The drive to resist compulsion is more important in wild animals than sex, food, or water. He found that captive white-footed mice spent inordinate time and energy just resisting experimental manipulation. If the experimenters turned the lights up, the mouse spent his time turning them down. If the experimenter turned the lights down, the mouse turned them up. The drive for competence or to resist compulsion is a drive to avoid helplessness.
—Martin Seligman
Topics: Control
Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter.
—Martin Seligman
Topics: Belief
Success requires persistence, the ability to not give up in the face of failure. I believe that optimistic explanatory style is the key to persistence.
—Martin Seligman
Topics: Failure, Believe, Fail, Give, Learn, Persistence, Success
It’s a matter of ABC: When we encounter ADVERSITY, we react by thinking about it. Our thoughts rapidly congeal into BELIEFS. These beliefs may become so habitual we don’t even realize we have them unless we stop to focus on them. And they don’t just sit there idly; they have CONSEQUENCES. The beliefs are the direct cause of what we feel and what we do next. They can spell the difference between dejection and giving up, on the one hand, and well-being and constructive action on the other. The first step is to see the connection between adversity, belief, and consequence. The second step is to see how the ABCs operate every day in your own life.
—Martin Seligman
Topics: Adversity
Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.
—Martin Seligman
Topics: Thinking
I believe that traditional wisdom is incomplete. A composer can have all the talent of Mozart and a passionate desire to succeed, but if he believes he cannot compose music, he will come to nothing. He will not try hard enough. He will give up too soon when the elusive right melody takes too long to materialize.
—Martin Seligman
Topics: Try, Believe, Talent, Wisdom, Music, Passion, Learn, Give, Desire
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Timothy Leary American Psychologist
- B. F. Skinner American Psychologist
- Howard Gardner American Psychologist
- Abraham Maslow American Psychologist
- George W. Crane American Psychologist
- Carl Rogers American Psychologist
- Orval Hobart Mowrer American Psychologist
- Bruno Bettelheim Austrian-born Psychoanalyst
- Erich Fromm German Social Philosopher
- Erik Erikson German-born American Psychoanalyst
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