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п»ї<title>A journey to realistic optimism from the hand of Seligman.</title>
"If all we had were positive emotions, our species would have died out long ago." So speaks Martin Seligman, whose theory of realistic or learned optimism we are approaching today. What does the psychologist mean by these words?
Actually, it is simple. Seligman does not believe in those people who seem to live in a constant state of naive optimism and constant happiness. But neither does he consider it logical and healthy to fall into persistent discouragement and pessimism. This psychologist considers that the ideal state of the human being is a realistic, learned and positive optimism, capable of seeing setbacks as a temporary and limited challenge.
Who is Martin Seligman? Before continuing, we make a brief introduction to the profile and work of the writer and psychologist Martin Seligman. It is important to emphasize that this researcher is known for his work in the field of learned helplessness. A mental state that is linked to the most endemic mental illness: depression.
In addition, Seligman has worked extensively in the field of positive psychology. In recent years, this director of the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania has focused his studies on the field of optimism.
Anyone who wants to learn more about his studies and research can read his works, many of which have been translated into Spanish. Aprenda Optimismo, la PsicologГa Positiva or El NiГ±o Optimista are perhaps the ones that have been most widely read by the non-specialized public and perfectly reflect the author's interest in disseminating his work.
Seligman's realistic optimismIn his early years as a researcher, Martin Seligman was experimenting with dogs. There he discovered that most of these animals were susceptible to entering a state of learned helplessness. Faced with negative stimuli and the impossibility of avoiding them, there came a time when the dogs stopped trying to avoid the stimulation and surrendered to suffering it.
However, Seligman observed that not all dogs took the same amount of time to surrender and that not all dogs were affected in the same way by the fact that they could not perform behaviors contingent on the appearance or disappearance of the stimulus.
Obviously, Seligman began to adapt these findings to the field of human psychology. And there he discovered how people reacted to different stimuli. Both positively and negatively, these discoveries fascinated the psychologist.
Results of Seligman's studiesAfter years of work, Seligman discovered that every human being can succumb to learned helplessness. In the same way, he found that we are also capable of possessing a realistic, unnatural optimism, which we acquire from observation and learning from direct experimentation with reality.
This learned optimism controls the processes of interpretation that our mind performs, both those performed on the past and those performed on the present. It also influences how we set our future expectations and the degree of frustration that failure to meet them can cause.
"Our strengths and virtues work against misfortune and against psychological disorders, and are the key to increasing resilience."
-Martin Seligman
Pessimism vs. optimismSeligman states that, through an exercise of association with past positive experiences, we can develop the habit of realistic optimism. One activity he advises to consolidate this optimism is to write down three positive elements of the day, what he considers to be the Three Blessings.
However, Seligman does not believe that optimism is valuable in all cases. The absence of the optimistic lens in certain circumstances is necessary. Especially when the risk or loss is or may be great, he recommends letting go of optimism.
"Habits of thought need not persist forever. One of the most significant findings of psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals choose how they think."
-Martin Seligman
In other words, Seligman validates the activity that realistic optimism can generate, as opposed to the passivity that naГЇve optimism can generate in order to respond to the challenges that day-to-day life poses. Regarding optimism and pessimism, in terms of how they condition our mental functioning, he speaks of them in the following terms:
Optimism: we react to setbacks by assuming our personal capacity, knowing that they are temporary, particular and require effort and skill to be overcome.
Pessimism: we react with a certain personal helplessness, knowing that setbacks are long. We tend to blame ourselves.
For Seligman, the personal decision of each individual is vital. We are beings with the potential to be active in the face of stimuli, at least before we enter a state of helplessness. The positive thing is that our environment is often rich in tools and resources for optimism to act as the support of our motivation, as opposed to the temptation to give up that pessimism feeds.
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