Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.
This month we’re exploring agency.
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We are creatures shaped by experience.
Through trial and error, we learn what works and what doesn’t, and carry those lessons into the future.
This typically serves us well, it’s how we learn, grow, and perfect ourselves.
But sometimes the lessons can mislead.
Instead of looking into why something did or did not work, we begin to build a narrative about ourselves.
Maybe we apply for a job and are rejected.
Maybe we try to lose weight but don’t see the results we hoped for.
Maybe we take a stand for ourselves and it backfires.
In these moments, a conclusion begins to form, and it is this story that we carry with us.
Maybe I’m not meant for this.
Maybe I’m not good enough.
Maybe I shouldn’t try.
Rather than examine what actually went wrong, we personalize the experience and allow it to define what is possible for our future.
In the 1960s, the psychologist Martin Seligman was trying to learn about fear, conditioning, and control.
He and his colleague Steven Maier setup three groups of dogs:
Group 1 could stop an electrical shock with a button.
Group 2 had no button to stop the electrical shock.
Group 3 received no electrical shock at all.
After the dogs went through the initial phase, they were each put into a box with a small barrier. When the shock was applied, they could easily jump over the barrier and escape it.
Surprisingly, only the dogs in Groups 1 and 3 jumped over the barrier when the shocks were applied. Group 2 dogs, the ones who from the previous test had no button to press to escape the shocks, succumbed to their fate and didn’t attempt to escape.
Seligman came to understand that it was the dog’s belief that they could do nothing about the shock that drove their lack of action.
They had learned that nothing they did mattered, that even when in a new scenario with an opportunity to escape, they didn’t try.
This is what Seligman coined as learned helplessness.
When living beings are subjected to repeated negative events, they can begin to see effort as useless, even when circumstances change.
We each will encounter similar situations within our own lives.
A rejection becomes proof we should stop applying.
A failed attempt at a goal is proof we never should have tried.
A hard conversation becomes proof we not have spoken up.
We too often see our experiences as zero-sum contests—I either succeeded or I failed.
Rather, they should be seen for what they are, practice for strengthening underdeveloped muscles.
A baby does not walk on their first attempt.
A professional piano player does not perform at Carnegie Hall for their first concert.
A NFL athlete does not catch a football the first time they step on the field.
Growth happens through repetition, regardless of success or failure.
Failure is not unusual. Life is filled with taking risks and strengthening our muscles—physical, mental, emotional—as we try to succeed. It is about repetition, adjustment, and learning.
Later in his career, Seligman proposed an antidote: learned optimism.
If helplessness could be learned, then perhaps optimism could be too.
Why are some people resilient while others aren’t? Why do some people bounce back from setbacks while others crumble under them?
Seligman discovered that the ones who bounced back, who didn’t let the event hold them down or prevent them from trying again, interpreted failure differently.
When we encounter a setback, we typically explain it in three ways:
Permanence: how long it will last.
Pervasiveness: how much of our life it will affect.
Personalization: whose fault it is.
Pessimists tend to see the events as permanent, pervasive, and personal. They see them extending out, affecting their life, and blaming themselves.
Optimists, on the other hand, see these events as temporary, limited, and contextual.
This isn’t blind optimism, however. It is much more akin to how the Stoics advised careful reflection of the judgments we make. It is hardly ever an event that harms us, rather, the judgments we attach to them that lead us to create narratives about ourselves. Likewise, learned optimism asks us to question and challenge the explanations we’re telling ourselves.
If we hold a negative feeling or emotion, we must investigate it and see why, really challenge the explanations we are giving for ourselves.
Helplessness does not spring forth from nowhere. It builds over time, through the conclusions we make of the events we encounter.
The trap is, a few failures can easily feel like a pattern, and a pattern can turn into a belief.
And when this happens, we may not even see the open door sitting right before us.
Not because escape is impossible, but because we’ve quietly decided it is.
Before you go…
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Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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