Although we most likely live in the greatest time of abundance in history, negative emotions are so infectious that people can still feel like they are drowning in a sea of worry. Collective pessimism makes them susceptible to falling victim to learned helplessness, which is often the cause of depression.

How can you resist being infected by negative emotions? How can you avoid the loop of learned helplessness? How can you better capitalize on the advantages of today’s world? What steps can you take to not only become happy but stay that way?

First, you will discover how the loop of learned helplessness originates and then you will learn to overcome it. To deal with it you will have to consciously switch your focus from negative stimuli to positive ones.

Martin Seligman’s research demonstrates that just a few negative experiences can convince you that everything is bad and there is nothing you can do about it. This conviction can lead to depression and resignation.

In one experiment he put a rodent into a box (let’s say it was a hamster), and then covered the box with a transparent cover. The hamster tried to get out. The first day it jumped and jumped but kept hitting its head on the clear cover. The second day its attempts at escape were more subdued.

After a few days the hamster gave up entirely. Researchers then removed the cover, but the hamster never tried to jump out. After failing a few times, it became convinced that it had no chance of success. Even though the conditions had changed, the hamster was still convinced about the inescapability of its situation. The state this hamster was in is known as learned helplessness, and it is something we too can encounter.

Unhappiness and feeling that “you aren’t good enough” are typical responses to being in a state of helplessness. To help better illustrate the point, we are going to refer to being in this state as having a “hamster.” Thus, when we write that someone “has a hamster” or that they have “caught a hamster,” it should be pretty clear what we have in mind. If you want to be happier in life, you need to learn how to hunt down and get rid of hamsters.

*نقاشی از Michael Prescott. وب‌لاگِ این مرد شریف :) : Michael Prescott's Blog (کلیک)