Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.232
EAN num: 9780671019112
ISBN number: 0671019112
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: March 01, 1998
Publishing house: Free Press
Sale Popularity Level: 19557
Studio: Free Press
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Product Description:
You can significantly improve your life -- starting today -- with the power of
Learned Optimism
In this groundbreaking national bestseller, Martin E.P. Seligman shows you how to chart a new approach to living with 'flexible optimism.' Drawing from more than twenty years of clinical research, Dr. Seligman outlines easy-to-follow techniques that have helped thousands of people rise above pessimism and the depression that accompanies negative thoughts and build a life of rewards and lasting happiness. Learned Optimism shows you how to: recognize your 'explanatory style' -- what to say to yourself when you experience set-backs -- and how it influences your life boost your mood and your immune system -- with healthful thoughts help your children to practice the thought patterns that encourage optimism break the 'I-give-up' habit with Dr. Seligman's ABC techniques change your interior dialogue and experience the astonishing positive results
Amazon.com Review:
Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist and clinical researcher, has been studying optimists and pessimists for 25 years. Pessimists believe that bad events are their fault, will last a long time, and undermine everything. They feel helpless and may sink into depression, which is epidemic today, especially among youths. Optimists, on the other hand, believe that defeat is a temporary setback or a challenge--it doesn't knock them down. 'Pessimism is escapable,' asserts Seligman, by learning a new set of cognitive skills that will enable you to take charge, resist depression, and make yourself feel better and accomplish more.
About two-thirds of this book is a psychological discusion of pessimism, optimism, learned helplessness (giving up because you feel unable to change things), explanatory style (how you habitually explain to yourself why events happen), and depression, and how these affect success, health, and quality of life. Seligman supports his points with animal research and human cases. He includes tests for you and your child--whose achievement may be related more to his or her level of optimism/pessimism than ability. The final chapters teach the skills of changing from pessimism to optimism, with worksheet pages to guide you and your child. --Joan Price
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Rated by buyers 
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I got this book with great hope in it's title. I'd hoped for something motivating and inspiring but it was a great disappointment. The author spends most of the book talking about his awards and recognitions for this or that and little if anything actually helping a negative thinker be optimistic. I saved chapter 15, I think, and discarded the rest of the book, something I NEVER do. Stick with Tony Robbins' Awaken The Giant Within, much better read, much more advice on being optimistic.
Rated by buyers 
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This book tells how to be more optimistic and gives solid scientific reasons why depression is associated with feelings of helplessness. In my search to achieve a more positive and productive life I have read many self-help books. Most are theories devoid of any compelling scientific rationale. Once you are exposed to the ideas in Learned Optimism you find them so rational that they become second nature. I knew of cognitive therapy but never the research that preceded it. I find that knowing the research behind the theory makes the mechanics of cognitive therapy totally intuitive.
Don't be put-off by the tests that comprise chapters three and four. These are useful, scientifically proven tests that have little in common with the tests that litter the average self-help book.
If there are any flaws in this book it may be the overuse of dialogs demonstrating how to learn to be an optimist. These are useful for those not familiar with cognitive therapy but I found them a bit repetitive.
Rated by buyers 
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I found out that a) I am a pragmatic realist w/ an optimist's bent and b)if i choose to apply what I've read it can make a difference in my outlook and in everyday as well as professional problem solving.
Rated by buyers -
Learned Optimism is a - sometimes uneasy - mix of the theoretical and the practical. Seligman is clearly captivated by his subject, which he has made his life's work. Not surprisingly then, he sees the value of an optimistic outlook in every aspect of life. It's not just that optimists do better than pessimists at school, work and sports, but they even live longer. Seligman makes the case that "the arrow points both ways": that pessimism is not a consequence but also a contributing cause of depression and that an optimistic "explanatory style" for the misfortunes of life, large and small, can actually prevent a descent into morbid depression. He even says he can predict the outcome of elections by analyzing the explanatory styles of the competing candidates - because in a head-to-head contest the most optimistic candidate will prevail.
In Part 1 of the book he lays out the theoretical case for optimism and the techniques by which it can be measured. In Part 2 he describes how the optimist's advantage is played out in the different "realms of life", such as work, sports, politics, etc. In Part 3, he explains self-help techniques for moving from pessimism to optimism.
I found Part 1 the most interesting - not least because I got to fill out a couple of tests to help me discern my explanatory style and determine if I was currently depressed (and how deeply). It turns out I am moderately optimistic about bad events and moderately pessimistic about good ones. But I am not at all depressed, so I guess I must have learned to live with the contradiction.
Part 3 gets us into the land of the light bulb joke (where to change, the light bulb must truly desire change). I am convinced from my own experience that optimism is like a muscle that can be worked and strengthened. I also recognized in Seligman's techniques ones that I had stumbled onto myself.
In the final analysis, whether the reader will find reading Learned Optimism helpful will depend on the reader. Judging by the Amazon reviews, the experience for some will be life-changing; for others not so. Perhaps underlying explanatory style may have something to do with that. Perhaps also a self-help book is not the best therapy for the truly, deeply depressed (as the book suggests, you can improve your outlook but you have to be motivated to start a mental workout routine and stick with it to see the positive results). However there is much to learn here and I would not hesitate to recommend the book to anyone interested in understanding more about the origin and effect of individual explanatory styles - including one's own - and what can be done to change them.
Rated by buyers -
It is refreshing to read a book like this showing people can change to being more optimistic, rather than all those books out there trying to convince people they have depression and they can't do anything about it but take pills for the rest of their lives.
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