22 - Learned Helplessness and Learned Optimism - Unleash Awesomeness

<a href="https://imgur.com/EFGcxzX"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/EFGcxzX.png" title="source: imgur.com" /></a> We all experience learned helplessness in our lives much to our own detriment. Yet most people don't even know what it is. Sam breaks down what the effect is, from how it was discovered to what you can do about it. This episode helps us learn more traits to boost our growth mindset with the goal of making you a more positive and strategic thinker able to look at the bigger picture and less caught up in the problems life throws at us. BACKGROUND It was discovered by Marting Seligman. He restrained dogs in a box and then gave them an electric shock at the same time as ringing a bell. After repeating this the dogs learned they would get a shock every time they heard the bell. He then put them in a box with a small fence they could jump over. on the other side of the fence would not get a shock when the bell rang. However, when the bell rang they just cowered and accepted the shock. If he put a different dog in the box that had not received the electric shocks before it would try to escape and quickly learn that when the bell rang it would be safe on one side of the box and not on the other. <a href="https://imgur.com/9n8EWi6"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/9n8EWi6.png" title="source: imgur.com" /></a> This has been demonstrated with other animal studies such as rats and even elephants and just in teh last few years in zebrafish and tree-shrews. They found that elelphant trainers would tie a young elephant to a post and it would struggle to try and escape the rope. For hours and days they might pull against it before giving up. However, once they gave up they wouldn’t test it again. So once teh elephant becomes an adult that can rip up tree’s and knock down walls, if you tie it to the post it was tied to as a child it gives up and sits down until it’s released. amazing! LEARNED HELPLESSNESS IN HUMANS Learned helplessness in extreme scenarios has not been experimented on with humans but it has been proven t