I’ve come to realise that certain seasons in my life are marked with emotional turbulence. And this particularly happens when I cross certain thresholds, certain essential markers of life.

Like birthdays.

I approach birthdays with a mixture of joy and despondency. It’s terrible, I know, and I should work towards it, but currently, my birthdays are always ladled with fears of impending doom. Like a precursor to midlife crises, my late teens and now twenties are choked with fears that each year that passes is a wasted year; that each season paints a picture of the nothingness that I am made of, that each year draws me closer to the mediocrity I so desperately detest.

Birthdays remind me of all the times when I have, both intentionally and unintentionally, worked against myself. Times that I have spent scrolling on social media when I should have been studying. Times that I have spent posting memes when I should have been carving a future for myself. Times that I have spent sleeping and lazing away, slagging at chores and feeling undeservedly overwhelmed and exhausted whilst my mates toiled away, making themselves relevant. Seasons that I misunderstood, opportunities that I missed, the ever-existing concept of the mortality of man, of the fact that one day, I’ll be a forty-year-old woman, looking back at her twenty-year-old self.

During birthdays, I fear that my forty-year-old self would cringe and slap her forehead at the thought of how she wasted her life in her twenties, and shake her head in dismay and disappointment. Maybe even cry.

I’ll be turning 21 soon, or would have turned by the time you see this post, and once again, the all too familiar fears are coming with a vengeance. My mind has pointed me to the reasons why the period between my past birthday and my current one has not really been the best of years. It has come close to convincing me that I have wasted the entire period of time that I was twenty. My mind desperately tries to make me believe that I have achieved nothing and even the little that I have achieved means nothing. And, in the opinion of the plaguing thoughts I have, all the checkers for the sort of woman I want to be, remain, for the most part, unchecked.

And it sucks. So I feel terrible.

Just recently, I found myself thinking of taking a studio picture to celebrate my birthday, of smiling in a way that seems almost deceptive. I saw a TikTok video that I might like to post. I mentally scrolled through my gallery looking for pictures where I appear happy and satisfied, the accomplished girl a lot of people see me as. And then, just as I was about to get excited, my brain made up a convoluted reason as to how stupid all that was. The post of how I am becoming the woman I want to be that I might make, the birthday wishes I’d reply, the baseless remarks about a joy it tells me that I should not feel, ecstasy that I do not deserve to experience. So now, I feel hollow. And I have whipped up my laptop and decided that I am going to talk about this. About the negative thoughts that continue to war against my sanity, and of the resolution I have taken against it.

Maybe I am doing so in a futile attempt in hopes that I might find that I am not the only one who feels this way, that my mates do not all have the perfect lives that I view them as having. That, just like I am, many of them have very vague career plans, are experiencing many new highs and new lows, new discoveries, new wins and new failures. That just like me, my mates all have dreams of success, but none have a very clear and direct blueprint on how to achieve this, just hopes and a very indistinct pathway to a very clear goal.

Maybe I’ll feel better, then. And all the negative thoughts will disappear.

Or maybe not. After all, I know that as long as you are a Christian working towards your purpose, negative thoughts are always going to be a way the devil gets to shoot at you, weigh you down, and put you in that particular mental state that serves as one of the hindrances to the goals and dreams that you have in mind. It’ll take more than just an affirmation, a validation of your thoughts and feelings for them to fade away. And I do want them to fade away, because, I had a premonition in between the rivers of self-pity that I had dived into and realised that negative thoughts really do nothing for me, or anyone for that matter.

What on earth does anyone gain by feeling bad for the time wasted, for the mistakes made? For all in the world, it robs one of the time one could have used correcting that mistake. And what does anyone gain by spending their time wallowing in fear of the unknown? In fear of failure? What role does that play in making anyone successful?

Don’t get me wrong. I know that there is a part that feeling bad about one’s actions plays in terms of making the person a better person in the end. I know that it’s only when a person hates the situation that he is in that he truly can begin to take steps to change it. It’s only when a person feels sick of his state of being that he can begin to alter it. But I also know that most of the time, we let the devil use these thoughts to achieve the exact opposite, creating a scenario wherein the more we feel terrible about ourselves, the more we do things that will make us feel even more terrible about ourselves in the future, and then it turns into a never-ending cycle of feeling like a terrible person until we die, truly the useless and mediocre person we feared that we were becoming.

