Learned Optimism - Book Summary & Review

Learned Optimism

How to Change Your Mind and Your Life

Martin E.P. Seligman 

Martin E.P. Seligman the father of the positive psychology draws on more than twenty years of clinical research to demonstrate how optimism enchances the quality of life, and how anyone can learn to practice it. Our way of thinking influences us in all areas of life. The book presents several techniques for learning new way of thinking. With generous additional advice on how to encourage optimistic behavior at school, at work and in children, Learned Optimism is both profound and practical–and valuable for every phase of life.

Notable Ideas of the Book

Acquire the right mindset and a positive view on your world.

We often wonder why some people find it easier to get through life than others? Or, why some people enjoy better health and success? We think, maybe they’re just lucky. But in reality, maybe they’re just optimistic.
Learned Optimism is about exactly this phenomenon.

It is quite normal for people to feel helpless in a situation of defeat. One thing which enables us to overcome the situation is our so-called explanatory style which refers to the way in which we explain the negative events of our lives to ourselves: optimistically or pessimistically.  

Both these ways are different. Pessimists have explanatory styles that are universal, permanent and internal; as opposite to optimists.

What exactly characterizes our explanatory style?

First, pessimists consider problems to be permanent, while optimists consider them only temporary.

Second, where optimists think of problems as being specific to a certain situation, pessimists generalize.

Third, optimists tend to consider negative events as being externally caused, and positive events as internally caused, pessimists think vice-versa.

Luckily, all three behavioural patterns can be changed. Pessimism and optimism are both habits of thinking, i.e., self-talk.

Our explanatory styles are derived from our individual experience. They can make us either pessimists or optimists. Human thinking habits are learned, mostly during childhood and mainly from parents and schoolteachers.

Childhood crises do not necessarily have a negative effect on children. It depends on how those crises are handled by the child’s primary caretakers.

Optimists have a better immune system and are generally healthier. But why?

Firstly, on a cellular level, optimists often have a stronger immune system. Studies have shown that changing our explanatory style can enhance our immune system.

Secondly, optimists tend to be more active than pessimists; they're more likely to take good care of themselves.

This is because optimists believe that their actions have a positive effect, so they're more likely to follow to a health care regimen. Pessimists, on the other hand think that nothing they do matter.

Thirdly, optimistic people find it easier to sustain friendships. Friendship is beneficial to our health because having a friend that you can confide in can actually eases the stress generated by negative events.

Pessimism promotes depression.

Negative life events also cannot be the only cause of depression. It's quite normal to respond to negative events with mild depressive symptoms – like a bad mood, but not everybody responds by becoming seriously depressed.

So, if negative events themselves aren't the cause of depression, what is? The answer is our explanatory style: how we think about those events is a determining factor in whether or not we become depressed.

Optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles have a huge influence on our performance too, especially in sports. The optimistic team always outperforms the pessimistic team.

Optimists are much more successful; talent is overrated if it’s not matched by optimism. Optimism motivates a person to strive for more and better. It enhances one’s talent and ability to use that talent. On the other hand, pessimistic people tend to give up trying after the first failure.

 Optimism is also very useful in your professional life.
Why do some people seem to thrive at every job they do, while others barely scrape by? Again, the factor that often differentiates these people is their explanatory style. People with an optimistic explanatory style are better suited for occupations that involve a lot of rejection, like in sales jobs.

We can change our self-talk by using the ABC technique.

Pessimistic explanatory style can have devastating effects on our life. Now question arises: “How can I change from a pessimist into an optimist?”

One particularly effective way of handling negative self-talk is the so-called ABC technique, developed by the psychologist Albert Ellis. This technique involves three steps: adversity, belief and consequence.

First, it's important to monitor ourselves in order to observe the link between adversity, belief and consequence in daily life.

Consider this everyday example:

Adversity: A love interest doesn't return your phone calls.
Belief: He or she doesn't like me. My jokes are not funny. I'm ugly.

Consequence: You feel depressed all day.

But it's not easy to recognize these ABCs in life, as most of our self-talk is unconscious. But then how to go ahead with this technique?

To do this, try to record all three ABC components when examining your negative self talk.

Adversity describes any challenging event. Belief concerns how we interpret such events. Here it is important to distinguish thoughts from feelings. When it comes to consequences, we should consider what we felt as a result of A and B. Once we’ve found a few ABCs in our life, we are in a position to change them.

Try to understand the connection between A, B and C, and change where appropriate. Our beliefs about a situation determine both its consequences and how we feel about the situation. If we change our beliefs, we also change the consequences and our feelings. While it's difficult to determine which of our beliefs are “true,” it's clear that how we think about negative events greatly influences how they affect us.

We can become an optimist by questioning and analyzing our beliefs. There are several ways in which we can change our beliefs.

The first way is disputation, which works on a deep level to transform your negative beliefs. Disputing your beliefs involves testing every belief in terms of the following four questions:

Is the belief actually true? If so, what evidence is there?

Is there an alternative explanation?

What are the implications of your belief, if it were true?

How probable are these implications, and are they really that bad?

Finally, ask yourself: is what I’m thinking useful to me? If a thought isn't useful, then you should simply let it go.

Once we have practiced this method of disputing your beliefs, we can move on to the second way: externalizing the voices. For this, we need to get a close friend to do this exercise with and to attack us as fiercely as we do yourself, using all your own negative self-beliefs. Our task is to defend ourselves against these attacks by verbalizing our defence out loud.

By practicing these methods regularly, we’ll be able to change our negative beliefs for good, and become a full-fledged optimist!

Ruchika Verma

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