Dr. Joel Wade

Today I want to put Learned Optimism in a form that you can teach to your kids. For more detail on this, I recommend The Optimistic Child, by Martin Seligman. The information in today’s column is drawn from that excellent book.

Before you do this, take some time to explore your own internal dialogue. You are modeling optimism or pessimism for your kids all the time, and the best way for you to teach them optimism is to embody it yourself a lot of the time (perfection is not necessary). See my past columns on learned optimism – ‘What You Say to Yourself Matters‘, and ‘Know Your ABCs‘ — and play with the suggestions here as well. Once you are comfortable with the principles, here’s what to do to begin teaching your kids:

Happiness has often been seen as light, fun, playful, and superficial, and portrayed as sort of whimsical, as though serious people shouldn’t take happiness very seriously. I see it differently. I think our capacity to develop and earn a sense of happiness in life is a primary feedback mechanism for our own individual success in living, and our continued growth and consciousness as a species.

Virtue comes from the Latin Virtus, meaning manliness, excellence, goodness. Happiness is a virtue, first and foremost, because it takes virtuous choices and behavior to create a happy life.

Imagine if all of your problems were gone. Imagine if all of your negative impulses were completely tamed, if all of your bad habits were stopped. Imagine if everything negative in your behavior, your thoughts, your emotions were brought to neutral. Would that bring you happiness?

I don’t think so.

Much as we tend to focus on our shortcomings, other people’s shortcomings, all of the symptoms and vices that make life more difficult than it might be, eliminating the negatives is not what gives life most of its meaning. A neutral life is not a rich life.

I want to revisit the concept of learned optimism this week, building on what I said in ‘Know Your ABCs‘.

There are people who have literally made the best out of existence in a concentration camp, while there are others who have lives overflowing with blessings yet can find nothing good to say about their situation. There are people who live in miserable conditions, but who even so would consider themselves happy. There are people who in the midst of an abundance of love, health, and opportunities, feel as miserable as the before-mentioned folks should feel.

Why is this so?

Do you long for the good old days, when life was simpler, people were healthier, air was cleaner, people were more prosperous on one income than they are now on two, morality was stronger, the world was more civilized, our country was freer, and there was greater opportunity for the innovative mind?

If you are longing for these things as though they existed in a more idyllic past, you are mistaken. Every one of these qualities of life has not just improved, but has improved dramatically over the past 50 years. I recommend to you Gregg Easterbrook’s book The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse.

I want to recommend book to you, Aging Well, by George Vaillant. Vaillant is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a longitudinal study that has followed a group of men in great detail from their time as Harvard undergraduates throughout their lives into old age. In this book he draws upon this study and two other longitudinal studies, one of gifted women, and one of inner city men, and finds that much of what we have heard about growing old well is not exactly true.

It can be helpful to think of your ethical principles as non-reversible commitments to yourself.

I have referred in the past to Barry Schwartz’s fantastic book The Paradox of Choice. My point in that column was that it is useful when making a commitment, as much as possible, to make that commitment non-reversible.

This is not always appropriate, of course. There is much to be said for the freedom to change one’s mind. But there is so much anxiety that can be created by continually considering and re-considering the decisions and commitments you have made; wondering whether there might be something better: a better mate, a better house, a better car, a better job, a better stereo system. A person can spend far too much time second-guessing what he or she has committed to.

Remember the old traditional marriage vows? “…For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

There are good reasons for these words, and other words of commitment like them, and these reasons are not just the ones you might think.

Of course there’s the obvious element of duty, of keeping your commitments to others to establish trust and to maintain an honorable reputation – with yourself as well as with others.

Then there’s the recognition that others are counting on you, and that your success or failure at sticking with your commitment to them will affect their lives, particularly when children are involved.

Martin Seligman pioneered the understanding of what is called “learned helplessness. He found that animals and people could get so used to not being able to act to improve their situation that they simply give up. This was a very important contribution to our understanding of depression and passivity.

In his book, Learned Optimism, he demonstrates how to learn, not helplessness, but its antithesis: optimism. The benefits of learning optimism are substantial. The studies have shown that there can be a difference of eight years between the life span of an optimistic person and that of a pessimistic person.

The optimist, of course, lives longer.

When one learns to be more optimistic, one can also expect to be healthier in general, to suffer less from depression, and to be more effective in one’s life. Optimists are happier and more resilient.

“Father, what is honor?”
“Honor, Son, is the gift that a man gives to himself.”
–from the 1995 movie “Rob Roy”

When you think of a person of integrity, what do you think of? Probably someone who is honest, who follows through on his or her commitments, who does what’s right even when it’s difficult, who walks his walk and talks his talk.

A simple way of thinking about integrity is congruence.

Integrity means that the various elements of your self are not disconnected or scattered about. What you believe is congruent with what you say. What you say is congruent with what you do.

What do you believe? What do you value? What is meaningful to you?