That’s the part that terrifies me. Therefore, I have resolved to take a conscious step daily with the help of the Holy Spirit to war against this mind that often works in equal parts against me as the rest of my body does at certain times. I refuse to give in to the negative thoughts, make them weigh me down and make me even more unproductive, just like the devil intends. I refuse to let myself become so consumed with fears that I begin to manifest the very fears that consume me. I refuse to let the devil win this battle against my mind.

Because, in the end, amidst the dark nights of the soul, I know that no matter how many times we fall, no matter how many stupid mistakes we make, no matter how much time we have wasted and might waste in the future, God’s hands remain ever stretched, ready to pick us up so that we might continue the race. And his hands never get tired. So, I have faith that no matter my failures and mistakes, God still has a great plan for my life, and as long as I am willing to work with Him, He will guide me to my expected end.

So, if you can relate to this post, if you perhaps have it even worse than I do, I hope you will take this resolution, just as I have, not to let the negative thoughts win. 

Have you ever seen a star athlete, a world-renowned musician or a billionaire and wondered what makes them reach the heights they attain? Have you ever tried to discover what they possessed that separated them from ordinary people, that made them do the things the average person would not be inclined to do?

Well, I know that I have. Through my years of studying the lives of successful and highly skilled people, I have always wondered how on earth they were able to spend years, sometimes decades, dedicating themselves to a particular craft or purpose, toiling and persevering in those endless hours, despite the storms that presented themselves in the process, despite the difficulties and challenges, until they grew to the point of manifesting perfection and expertise in their skills or professions.

Well, a little while back; to get an answer to this pressing question, I did what any curious and dedicated person would do. I began to fish for books, articles and write-ups. Finally, I found a word that answered the question that had bugged me for so long, the X factor for the successful and highly skilled.

Let me introduce you to ‘Grit.’

-Firmness of mind or spirit: unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

-Stubborn courage; brave perseverance. (Collins Dictionary)

-The courage and strength of mind that makes it possible for somebody to continue doing something difficult or unpleasant. (Oxford Learners Dictionary)

According to Angela Duckworth, the psychologist and researcher who coined the term, and whose book introduced me to it: ‘Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals.’

This simple four-letter word is exactly what makes high achievers and successful people special.

 

SO WHAT EXACTLY DOES GRIT EVEN MEAN?

Not everyone possesses grit. But for those who do, even before the quality announces them to the world, certain traits are evident in all of them. These characteristics boil down to the two components of grit as stated by Duckworth: passion and perseverance. And upon understanding these components, you can deem yourself as having grasped the concept of grit.

 

PASSION (PURPOSE)

It’s quite impossible to be gritty if you are not working towards something. However, it is not just enough to work towards something, to achieve good success in whatever you are working towards; it has to be in line with your God-given purpose. Click here to read my thoughts on purpose. 

A key distinguishing quality of the gritty and highly accomplished is that they know what their purpose is. They have a well-defined philosophy or vision that keeps them on track and guides their decisions. And you would notice, by looking at some of the most successful businessmen, athletes, ministers and the like, that they do not have a thousand and one visions or career paths, but are, most of the time, dedicated to just one. A world-renowned guitarist does not spend his days shuffling between instruments but remains dedicated to one, consistently building him or herself and growing in the knowledge of a single instrument until the world begins to pay attention.

Therefore, gritty people have direction, a fixed path they have resolved to take in life. They do not abandon this path in the face of obstacles but persevere towards their ultimate goals with great drive and doggedness. Hence, the first step towards becoming gritty is determining what God wants you to achieve during the short time you have on earth. And then, that purpose of yours has to become an ultimate goal that you must be determined to be loyal, faithful and steadfast to.

With that clear direction or path, you can then get ready to consistently climb, step by step, dedicating hours, days, and years towards the attainment of your ultimate goal.

One of the issues many ambitious young people have is that we tend to want to be a jack of all trades, forgetting that we could end up as a master of none. We want to do a hundred and one things. We want to learn all the skills, play all the instruments, and do all that can possibly be done in our profession. But unfortunately, expertise can never be achieved through this.

