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1) – LEARNED OPTIMISM by Martin EP Seligman
This was recommended to me as a difference to the usual “mindfulness” stuff that people keeping saying one should do, but which doesn’t work for me. Essentially Seligman had noted that removing negative feelings doesn’t cause a rise in positive feelings, because they need to be controlled separately, and aren’t just opposites on a set of scales. He also wanted to stem the burgeoning youth depression, because chemical therapy didn’t seem to work on children, and he didn’t want to be to doping up America’s kids. Which of course eventually did happen.
Anyway, so he came up with questionnaires to work out whether one could benefit from his techniques about the Pleasant Life (being OK with where you are), the Engaged Life (being the best you you can be), and the Meaningful Life (being the best person for others and wider society). And those bits in the middle of the book are relatively interesting – as well as a nice change from mindfulness – even if they don’t apply to all of us. In fact they seem to be aimed at younger adults starting families, which ain’t me. The book goes with pessimists always assuming disaster is their fault, and optimists that it’s always other people’s fault. In fact they tend to be a mixture, for me, anyway. and the second option, which he categorises as the optimistic one, is more a tell of the psychopath in The Psychopath Test. Hey, Psychologist-duel!
The biggest problem the book has as a book, though, is that at least a third of it is padded out to buggery with the history of the author’s career, and how positive and negative thinking has affected US politics and sports. None of which matters to me. So, really, it needs a cliff-notes bare-bones version very, very strongly.
This was recommended to me as a difference to the usual “mindfulness” stuff that people keeping saying one should do, but which doesn’t work for me. Essentially Seligman had noted that removing negative feelings doesn’t cause a rise in positive feelings, because they need to be controlled separately, and aren’t just opposites on a set of scales. He also wanted to stem the burgeoning youth depression, because chemical therapy didn’t seem to work on children, and he didn’t want to be to doping up America’s kids. Which of course eventually did happen.
Anyway, so he came up with questionnaires to work out whether one could benefit from his techniques about the Pleasant Life (being OK with where you are), the Engaged Life (being the best you you can be), and the Meaningful Life (being the best person for others and wider society). And those bits in the middle of the book are relatively interesting – as well as a nice change from mindfulness – even if they don’t apply to all of us. In fact they seem to be aimed at younger adults starting families, which ain’t me. The book goes with pessimists always assuming disaster is their fault, and optimists that it’s always other people’s fault. In fact they tend to be a mixture, for me, anyway. and the second option, which he categorises as the optimistic one, is more a tell of the psychopath in The Psychopath Test. Hey, Psychologist-duel!
The biggest problem the book has as a book, though, is that at least a third of it is padded out to buggery with the history of the author’s career, and how positive and negative thinking has affected US politics and sports. None of which matters to me. So, really, it needs a cliff-notes bare-bones version very, very strongly.