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"My aunt Beulah used to call it making an Oops into an Opportunity." -Nancy Jarecki, "Head Strong", Vogue, February, 2011
One of my heroes is Dr. Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism and father of the positive psychology movement. Dr. Seligman has been influential in turning the therapeutic community from identifying pathology to instead identifying what works.
While working as a young researcher in an animal lab, Seligman coined the phrase "learned helplessness." He used this phrase to describe the behavior of the lab dogs who he believed had "given up" trying to avoid or change their situations because they seemed powerless to do so. Later, Seligman applied his observations to people and began to study the differences between those who believed they were powerless (pessimistic) and those who believed they could affect their own fates (optimistic).
And, by the way, he stopped doing research with animals.
After many years of developing his theory, Seligman now suggests that optimism can improve health, enable achievement, and guard against depression. And, he believes optimism can be learned and practiced. It's all in how we train ourselves to think about life's problems and events.
In other words, are you a person who routinely makes an oops into an opportunity or do you wallow in the oops?
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