 In order to actually develop the grit needed to harness our skills or have a clear purpose in our occupations, we would have to sieve through our career goals and determine the highest priority goals. And then, after ascertaining this, we should keep working towards the definite goal or goals without looking for a change or novelty even when boredom sinks in and our repetitive actions in growing a singular skill begin to feel stale. This means that once we have determined the course of our lives through the help of God, there has to be a fierce determination to stick to that course.

PERSEVERANCE (RESILIENCE)

Gritty people are not only paragons of perseverance, they are also extremely diligent and resilient. What this means is that by the time they have discovered their purpose and taken out the time to set goals for themselves in a bid to achieve this purpose, they begin the hard, painful job of building their skills, growing in their aptitude, developing their talents, of doing the same thing over and over again till they are perfect and flawless.

There is nothing extraordinary in the actions that gritty people take, nothing unique about the strokes of an artist or the kicks of a footballer. This is more apparent in the fact that a vast number of people around the world are born with the same skill sets, the same level of intelligence, same capacity and potential as the gritty people who turn out to be highly successful. The difference between others and this special group of people is that the gritty people push their potential to their extremes of use. They achieve this by doing repetitive actions consistently and inculcating deliberate practice, diligence and resilience. This simple recipe is truly what births the highly successful.

It might be a bit of a wake-up call for many to read that the record-breaking athletes, the extraordinary musicians and the billionaires of the world are really just normal human beings with the same capacities as the rest of us. Sure, I am not disputing the fact that there are people born with extraordinary brains, minds and manifest special giftings at a young age, but that is not the rule, those people are merely the exception. Most others are ordinary people with an exeptional mindset.

But in the present world, the result of years of hard work has been fallaciously regarded as talent by those who use such a belief system to justify their lack of effort and diligence. And yes, again, while many are born with gifts, attaining world-class excellence in those talents can only be achieved through intense hard work over a very long period of time, stretching yourself to the very limits and then waking up ready to do so over and over again until it becomes second nature.

Consistency of effort over a very long time truly is the hallmark of grit.

The gritty never give up. It’s that simple. Once they have discovered their God-given purpose in life, they run with it, and even if some of the things they have to do are tedious, tasking or even painful, they wouldn’t dream of giving up.

 

LIKE ALL HABITS AND QUALITIES, YOU CAN DEVELOP GRIT

As I mentioned when I shared my thoughts on learned helplessness, many of us are unfortunately brought up under circumstances that may have left us predisposed to giving up easily and never being consistent. But there is good news for you. Grit is like a muscle, and the more you train and work on your grit, the more it grows. You too can have that X factor that makes the highly successful special.

It really all boils down to a consistent pursuit of excellence in our plans and purpose. However, the issue lies in the fact that not many of us are consistent. Many of us are way too easily inclined to quit whatever goal we pursue once we encounter an obstacle or challenge that seems insurmountable or difficult. And like unstable leaves, we drift from one path to another, quitting far too early and too often, never committing long enough to a skill or pursuit to get good at it, and never staying dedicated to anything long enough to actually achieve expertise. We wonder why we never attain the success we so desperately desire.

A person who wishes to get fit cannot possibly attain that by going to the gym every day for two weeks, then once in three days, once a week, then never. It doesn’t matter if he or she does backbreaking work in the first two weeks, it is simply too short a time span to achieve anything meaningful. He or she would have to wake up every single day for years, ready to get up, go to the gym and perform acts that would most definitely range from uncomfortable to painful.

The same applies to us. No matter what gifts or natural talents you may be born with, you can only become highly skilled through hours and hours of consistently working on your craft. There are no two ways around it. Without consistent effort, your skills and natural inclinations are nothing but potentials you never meet. Your purpose becomes nothing but a goal you could have achieved but failed to.

A key word to note here is deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is a type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. It requires focused attention and is conducted with a specific goal of improving performance, unlike regular practice which might simply involve mindless repetitions. Hence, deliberate practice focuses on the improvement of weaknesses, not merely a repetition of the actions that we are already good at. It involves seeking out gaps in performance, the actions that we are not yet good at, honing on them until we have achieved expertise, and then looking for a new challenge or gap in performance.

In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on ‘Flow’, he laid out a clear formula for engaging in deliberate practice. In describing the sort of activities that induce a state of ‘flow’, which is a mental state in which a person is completely and totally immersed in a task, he said that the tasks have to be challenging but not so challenging that they become impossible and must also involve an investment of some time or energy to make progress.

