Sublime

In human beings, Seligman observed, learned helplessness was usually a function of people’s “explanatory style”—their habit of explaining negative events to themselves. Think of explanatory style as a form of self-talk that occurs after (rather than before) an experience. People who give up easily, who become helpless even in situations where they

Because of their growth mindset, they did not feel permanently branded. Because of it, they tried to learn something useful about themselves and relationships, something they could use toward having a better experience in the future.

Such a belief system makes individual failure almost inconsolable.

This is the central prediction from my theory: People who have a pessimistic explanatory style and suffer bad events will probably become depressed, whereas people who have an optimistic explanatory style and suffer bad events will tend to resist depression.

ABCDE model. A stands for adversity, B for the beliefs you automatically have when it occurs, C for the usual consequences of the belief, D for your disputation of your routine belief, and E for the energization that occurs when you dispute it successfully.

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

Adlerian psychology is a psychology of courage. Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.

Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl describes our attitudes and reactions as being the last of our human freedoms.