Psychologist Angela Duckworth presented an interesting question in her book, ‘Grit’. She asked: ‘How many of us start something new, full of excitement and good intentions, and then give up- permanently- when we encounter the first real obstacle, the first long plateau in progress?’

The answer? Far too many of us.

The truth is that once the fuel of motivation that propels people to work towards their goals runs out or they begin to encounter difficulties and failures, most typical people just stop pressing towards their goals and dreams. The atypical ones are those that press on despite a distinct lack of external reward for the efforts that they are putting in and despite struggles, challenges and failures.

And I have often asked myself why. Why do people give up on goals and dreams and targets? Why do so many people begin projects that they never complete? And what is it that marks out the people who persist in their goals and dreams despite obstacles, difficulties and failures?

Well, I think I have found a good answer to the last question. That distinct marker that differentiates between the quitters and the persistent go-getters is a single quality.

Doggedness.

 

UNDERSTANDING DOGGEDNESS

Doggedness: (noun) marked by stubborn determination.

Synonyms: perseverance, persistence, single-mindedness, tenacity, determination, indefatigability, staying power

Essentially, doggedness is marked by the ability to persist even in the face of difficulties. It is being willing to “give it a go” even when the outcome and the way to proceed are uncertain. It is the acceptance that success does not come easy and not being frightened of finding things difficult. It is having a high level of “stickability”, and being able to readily recover from frustration. It is the ability to “hang in” with your goals and dreams even though you may, for a while, feel somewhat confused or even anxious. It is the ability to dust yourself and try again even after falling.

Simply put, doggedness is not quitting even when giving up seems to be the only reasonable step others might take. It means not losing focus when failures nibble at your determination and begin to sway the conviction of your vision. It is, tapping from the words of George Bernard Shaw, the willingness and ability to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

 

WHY BE ONE OF THE DOGGED?

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, ‘Outliers: The Story of Success’, stated that success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.

There are numerous people who exemplify the truth of Gladwell’s words. We have the famous Abraham Lincoln, who seemed to be the epitome of political failure before emerging the renowned president of the United States, Thomas Edison, who never stopped looking for opportunities to learn from his recurrent failures before becoming one of the lead inventors of his day. We have Lee Myung-bak, who was born into a wretched family and eventually rose to be the president of South Korea, Harrison Ford, who faced multiple rejections during his early acting career but eventually, through perseverance and hard work, rose to be the star that he is today. In Nigeria, we have Cosmas Maduka, who rose from selling akara on the streets at the age of seven to becoming the CEO of Coscharis Group, a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, and Mike Adenuga, who used to work as a taxi driver to help fund his university education and is currently the third richest person in Africa.

Here’s the thing; as a Chinese proverb states, a gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a person perfected without trials. Most people are born with tremendous potential. The real question is whether they employ diligence and doggedness to their maximum. In the end, it is those who are dogged enough to resist the trials and difficulties that come with pushing towards goals that will be the winners in this journey of life.

Therefore, to achieve success, you need to be fearless, tenacious, and determined never the let the strong tide of failures, opposition and woes drown you. You need to face the obstacles head-on and be determined to stand your ground even as the storms threaten to knock you off the ground. You need to be dogged.

It helps to understand that for great things, the rewards don’t typically rise early. There are no overnight successes, in the true sense of the word. But here’s the thing about those later rewards, those that emerge after facing storms and difficulties and obstacles. Most of the time, they’re explosive. And very loud.

Hence, for anyone who suddenly shoots to the top, we all need to understand that he or she was propelled by a solid base of doggedness, resilience and tenacity. 

 

DEVELOPING DOGGEDNESS

11.  PASSION

The passion that is required for doggedness does not merely equate to intense feelings or emotions, but rather, deals with the inner drive that births consistency over an extended period of time. This type of passion does not deal with mere interests that come as quickly as they fade away but rather, what a person wants to achieve in life, the legacy a person wants to leave behind. It deals with a person’s purpose in life. It deals with an ultimate goal that a person is ready to loyally care about and put effort into.