Hence, during deliberate practice, you should ensure that you engage in challenging tasks, but not those that are so beyond your current skill set that you feel frustrated. In that way, you are energized to keep challenging yourself and even derive some enjoyment in the process.

You will also have to learn how to follow through on your commitments, which both requires grit and at the same time, builds it.

You will have the build a habit of challenging yourself every single day. And while this might be difficult during the first few months of consistency, if you are persistent, eventually, you will build the capacity and tenacity to exhibit levels of grit displayed by the highly skilled.

A direct quote from Duckworth’s book reads: “Eventually, new ways of thinking and acting become habitual. There comes a day when we can hardly remember our immature former selves. We’ve adapted, those adaptations have become durable, and, finally, our identity—the sort of person we see ourselves to be—has evolved. We’ve matured.”

A simple hack to getting grittier would be to find a gritty community and join it. You can do this by making the right friendships, joining organisations that push you to go to your limits and getting accountability partners and mentors. In the online space, an easy hack would be to follow gritty people and get involved in online spaces that promote resilience and discipline. When I began my productivity journey back then in 2020, one of the things that helped me develop my grit was constantly watching certain creators on YouTube that were very gritty. They were university students, just like I am, and watching them push themselves towards studying for long periods and stretching themselves in building leadership and career skills was enough for me to want to be just like them. In a community where everyone goes the extra mile and is fixed towards fulfilling a particular purpose, doing the same no longer feels like a big deal, because that is what everyone else does. It becomes part of the day-to-day routine and slowly turns into a habit. Duckworth called this the easy way to get grit because there are very few things as strong as the basic human drive to fit in amidst a community.

Now in your pursuit to becoming a better and grittier person, remember that there will be obstacles across the way, failures, and defeats. There would be times in which you would work harder than everyone else in the room and still fail. There would be times in which your purpose gets so difficult and tedious that you would be heavily tempted to just give up as everyone else does in such a situation. But remember, when your God-given purpose and vision remain ever at the back of your mind, and you back it up with a fierce resolve to succeed, and a refusal to let the setbacks become permanent excuses, success is guaranteed.

 

For more information on the topic, you can get these books:

‘Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.

‘Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

 

 

Let’s paint a fairly common scenario here.

Perhaps you wrote your JAMB examinations once, twice, or maybe three times. You enter into the university, get your dream course, and, pumped with all the ginger and adrenaline that comes with being a fresher, you enter with a singular goal, to become a first-class student.

So, you do all you think will lead you to your goal. You begin visiting the library every day and ensure you read for at least an hour a day. You stay in the front seat every lecture day, meticulously taking detailed notes of whatever your lecturer teaches. You are certain that you are on the right path, the path of success.

Exams roll up and, quite frankly, the exam questions are not exactly suited to your expectations. So, when the results show up, you get one or two As furnished with a splattering of Bs and Cs. Your morale has been greatly dampened, but you decide to swallow the disappointment and have a go at it again. You spend more hours reading and putting in your all to achieve your first-class dreams. The second semester exams roll up and the results are once more, less than desired.

What are the chances that you would still roll with your dreams of a first-class to your second year? Research shows that unless you have the right explanatory style, and not many of us do, there are chances that you would succumb to the belief that you do not have what it takes to get to that goal or dream of yours, that you would believe that nothing you do would matter.

Essentially, in your academics and academic dreams, you would learn to be helpless.

 

 

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS DEFINED

Many of us have had one or two goals or ambitions that we have abandoned because somewhere along the line, after a few weeks or months of effort without results, we decided that we were just not cut out for the task and gave up hope. What many of us don't know, is that there is a terminology for that experience.

In the mid-1900s, two psychologists, Martin Seligman and Steve Maier were on a roll. They had discovered a theory that was set to completely distort the prevailing behaviourist psychological thoughts of the moment and revolutionize what the world knew about depression, optimism, and pessimism.

Due to his observations from a previous experiment done by his lecturer at the university, Martin Seligman had developed a hypothesis that creatures could learn how to be helpless. Together with Steve Maier, he set out to prove his hypothesis.

The series of experiments conducted by the two are well-known among those in the psychology field. The scientists began by grouping some dogs into three groups.

