Learned Optimism summary

Whenever we experience a negative event in our lives, we always explain it to ourselves in one of two ways: optimistically or pessimistically.

But what exactly characterizes our explanatory style?

Our explanatory style derives from our individual experience. Depending on our life experiences, we become either pessimists, believing we have no control over our fate, or optimists, feeling a sense of control over our destinies.

This can, in fact, be seen even in dogs, as seen in the experiment about learned helplessness mentioned earlier. The experiment turned the dogs into victims of an unpleasant situation, and in doing so they were trained to become passive and pessimistic.

The positive effects of an optimistic outlook are far greater than most of us assume. For instance, compared with their pessimistic peers, optimists are generally healthier.

Why is this?

At this point in history, the Western world is witnessing an epidemic of depression: at any given moment, approximately 25 percent of the population is experiencing some form of depression.

But what are the causes of depression?

As we've seen, optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles have a huge influence on performance. One area where this is particularly true is competitive sports. Given two teams that are equal in every other respect, the optimistic team will always outperform the pessimistic team, especially after a prior defeat.

Consider, for example, a study by Seligman and his colleagues, in which they rated the optimism of baseball teams across two different seasons. Keep in mind that, in terms of players, both teams were equally talented.

Even if you're not a big-shot athlete, you're more likely to overcome the challenges in your life if you use an optimistic explanatory style.

This benefit can be seen even in children, as those with an optimistic style do better in the classroom than their pessimistic peers.

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.

Now that you’ve seen the devastating effects a pessimistic explanatory style can have on your life, you might reasonably wonder: “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.

Our beliefs about a situation will determine both its consequences and how we feel about the situation. So, by changing our beliefs, we also change these consequences and our feelings.

While it's difficult to ascertain which of our beliefs are “true,” it's clear that how we think about negative events greatly influences how they affect us.

As we've seen, optimists interpret stressful situations as being specific, temporary and externally caused. Is this how you tend to respond to such situations? If not, you're in luck, as there are several ways that you can begin to change your 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: