After reading Learned Optimism : How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Martin P. Seligman, I was struck by the concept of learned helplessness and it’s impact upon people’s lives. Martin describes learned helplessness as:
“the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter”
Each of us begins our lives in helplessness, this feeling of helplessness is often reinforced by our families, schools, organisations and society. This thinking style is created through exposure to uncontrollable events and can additionally be developed by failure and defeat. The more we feel we are not able to influence or produce the results we want in organisations and society, the more likely we are to adopt a helpless style of thinking. Learned helplessness manifests itself in our thinking process, specifically the habitual way in which we explain bad events. There are three crucial dimensions in our thinking which affects our tendency towards helplessness, these are:
- Permanence This is thinking that bad events which happen to us are permanent, and that they will always affect our lives. Those who resist helplessness see the cause of bad events as temporary. Do you think in always’s and never’s or sometime’s and lately’s?
- Pervasiveness: Specific vs. Universal Whereas permanence is about time, pervasiveness is about space. People who suffer from learned helplessness tend to catastrophize, seeing failures as affecting the whole of their lives and not just a specific area of their lives. They give up everything if a bad event strikes one area of their lives.
“People who make permanent and universal explanations for their troubles tend to collapse under pressure, both for a long time and across situations.”
- Personalization: Internal vs External This is about who we blame for bad events, either blame ourselves or other people and circumstances. People with a tendency towards helplessness internalize and blame themselves for bad events.
The key to breaking out of the learned helplessness style is to change our thinking.
“Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.”
I found the book really helpful and would recommend it to anyone who can identify with the learned helplessness thinking style and requires additional assistance.
Technorati Tags: Optimism, Book, Personal Development, Personal Leadership
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