In the first group, the dogs were strapped into harnesses for a while and then released.

In the second group, the dogs were placed in the same harnesses but were subjected to electrical shocks that could be avoided by pressing a panel with their noses.

In the third group, the dogs received the same shocks as those in group two, except that those in this group were not able to control the shock, even though they pressed the panel. For those dogs in the third group, the shocks seemed to be completely random and outside of their control.

The dogs were then placed in a shuttle box with a low barrier that they all could jump from to escape the shocks and all were subjected to the same amount of shocks. Dogs from the first and second groups quickly learned that jumping the barrier eliminated the shock. However, most of those from the third group made no attempts to get away from the shocks. They just lay there, whimpering and accepting the shocks.

According to Seligman, the dogs just lay there because they had learned that nothing they did mattered and could stop the shocks, and they, therefore, expected that no actions of theirs would matter in the future. In other words, they had learned to be helpless.

This experiment was further carried out on rats, and even humans and they all served to prove Seligman’s hypothesis. Humans, as well as any other being; can learn to be helpless, with all the resultant psychological effects.

According to Martin Seligman in his book, ‘Learned Optimism’, learned helplessness is ‘the giving up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do does not matter.’ In other words, it is a situation where a person doesn’t try to break away from a negative situation or attempt a particular task because the person believes that it is impossible to do so. This can occur when a person has failed on previous attempts or has witnessed others fail.

Unfortunately, that comes with its bounty of repercussions.

 

THE DANGERS OF LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

Learned helplessness has been linked to a host of other negative effects, such as pessimism and depression.

In fact, it has been shown that those who learn to be helpless end up relenting, becoming apathetic, and may end up making the situation they found themselves in much worse than it would have been if they had not learned to be helpless and given up on trying. It also leads to giving in to despair and accepting one’s fate.

In the above instance, suppose you develop the belief and mentality that nothing you do will ever give you the first class you dream of. With that would naturally come an indifference towards your academics; as is quite often the case with a lot of students. As a result, your grades would plummet, which further enforces the belief that you do not have what it takes, which makes you backtrack even more till it becomes a vicious cycle.

These consequences have been seen to manifest in plenty of social situations. Learned helplessness is the reason why many do not vote. They have learned that no matter what they do, the more corrupt politician would still find his or her way to power. 

It is the reason why many men and women living with abusive partners (particularly after a prolonged experience of the abuse and failed escape attempts) do not leave their abusive spouses, even when they have the chance to do so.

It is the reason why many of us have stopped setting new year’s resolutions, believing that it is not worth the stress since we have barely been able to achieve most of the new year’s resolutions that we have set in the past.

Most importantly, it is one of the most popular reasons why a lot of us have given up on our dreams.

 

THE POSSIBILITIES OF FIGHTING AGAINST LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

In the original formulation of the theory of learned helplessness, the researchers glossed over the fact that in the learned helplessness experiments conducted with humans, about a third did not give up hope, and had, contrary to the expectations of the researchers, resisted the natural inclinations of learning to be helpless. This was until John Teasdale made that observation in one of the presentations conducted by Seligman.

As a result of this, the psychologists embarked on further research, which showed that a person’s chances of learning to be helpless depended completely on their explanatory style to adverse encounters or situations. Your explanatory style is how you habitually interpret or explain to yourself why events happen.

This means that how you interpret or explain adverse events affects your likelihood of feelings of helplessness and subsequent depression.

Research has shown that an optimistic explanatory style stops helplessness, whereas, a pessimistic explanatory style spreads helplessness.

This was further explained in the attribution approach to learned helplessness which was proposed by Bernard Weiner. His attribution theory consists of six parts:

A global attribution occurs when the individual believes that the cause of negative events is consistent across different contexts: For instance, the belief that your failure in your year one would apply to whatever other academic endeavours you put your hands to.

2. A specific attribution occurs when the individual believes that the cause of a negative event is unique to a particular situation: For instance believing that your failures were only because you were not well adjusted in your year one and that would not apply in all other scenarios.

3. A stable attribution occurs when the individual believes the cause to be consistent across time: For instance, believing that whatever caused you to fail would continue causing you to fail all through your stay in the university, rendering you incapable of ever improving your performance.

