Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life

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

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 discussion 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