An excellent another great book-learned Optimism by Martin Seligman as always we have the book philosophers notes where I've got some my favorite big ideas.
Martin Seligman is one of the leading researchers within the field of positive psychology. Martin Seligman, who wrote an optimism was the top of the American Psychological Association or something like that the professional organization for psychologists. So learned optimism it's amazing a very big idea. The favorite principle of living an unprecedented life if we will not get on top of things of our consciousness and our minds.
Learned Optimism Book By Martin Seligman
We want to be to source if we will not control that little monkey running around up there. Then none of the opposite stuff really matters. so we would like to find out how to shape our minds and this book is all about that so first so as to understand wanted optimism. We had like to understand its opposite learned helplessness and also I would like to offer a little bit of context this concept the lead quote that I even have here during this note.
I kick off everyone with a quote is that this Seligmann says one among the foremost significant findings in psychology in the last 20 years is that individuals can choose the way. They think now why that's significant. It wasn't that way back when we thought that everything that we did was a result of our conditioning a guy named BF Skinner was a behaviorist and everyone at the time essentially believed that what we had been conditioned to be is who we were there was no other variable I'd play genetics nature plus nurture conditioning boom there you're and what Seligmann did was he came out and said no no we will actually shape the way we show up and that was blasphemy when he first came out with this in 1965 which I find remarkable and he talks that in the book but um so back to learned helplessness Seligman was actually studying learned helplessness before he got into learned optimism and really quickly helplessness is one among the highest correlates to depression if you feel helpless if you are feeling such as you can't do anything constructively to make a wonderful life.
That's a reasonably good indicator that you're trending toward or you might be depressed so it's really important that we move from helplessness to empowerment and that is again what this book is all about it's what numerous of these great books are all about if you think about Esther and Jerry Hicks if you're into the work of Abraham they have their emotional guidance device right at the highest is freedom and empowerment and knowing we will create our ideal lives and joy and tons of appreciation at rock bottom is depression and helplessness then rage and every one the frustrated energy that goes with that so we would like to be ready to move up this spectrum toward learned optimism really quickly about helplessness and what he was studying what he learned here's a very fascinating study imagine that you simply usher in a few of dogs writing I'm an animal lover but uh we'll accompany this experiment for the moment so we've two dogs or separated and they're given mild shocks right one dog during a position|is ready"> is in a position to maneuver in a certain way or do certain things that basically removes that shock right they're on top of things of the shock experience and that they finish up being okay this dog up here doesn't have an equivalent ability to regulate the shocks that this dog has actually whether the shocks continue or off is dictated by this dog right so this one is essentially out of control doesn't feel.
It has control to regulate the shocks now what's interesting is that you simply have these two dogs right one which will control the shocks one that couldn't then you choose them up and you set them into a special a part of the experiment in this experiment both dogs can control whether or not they will escape from the shocks the dog that felt that it had power before no problem it quickly learns what to try to to and it's fine the dog that now has the power to urge out of the shocks but was conditioned before to think that it couldn't escape from the shocks now crawls up into a ball within the corner it just continues to suffer the shocks it's learned helplessness so that's the idea of learned helplessness that we would like to juxtapose with learned optimism so halfway done learned optimism it's quite positive thinking right it's quite whistling platitudes to ourselves and affirmations as Martin Seligman says it's all about changing the elemental way we communicate with ourselves and one among the key ideas we would like to require faraway from this is the thought of explanatory styles if you haven't noticed.
We're always talking to ourselves in our heads right well he calls those explanatory styles and you'll differentiate between an optimistic and a pessimistic explanatory style really quickly there are three P's to our explanatory style whether we think something is permanent whether we think it's pervasive and whether we think it's personal so really quickly let's believe it this manner for instance something good happens to us the optimist thinks that that good is probably going to be permanent they think it's pertinent again within the future it's pervasive meaning it isn't just this one event I got a promotion at work or I had an excellent date or whatever it's they think it's pervasive it goes across multiple domains in their life and that they think it's personal they think it's something to try to to with them isn't that great now the pessimist once they experience a positive event for instance for instance they get a promotion at work the pessimist thinks it isn't permanent it isn't going to last they think it isn't pervasive they got lucky during this one aspect of their life and that they don't take it personally they think that the boss just must spend.
It must are during a good mood quite thing so that is the positive event and that's how optimists and pessimists respond now on the negative event they do the other if a negative event happens to an optimist for instance they have a setback at work on a relationship the optimist says this is not permanent this is good now and it isn't pervasive it isn't getting to happen to every aspect of my life and i am getting to kind of deflect a touch little bit of the personal stuff and say it had been probably outside of something outside of me right now the pessimist when something negative happens does the other they say it's permanent I'm always getting to be screwed it's pervasive this is not just my job this is often every aspect of my life and it's personal I'm totally at blame there's nothing outside of me that could have contributed so those are the differences between pessimists and optimists with explanatory styles and that we want to find out to seem at our three P's so my suggestion for you during this discussion is how are you perceiving things in your world if something's going right.
How are you watching it as an optimist or as a pessimist if something's going wrong how are you looking at it as an optimist or a pessimist and therefore the exciting thing is we can learn to vary how we approach these things i'm going into tons more detail about it within the note so if you've got the notes check it out if you do not have them yet as I always say what are you waiting for check in guarantees the simplest 47 bucks you'll ever invest in yourself what else we would like to hide we have a few more minutes so he talks about another really cool studies where we will check out the facility of optimism and why we would like to be optimistic starting from MetLife and insurance company to Olympic athletes right therefore the insurance firm MetLife hired Martin Seligman and that they brought him in and what he proposed was that they should hire people supported their level optimism not just their aptitude and their motivation but their optimism because how they answer a challenging situation like someone telling them no again and again is one among the very best and that they found one among the very best predictors of that individual success as a salesman in the organization.
So he says one build your optimism to be more successful in any endeavor and better people who are optimistic it's one among the most underrated yet valuable attributes we will search for in people he also talks about Matt Biondi the old-school Olympic swimmer but apparently, he placed second in one among his events and bounced back and Sullivan knew he would because optimist tends to bounce back positively after a setback and he had studied beyond very cool stuff so there is a bunch more stuff in the note but that's the really quick look at an excellent book-learned optimism. I think you'll just like the note and that I think you'll just like the book Martin Seligman's awesome inspect authentic happiness.
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