“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”– Roy T. Bennet
Optimism is hopefulness and confidence about the future or the success of something. Being an optimist doesn’t require life to be a bed of roses, or that you have an amazing childhood or that your life is already wonderful.
The truth is, we are all in a gutter of some sort at any given time. Right now, our gutter is this Covid-19 pandemic, this crisis sees no colour, gender, race, creed or country. It affects everyone who is alive right now. You see, we’re all in a gutter, but the difference is that some of us are looking at the stars. Looking at the stars makes you focus on the bright side of things, obviously not ignoring the dark side but choosing to focus on the bright side and that’s what optimism is all about.
So, learned helplessness is a behaviour exhibited by someone after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. This is when a person has accepted their powerlessness, discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive or unfavourable situation even when the alternatives are clearly presented.
American psychologist Martin Seligman said, “One of the most important findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.” This means that if you can learn pessimism, you can also learn optimism. This led to his theory called learned optimism. Learned optimism is more about changing the fundamental way we communicate with ourselves. If you haven’t noticed, we’re always talking to ourselves in our heads and he called that explanatory style.
