How to Cure America

U Penn Professor Martin Seligman asked the age old question …

“Are optimists truly more likely to succeed than pessimists?”

On the surface this may seem like a rather unimportant, and ultimately unanswerable, question.  It is neither.

Seligman and his team at U Penn devised rather ingenious experiments that revealed:

• optimists are healthier
• optimists are more successful
• optimists have better relationships
• optimism can be learned
• pessimism can be un-learned
• once learned, the results are permanent (!!)

The “unlearning” boils down to what he calls “explanatory style.”  How we explain the events in our lives, it turns out, is extremely important.

Contrast this with the “learned helplessness” that plagues so many people in America today.  Indeed, an entire culture seems to be cropping up around teaching people to see themselves as victims, and to focus on the external causes of suffering.

Seligman’s work is the antidote to this plague.

I challenge you to share this Simpleology Summary of Seligman’s seminal book Learned Optimism with the most pessimistic people you know.  In it they will discover:

• the “three P’s” of explanatory style
• the very simple process that cures pessimism permanently
• the “ABCDE” framework that instantly turns any negative mood into a positive one

Imagine what the world would be like if everyone had these simple, but profoundly powerful, tools …