Learned Optimism – How Being Optimistic Can Lead To Happier And Better Lives
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Learned optimism is a concept first defined by Dr. Martin Seligman, Ph.D., currently Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology and Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and published in his book, “Learned Optimism“.
He is well known in clinical and academic circles and is a best-selling author of many books which have been translated into several languages. His concept is that a talent for optimism can be learned and cultivated by getting rid of negative thoughts and pessimism.
Pessimists are prone to giving up when faced with events they consider to be too difficult to deal with, and have lower self esteem; whilst optimists are more likely to rise to a challenge and as a consequence generally have much more confidence in themselves and their abilities.
There are many differences between pessimists and optimists; the pessimist assumes that because he is not a success in one area of his life, then he will not succeed in other areas. The optimist, however, sees a setback as a temporary episode and moves on with his life. The same outlook applies to positive occurrences – the pessimist feeling that the good times won’t last, while the optimist is confident that things will stay upbeat.
The theory of learned optimism came to Dr. Seligman through the study of learned helplessness; a condition in which a person feels that a recurring negative event is out of his control. He realized that some of his subjects blamed themselves for the negative events, while others put the blame on his experiment, feeling that they were set up to fail. He realized that the difference between the two groups of subjects was optimism and decided to attempt to teach people to become optimists.
His teaching was simply to train pessimists to respond to adverse occurrences in a different manner. He taught them to talk themselves through problems by utilizing his ABC plan. This plan represents Adversity: the event that happens; Belief: how the adversity is interpreted; and Consequence: the feeling and actions resulting from the belief. Seligman later added D to represent Disputation, where the subject analyses the event; and E, which represents Energization, when the subject is energized and enjoying the positive feelings that have come from the successful disputation of his negative reaction to the event.
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