Learned Optimism
| https://youtu.be/uUeygs-_hyQ |
Hi, this is Bill Chan again with The 5 Elements of a Fulfilling Life at 5Element5.com.
Today I want to talk to you about the difference between Optimus and pessimists.
According to research, optimists are generally more successful and productive; they lead happier lives, have happier marriages, and, naturally, they live much longer.
Most of the time, they're more immune to physical and psychological illnesses and things like depression.
Depressions link to pessimism. Optimists are more immune to heart disease and a lot of chronic physical illnesses as well.
Now according to Dr. Martin Seligman, about 20 percent of us are born highly optimistic, and the other 20 percent are extremely pessimists; they're born that way.
Now the rest of us are somewhere in between, so we're neither pessimists all the time nor optimistic all the time, so we're in between.
Certain times we're more optimistic, and other times, we're more pessimistic; now, if we're swinging on the lower end of optimism, we are more toward the pessimists.
We can learn to be more optimistic, according to Martin Seligman; these skills can be transferred, which is good news, he did research once where he put these dogs in a wired cage, and in the wired cage, he would run electricity in there from time to time. When he ran an electric charge all over the cell, they would still get electric shots no matter what the dogs ran.
So there's no Escape; after a while, these dogs learn that, no matter what I do, I'm going to be shot anyway, so they just lay there and take the shot.
Then he puts these dogs and a bunch of dogs that had never experienced the electric shots in the same cage; in half the cell, he ran electric photos, and in the other half, he didn't.
As soon as the electric shots went on, these control dogs, which had never been in environments like this before, went right to the other side of the cage to avoid being shot. Yet, the other dogs just lay there even though they see their peers jump over to the other side and avoid the shots; they still wouldn't do it; they would just lay there and take these shots anyways.
So Martin Seligman coined this as "Learn Helplessness," At the same time, he found that 30 percent of the dogs, no matter how much they've been in these adverse environments, would still run around to avoid the shots.
These are more optimistic dogs, and they will try to look for escape routes, and when Dr. Seligman did this experiment with humans, he found that humans are the same way.
Using loud noises instead of electric shots, he noticed that some humans were still looking for a start button to stop the loud noises, no matter the situation. In contrast, most humans would tolerate loud noises.
They would learn that if they couldn't control the environment, they would give up; this is "Learned Helplessness," he was looking at what makes these two groups different, and he found that the ways of thinking are quite different from these two groups and he used this "a b c d e" formula to explain I
(A) stands for adversity when bad things happen; how would the optimist think differently from the pessimist?
(B) stands for belief, the Optimist would say evil things are only a one-time event, so it's temporary, and maybe I don't believe that it's my fault, right?
Other circumstances or events may cause this adversity, so it may not even be my fault, and then they would say is it under my control, or how to overcome the situation?
Yeah, if it is my fault, I would go ahead and do something different next time to change the event (C) consequence, so they're looking at the event as a temporary one-time event, and they're looking at hey, maybe it's other people's fault as well, it's not just all my fault.
Whereas the pessimists will take all the blames internally, they said hey, this must be all my fault; it's my bad luck, I'm just not cut out for this, and they would say hey, this always happened to me, they look the event as Global not temporary, so there's no avoiding it, it's always like this for me.
In essence, the pessimist is saying there is nothing he can do about it; they believe (B) their bad luck is the cause of consequence adversity (A).
The Optimist will say well, I could do something about it so that I would change the event. Consequently (C), they work harder, try different routes, and try to change the occasion, whereas the pessimists will say, " Oh well, it's bad luck, and I won't do anything about it.
I'll just lay there and take the bad luck, so because they're not exerting any effort, the chance will not change (C).
What Martin Seligman suggests is like using the (D) disputing with themselves instead of laying over and just taking the bad luck they could discuss with themselves.
Have I ever been in situations like this that I have overcome? Maybe in high school, I did something, or in college, through my perseverance and hard work in a course that I thought was difficult; I had overcome that and got a B out of it, so it wasn't that bad after all.
Because they're disputing it, their execution is going to be different; instead of just laying over and taking it as is, they would then say hey, maybe there is something I can do about it; I'll go out there and change the situation, my execution (E) would be different right?
In that sense, they can overcome the obstacle and improve the event, so execution is the key.
Now what Martin Seligman posits; this is all in mind, so you can change the way you think; if you are a pessimist, you can become more optimistic.
When you become more optimistic in your way of thinking, you dispute with yourself when you have this inner critic.
This inner critic keeps coming up, saying you can't do it, you're not good, you're not good enough, you dispute by saying, hey look, I have done this before, and I know I can overcome it; here's my evidence, if you can't think of any ask your friends to tell you some of your strength, tell me what I'm good at, okay and then use that to dispute with your inner critic and lastly do something to change your critical behavior.
You can't just sit around and hope for things to happen to you; you have to go out there and change the events, work harder, study harder, and maybe exert more effort.
Okay, maybe analyze things more, maybe change your ways of doing things, now that is the key because when you change your behaviors, when you learn, when you work harder, when you stop the old way of thinking, or be more creative, using more innovative ways of doing things, hey events could change then you might have a victory in your hands.
So stop complaining and start doing something to change your life and be more optimistic.
When you become more optimistic, time and time again, your way of thinking will switch, and now you're going to be thinking like a happy person; you might not even have to argue with yourself, and you might be able to convert your thinking right away and say hey look for in every adversity there's a (C) of equal and opposite benefit, maybe then I should hopefully benefit in that situation, and that could change the tie of events entirely.
Okay! I hope that's helpful for you and that you can apply this next time you encounter any obstacles or challenges.