The logic of the necessity for enduring passion is quite straightforward. If you do not know, in a very deep way, what you want in life and why you are pushing towards your goals, it becomes very easy to throw in the towel at the slightest wind of resistance or difficulty. It becomes easy to create those exquisite excuses we often use to delude ourselves from the truth of the fact that we just do not have the sustaining passion and drive to build up the diligence that keeps people pressing. It becomes easy to give up with few to zero regrets.

Resilience requires fierce resolve, fortitude. And same cannot be cultivated without having the right levels of passion to keep a person pushing.

 

22.  A MINDSET SHIFT

In developing doggedness, changing the way you think about failure is a fundamental requirement. We give failure more credit than it deserves, interpreting it as implying things that are much deeper than what it actually implies. Hence, most times, we give up at the first instance of failure or difficulty because we have come to ascribe failure as implying a lack of ability, lack of talent, or just plain unbreakable incompetence. But quite frankly, it is folly to give up and consider future attempts as a lost cause simply because your first couple of attempts weren’t successful, thereby allowing those failures to stop you from reaching your goals. Your projects and goals should not be considered impossible simply because they did not work out the first time. To put it quite simply, no one is perfect and everyone is bound to experience failures and difficulties whilst attempting to push towards dreams and goals.

Changing your opinion about failure and obstacles can be the one milestone to cross towards becoming dogged. The first step towards changing ingrained views regarding failure is to replace your irrational opinions about failure with the understanding that, as Robert Kiyosaki said, failure is part of the process of success and therefore, to avoid failure is also to avoid success. The truth remains that failures are going to happen on the journey to success and how one deals with them are the most important determinant of success.

The next step is to understand that failures are simply a sign of taking on challenges and that everyone has the ability to overcome failures. Then the last step is realising that there is a surplus of historical evidence that presses to the point that bouncing back after failure will only make an individual stronger and wiser.

And understanding these three truths will not only transform your mind, but will give you the fortitude and mental strength to persevere despite failure. Remember that the worst thing you can do to yourself is to let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.

 

33. DILIGENCE

Here’s an unfailing truth: diligence is more important than natural talent. In fact, in several studies done to determine which, between diligence and natural talent, leads to success, diligence has always taken the lead. Always.

It comes, then, as common wisdom that a person simply cannot be dogged if the person is not disciplined and diligent. Diligence comes, in fact, as a condition precedent to developing doggedness. It is diligence that pushes a person to spend long hours learning, growing, engaging in deliberate practice, and putting in work irrespective of failures, obstacles and difficulties. Doggedness requires the ability to put one’s head down and go as hard as one can. It requires the ability to press on in the midst of impossibilities. And it is only diligence that grants a person the ability to do all that is required to be truly dogged.

All in all, doggedness is making the commitment to aggressively pursue goals that you believe in and value with discipline, tenacity and hard work. It is being ready to face all the risks that come one’s way in the journey to success. It is hard work, it is persistence, it is fierce determination. And it is impossible to succeed in life without cultivating doggedness.

 

 

On the 31^st of December, 2023, I lay on my bed and imagined how my life would be if I let myself be restricted by the various fears that threaten to overwhelm me whenever I try to make progress or venture into a new activity. I let myself visualise the horrors of living a life where 30, 40, 50 years down the line, I come face to face with the harsh reality that I have wasted my life succumbing to my fears of not being able to cope with failure, or the pressures of success, or my fears as regards my creativity and writing, the fears that I have no talent, that whatever I wish to write is not important or relevant enough to change lives or even attract patronage.

And I found myself envisioning a life wasted doing nothing, rotting and withered away, irrelevant, with nothing tangible to account for the years I have spent on earth. A life where, as an 80-year-old, I become aware of the fact that, as a result of letting my fears anchor me firmly to my comfort zone, my equals have gone miles ahead of me in every single sphere of life. Where I realise that the purpose of my life God has given to me was never fulfilled and it is now too late to do anything about it.

