Learned Optimism: How to Change your Mind and your Life (Martin E.P. Seligman)
ISBN-10: 1400078393.
If you'd like to learn how to become more optimistic (or even if you're just curious about what optimism is really all about) then this book is well worth a read. Seligman includes a couple of questionnaires so you can test your own level of optimism or pessimism and there's even a quick depression test - just to check whether you should in fact be reaching for the Prozac. So is it all just happy clappy nonsense? Absolutely not. Seligman's a bright chap with letters after his name who's devoted his entire professional life (about 40 years so far) working in this field and there's plenty of science and data in the book for any sceptics. We don't want to give too much away because you really should read the book for yourself and take the tests. Fundamentally it's all about your "explanatory style" - that little voice in your head (you hear that too? phew!) when things go wrong. What do you say to yourself to explain setbacks? Pessimists tend to have a pessimistic style of explaining bad events to themselves. They view them as: permanent (I always make a mess of pitches and I'm never any good at them); pervasive (in fact I'm not good at any sort of presentations); and personal (it's entirely my fault my fault that we lost that pitch). Optimists on the other hand tend to explain bad events as: temporary (hey, we never won that pitch but there's another one next week); specific (our performance on that particular pitch wasn't our best); and external (the pitch panel members were in a really bad mood that afternoon and took a strong dislike to one of my colleagues). Oh and by the way, optimists tend to explain postive events to themselves as permanent, pervasive and personal while pessimists do the opposite. So not only do the optimists cope better with bad events, they capitilise more on good ones. Read this book and learn to become an optimist.
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