4. An unstable attribution occurs when the individual thinks that the cause is specific to one point in time: For instance, believing that whatever caused you to fail was only related to your performance in your first year, and not necessarily in the entire time you spend in the university.

5. An external attribution assigns causality to situational or external factors: For instance, believing that you did not do well because, perhaps, the exams were completely different from what you were used to, or you had not yet adjusted to the university environment, or that the lecturers set topics outside of the scope of what they taught.

6. An internal attribution assigns causality to factors within the person: For instance, believing that you did not do well because you are inherently incapable of ever getting good grades.

 According to Weiner, those with an internal, stable and global attribution style for negative events are more at risk for falling into learned helplessness and developing a depressive reaction to failure experiences. They are the ones more likely to believe that they are not in control of their situation or destiny and give up and accept whatever situation they are in.

On the other hand, those that have an external, unstable and specific attribution style are more likely to resist learned helplessness and fall into the same line as one-third of humans in the experiments.

 

COUNTERING YOUR NEGATIVE EXPLANATORY STYLE/ PREVENTING LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

Conquering or preventing learned helplessness is reliant on changes you make as to how you view or deal with negative or averse situations, especially those that may occur from time to time, like an academic failure.

In line with this, Martin Seligman introduced the ABCD method in dealing with learned helplessness. He opined that in dealing with learned helplessness, we need to recognise the process that goes on in the formation of the beliefs that lead to learned helplessness, the ABC process.

A – Adversity

B – Belief

C – Consequences

So, when you encounter adversity, you would react by thinking about it. Those thoughts most likely would transform into your beliefs. Those beliefs do not just sit there idly, they have consequences. The beliefs are the direct causes of what you feel about the situation and what you intend to do next.

For instance:

Adversity: I have tried all I can to achieve my goal of becoming a Straight-A student. I have read like one preparing for a scholarship exam, have burned the midnight candle, and yet, all I have are average results.

Beliefs: Why am I still wasting my time going to the library to read and being the first and most attentive in lectures? It is clear that nothing I do will ever give me the first class that I desire.

Consequences: I feel empty and unintelligent, and I have decided that the effort is not worth it. Let me just do what I can to graduate and get out of this university. It is not even as though the grades would determine what my future would be like.

Once you recognize this chain of beliefs, you can break it at the core by destroying the inherent beliefs you have after every negative event.

The best way of dealing with the negative beliefs that lead to learned helplessness is to dispute them.

Disputing beliefs simply means giving them an argument or attacking them. By doing so, you can change your reaction from that of feeling dejected, helpless and giving up to a willingness to keep pushing on and trying again.

To properly dispute beliefs, you have to realise that they are false. To do that, you have to distance yourself from your beliefs so that you can realise that just believing something does not make it so. Just because you fear that you are unintelligent, academically paralysed, not gifted, purposeless and the like, does not make it so. You have to distance yourself from those beliefs and explanatory styles to verify their accuracy. And the fact that pessimistic beliefs often blow things out of proportion means that there is a very high chance that you would find that your beliefs are false.

Furthermore, the best way to dispute beliefs is to provide evidence to the contrary, to show that the beliefs are factually incorrect.

According to Seligman, to dispute your own beliefs, you have to focus on the changeable (not knowing the right way to study), the specific (the exams were not what I expected), and the non-personal (the professors were strict in their grading) causes.

Disputation: I may have hoped to get all As, but I got at least a few As and Bs. I only had two Cs out of fifteen courses. Those are not terrible grades and they do not mean that I am unintelligent. They may not be first-class results, but they certainly do not mean that I cannot achieve a first-class in the remaining three years I have at the university. I, after all, was always one of the first third in secondary school. That has to mean something. Besides, I have been able to identify that I did not do well because I prepared like I used to do back in secondary school and I have been able to see that it is not the best way forward. I will try better and use a different technique in studying so that I can achieve the grades that I desire.

The outcome of such a disputation would be the reverse of the consequences of the negative thoughts you may have had ab initio. Instead of giving up, the disputation would make you feel much better about your goals and make you feel like you have what it takes to try again and again until you eventually succeed.

 

A bulk of the information used for this blog post was gotten from Martin Seligman’s revolutionary book, ‘Learned Optimism’. To get the kindle version of the book, click here.