correcting each other. Explanatory style developed from childhood. If your child is over seven he has probably developed an explanatory style.
Preadolescent children are extremely optimistic with a capacity for health and immunity to helplessness. They will never again test after puberty when they lose much of their optimism. There are three major hypotheses for the origin of explanatory style. The first is the child’s mother. Everyday hearings from mother make permanent pervasive and personal analysis of unsorted events that happens around the house. The way your mother talks about the world to you when you were a child had a marked influence on your explanatory style. Mother’s level of optimism and a child’s level were very similar. We are surprised to find that neither the children’s style nor the mother’s style bore any resemblance of a father’s style. If the child has an optimistic mother, this is great but it can be a disaster to the child if the child has a pessimistic mother. Mother’s is similar to both the sons and daughters. The father is similar to no one.
Optimists recover from their momentary helplessness immediately, very soon after failing they pick themselves up, shrug and start trying again. But then defeated the challenges and they are set back on the road to inevitable victory. They feel the defeat is temporary and specific not pervasive. The children of divorce do badly by and large. These children are much more depressed than the children from intact families. They have lower self-esteem and they worry more. Any marital fights are unproductive but I do not advise you on how to fight productively. I believe in some form beyond this and to be aware from more make to choose to fight, that your fighting may harm your children. As far as your children are concerned there is very little to be said in the favor in regards to fighting. Being angry and fighting are not the human rights. Consider swallowing anger, sacrificing pride, putting up less than you deserve from your spouse, set back before provoking your spouse and before answering the provocation.
Psychological traits, particularly optimism can produce good health. Optimism should produce good health concern, sticking to health regimes and seeking medical advice. Optimists are more likely to take action that prevents illnesses. Optimists have more social support. Wealth at age 20 does not guarantee health or success. Health at age 60 will strongly relate optimism at age 25. In religious material of the Russian Jews were noticeably more optimistic than the Russian orthodox material, particularly in the permanent dimension. If the cost of failure is high optimism is the wrong strategy. If the cost of failure is low then use optimism.
Distract yourself when they occur, dispute them. Disputing is more effective in the long run. Some people ring a loud bell; others carry 3 x 5 card with the word stop in enormous red letters. Other people find wearing a rubber band around their wrist and wrap it hard to stop their ruminating. This is called attention shifting. Write the troublesome thoughts down the moment they occur. Write them down instead of at times think about them. They no longer have any purpose and purposelessness lessen their strain. Make your disputations convincing, evident, alternative implication, usefulness.
No organization filled with optimistic individual has an edge. Over 50 companies now use optimism questionnaires to identify people who have not just the talent and drive, but also the optimism needed for success. Mild pessimists do well in these fields safety, financers, technical writing and quality control. There is a company called Foresight that administers optimism questionnaires. When our explanation is adversely external and when we believe that the adversity is a trespass against our domain we feel anger. The things we say to ourselves when trouble strikes can be just as baseless as the rantings of the drunk on the street. Any personal failure seems less internal and less pervasively undermining. Consider putting aside 5% to charity. Give up some activity, which you do regularly for your own pleasure and instead devote activity to the well being of others. Teach your children how to give things away.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671019112
