Feeling a little down, pessimistic, or (shudder) DEPRESSED?

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It’s Time to learn optimism!

In his great book, Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman reminds us: “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.”

Powerful stuff. In our most recent PN TV episode , I share some of my favorite Big Ideas on how we can go about “learning optimism” and why we should care.

Big Idea

Optimism vs. Positive Thinking

“Learned optimism is not a rediscovery of the ‘power of positive thinking.’ … Changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience the setbacks that life deals all of us is the central skill of optimism.”

From a scientific perspective, “optimism” does not equal positive thinking.

It’s all about the way you interpret something that happens to you and changing what you say to yourself when things aren’t going the way you’d like.

Seligman says we need to work on our “explanatory styles” and in the PN TV episode , I talk more about this and hope you enjoy it!

“Pessimists can in fact learn to be optimists, and not through the mindless devices like whistling a happy tune of mouthing platitudes (‘Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better’), but by learning a new set of cognitive skills.”