And I realised that having lived that sort of life would be the most devastatingly terrifying thing that would ever happen to me. So I decided to make a little personal proclamation against fear in view of the coming year. And I decided to make this blog post.

 

THIS PLAGUE CALLED FEAR

We all have experienced fear at many points in our lives. And we all know when fear likes to creep in, to show its ugly face, to envelop itself around our minds and hold on so tightly and fiercely that sometimes, we even have physical reactions to this feeling. Goosebumps, panic attacks, the urge to pee…

Some fear is instinctual and healthy and keeps us alert to trouble. The rest- the part that holds us back from personal growth, is inappropriate and destructive.

But fear is a constant. Fear doesn’t go away, won’t fade away and as long as you are alive, you will consistently and continually experience fear.

Apart from when faced with dangerous situations, fear usually arises when we approach big projects, when we walk towards change, when we want to try out new things, or big things, or overwhelming things. It usually comes along with negative thoughts which seek to convince you that you cannot handle whatever it is that you have set your mind to do.

And if you dwell on those thoughts long enough, the fear goes beyond more than just causing uneasiness or bowel distress. It cripples you. And the crippling can be for years, decades, hell, even the rest of a person’s life.  Because fear has the potential to become a desolate graveyard where dreams go to desiccate and decay.

You would think that such a devastatingly destructive feeling would be one that can fade away and dissipate if we kindly ask it to. But you cannot kill fear.

However, perhaps, there is a possibility to live with fear and yet live above it and its consequences. Perhaps there is a way to just make space for it, a nice little space where it can sit and watch you go conquer territories. Perhaps, there is a way to move, thrive despite the fear.

 

WHAT IS LIVING BEYOND FEAR?

Living beyond fear does not mean living in the absence of fear. It means living despite fear. It means realising that you would definitely not be successful at every single thing you set your hands to do, and not letting that stop you. It means realising that you might work for years and still fail at a project, and having that understanding not cripple you from actually taking steps towards your dreams. It means having the goosebumps and the panic and the shivers and still striding towards your goals and dreams.

It means living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity, passion and courage than by fear. It means not letting fear take the front seat in your life

As Gilbert said, living beyond fear means telling fear that: “You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps, you’re not allowed to suggest detours, you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.”

It means not letting the question of ‘why bother trying?’ get hitched in your throats. It means not letting fear tell you that it would be better to remain in the same spot, where things are comfortable and normal and routine and where you would never have to do anything risky or dangerous.

The fact remains that whenever you try to take a chance, move towards a goal that you’ve always been terrified to venture into, to take steps towards pursuits that seem almost impossible, it is natural to experience fear. But in 2024, you have to resolve the conquer the fears that have held you back from actualising goals, that have held you from experiencing life the way you want to experience it. Gain mastery over your fears, for bravery is not the absence of fear but the mastery of it.

This 2024, be willing to take risks. Be willing to do whatever brings you to life. Be willing to set seemingly unrealistic New Year's resolutions and gun for them, regardless of the many times you have tried to live up to your resolutions and failed.

You will have to realise that achieving your goals takes nothing more than disciplined labour. Change is not easy. It takes courage to mould your life the way you want it to be. There are all sorts of real and imagined obstacles that get in the way. However, those obstacles need not deter you. Instead, choose to enjoy the ride, the agony and the ecstasy, the success and the failure, the joys and the pains, the difficulties and the confusions and the satisfaction and sense of fulfilment at having gotten work done.

 

A LITTLE BIT OF MOTIVATION FOR THE COMING YEAR

The truth remains that as long as you continue to push into the world, as long as you continue to stretch your capabilities, as long as you continue to take new risks in making your dreams come true, you are always going to experience fear. But you might be relieved to know that not only are you going to experience fear when you are in unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else. The difference lies in whether you interpret fear as a signal to retreat rather than as a green light to move ahead.

The key is in altering your relationship with fear. So, this 2024, instead of trying to escape fear or letting it control your life, strive to transform it into a companion that accompanies you in all your exciting adventures and watch as you shoot for the heights of your dreams.

Happy New Year!

 

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.