Written by Martin E.PN Seligman, the bestselling author of Authentic Happiness, Learned Optimism drags from research made over two decades to prove how optimism improves the quality and standards of life. And how one can learn how to practice it.
HOW THIS BOOK HELPED US?
This book helped us discover our pessimistic tendencies if we have them or those of people we care for. It also introduces us to the techniques that have helped thousands of people undo lifelong habits of pessimism and, its extension, depression. It gave us the choice of looking at our setbacks in a new light.
THE BOOK EXPLAINED UNDER 60 SECONDS
Learned optimism discusses how you can change your mind and life. This can only be done through attaining learned optimism. The book throws light on pessimistic people and those who are optimistic. The writer says pessimistic people usually let their failures block them from moving on. Their failures are permanent and become part of their lives. These people also blame themselves for their setbacks. About optimistic people, the writer articulates that these people perceive their failures as challenges and opportunities to become better. To them, setbacks are just warnings that tell them they need to replan or find a better approach to a specific task.
TOP THREE QUOTES
- “While you can’t control your experiences, you can control your explanations.”
- “The genius of evolution lies in the dynamic tension between optimism and pessimism continually correcting each other.”
- “Success requires persistence, the ability to not give up in failure. I believe that optimistic explanatory style is the key to persistence.”
BOOK SUMMARIES AND NOTES
Chapter one: The Quest
Two Ways of Looking at Life
You can look at life from the Optimistic and the Pessimistic approaches. Pessimistic people usually believe that dreadful events will last long, undermine what they do, and everything is their fault. Optimists who face the same hard knocks of this world tend to reflect on this misfortune oppositely. They always assume that defeat or failure is just a temporary setback, and its source is confined to this one case. Optimists don’t think of failure as their fault but instead brought about by circumstances, bad luck, or other factors.
Explanatory style. This refers to the way you constantly explain to yourself why certain events happen. This approach is an ideal modulator of learned helplessness. Usually, an optimistic explanatory style ceases helplessness, whereas a pessimistic explanatory style escalates helplessness. When explaining events to yourself, the course you take dictates how helpless and energised you can be when dealing with daily setbacks and defeats.
Learning to Be Helpless
The giving up reaction and quitting reply comes from believing everything you do does not matter. When people are experiencing bad or intense situations, and their actions to try to escape those situations don’t seem practical, they’ll have no choice but to give up and do nothing. Whatever they did, didn’t seem to matter. When people understand that they have no power over what happens to them, they start to think, act, and feel helpless. People can learn to be helpless and also unlearn it. Though unlearning, this persistent reaction prevents people from future helplessness. In laboratory experiments, learned helplessness almost had the same effects and exact causes as fully-developed depression.
Ultimate Pessimism
When pessimistic, you go through a lenient version of a significant mental order: depression. Being depressed is pessimistic, and understanding pessimism helps you look at the expanded and exaggerated form. Most people have depression at some point, and it’s not a good place to be. For some, it’s a rare experience; for others, it’s familiar. A state that oppresses us every time defeat conquers us. Still, others are fully drained by its power for most of their lives.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “With these freedoms have come perils. For the age of the self is also the age of that phenomenon so closely linked to pessimism: depression, the ultimate expression of depression.”
Chapter two: The Realms of Life
Success at Work
Many people quit their jobs, yet they pay them just enough to sustain their lives; why? Even the best employee gets some depreciation from other employees or clients. Usually, many of them are correct, but this discourages the employee. Once they are depressed, getting up and making the next move requires extra effort. Their productivity drops, and they begin to think about quitting. Only some know how to get around this situation when they get into it.
Optimistic employees are more persistent than pessimistic ones. Optimistic employees are immune to helplessness and don’t give up no matter how much rejection and failure they face. These invulnerable optimists are usually not considered, yet they stand high chance of succeeding at a job as demanding as sales.
Children and Parents: The Origins of Optimism
Explanatory style has a severe effect on the lives of grownups. It can generate depression in response to daily setbacks and failures or might create resilience even amidst disaster. Your explanatory style can prevent you from achieving your goals or help you exceed them. It also influences how the community perceives you and affects your physical health. The explanatory style evolves in childhood. Therefore, the pessimism or optimism generated is very fundamental. Impending failures and wins are filtered through it. Then, it becomes a fixed habit of thinking. Children over seven years have developed the explanatory style but are just in the process of straightening it out. As a parent, you can assess your child’s explanatory style using a test known as the Children’s Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ).
School
Explanatory style is the modulator of learned helplessness. Optimists usually recover from their helplessness instantly after facing a defeat. For them, failure is just a challenge. At the same time, pessimists are deeply immersed in defeat and perceive it as a permanent failure. This theory is also manifested in class. Pessimistic students usually see themselves as failures or incapable of attaining good results. When they fail, they typically consider themselves dull and mentally weak and fall into depression. In contrast, optimistic students view failure or defeat as a challenge and an opportunity to improve. They’re always looking for ways of making themselves better.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “Optimists do better in school, win more elections and succeed more at work than pessimists do.”
Chapter three: Changing From Pessimism to Optimism
The Optimistic Life
Life tends to impose the same tragedies and failures on both an optimistic person and a pessimistic. Still, the optimistic tend to endure them better. The pessimist gives up and falls deep into depression. Since they’re resilient, optimists usually succeed at work, school and sport. Here’s some good news, pessimists can adopt the skills of optimism and forever improve the quality and standard of their lives. Most optimists have experienced periods of moderate pessimism. The skills that gain the pessimists can also be utilised by optimists when their backs are on the wall. Changing from pessimism to optimism may seem undesirable and unimaginable to pessimists. Optimism does not involve learning to be more selfish and self-assertive and presenting oneself to others arrogantly. But instead consists in learning specific skills to communicate to yourself about failures and defeats from a more encouraging point of view.
Helping Your Child Escape Pessimism
Most children are suffering from pessimism, and it’s ruining their education and livelihoods. School-age children usually have the same rate of depression as adults. Pessimistic children can learn to be optimistic like adults do by developing confidently promising approaches to explaining failures and setbacks to themselves. As a parent, apply the ABC model to your child. Explain the ABC model to your child as the connection between adversity, beliefs and consequences. Make him understand that the things he thinks about when the situation is terrible to alter how he feels. When he feels sad, a thought has already triggered the feeling. Make sure that he learns how to find that thought to change it. Set aside half an hour every day in which your child will learn to put the ABC model into practice in his own life.
Flexible Optimism
Depression is based on the noted increase in individualism and the decrease in the commitment to a common goal. Much as this is indicated, there are two ways out: first, changing the balance of individualism and the commons; second, manipulating the strengths of the maximal self. If individualism without commitment to the commons generates a large-scale depression and meaninglessness, then something has to give. There is a possibility that the overstated individualism will blow over, and the self will alter back into the Yankee self. You can exploit the strengths of the maximal self by changing the balance between the self and the commons by choosing to widen its commitment to the common.
Favourite quote of the chapter: “Seeing the connection between adversity, belief and consequences is the first step for your child to take in learning optimism.”
HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS
“Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman can help software developers by providing practical tools to overcome challenges and setbacks and cultivate a positive, growth-oriented mindset. By teaching developers to recognise and dispute negative thought patterns, reframe failures as opportunities for learning and growth, and cultivate a sense of personal agency and control, the book can help developers approach their work with greater resilience, creativity, and motivation. This can increase productivity, problem-solving, and a more positive work environment. Additionally, the book provides strategies for bouncing back from setbacks and handling stress effectively, which can be helpful in a fast-paced and demanding industry like software development.
