Martin Seligman

What You Can Change and What You Can't

IN A NUTSHELL
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  • “I want to provide an understanding of what you can and what you can’t change about yourself so that you can concentrate your limited time and energy on what is possible. So much time has been wasted. So much needless frustration has been endured. So much of therapy, so much of child rearing, so much of self-improving, and even some of the great social movements in our century have come to nothing because they tried to change the unchangeable. (…) Because there have been so many failures, we are now able to see the boundaries of the unchangeable (…).”
KEY IDEAS
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  • HUMAN PLASTICITY
  • EMOTIONS
  • CONSERVATION OF DYSPHORIA
  • ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, ANGER
  • OVERCOMING EMOTIONS – techniques
  • INNER VOICE
  • CBT, INTERPERSONAL THERAPY
  • SEX -5 LAYERS OF EROTIC LIFE
  • DIETING & WEIGHT LOSS
  • GROWING UP, TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
KEY QUESTIONS
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  • What can we succeed in changing about ourselves?
  • What can we not?
  • When can we overcome our biology?
  • When is our biology our destiny?
  • Can we change our personality?
  • Can we change our personalities?
  • Can we change your mindsets?
  • Can we change the way we see the world?
  • Can we change our IQ?
  • Can we change our gender?
2 OPPOSITE THEORIES OF CHANGE

1. Biochemical point of view

  • Our personality is fixed, determined by genes
  • We are prisoners of our genes
  • Character is unchangeable, brain chemistry is responsible for every human factor
  • Mental illness is really physical illness
  • Emotion and mood are determined by brain chemistry
2. Behaviorist point of view:
  • Human beings can change in almost every aspect: intelligence, sexuality, mood, personality traits, political views
  • The self-help industry is based on this view: humans can change and fulfil their potential.
Martin Seligman’s findings
  • Personality is only partly genetic. It’s about 50% inherited (except for IQ, which may be around 75%), but at least part of the personality is not inherited.
  • “The other half of personality comes from what you do and from what happens to you—and this opens the door for therapy and self-improvement.”

EMOTIONS

CONSERVATION OF DYSPHORIA
  • Dysphoria simply means bad feeling. We experience bad feelings in our everyday life. Being angry in the traffic jam, being anxious when having a job interview, being a little depressed when something terrible happened. It’s not an indication of mental illness, it’s a normal part of everyday life.
  • Conversation of dysphoria means wanting to prolong the bad mood or feelings, spotting the negative things in every situation. Just think about the chronic complainers who can find a negative thing in every possible situation of the life.
  • “Bad weather inside. People, by and large, are astonishingly attracted to the catastrophic interpretation of things. Not just “neurotics,” not just depressives, not just phobics, not just explosive personalities, but most of us, much of the time.”
  • “What, the microwave is on the blink? This disaster is followed by repeated, angry calls to the appliance service; worrying at four a.m.; busy signals, cursing, and blaming. I experience just about as much total dysphoria over this triviality as I do when the big things, all of them, go badly.”
HISTORY OF EMOTIONS
  • Every negative emotion has its own evolutional purpose. Our big brain as homo sapiens evolved about 600 000 years ago. HOWEVER, a big brain is not enough for civilization. “But Homo sapiens sat on the savanna, wrote no books, planted no corn, spoke little, and built no cathedrals.” There is one more secret ingredient: PESSIMISM. It’s one of the most contra-intuitive ideas, but it does make sense evolutionarily.

 

WHY IS THAT?

  • Each of these emotions is a message that something uncomfortable is happening and warn us to TAKE ACTION and CHANGE our lives.
  •  With our daily dysphoria, we are in touch with the very state that makes civilization possible, that transforms berry-gathering into agriculture, cave painting into Guernica, eclipse-gaping into astronomy, and, alas, ax handles into Stealth bombers. Each emotion has specific content and goads for specific action.”

 

GOOD EMOTIONS vs BAD EMOTIONS

  • It’s important to note that that our society and civilization evolved much faster than our unconscious and instinctive reactions. The 21th century life is fundamentally different than the life which these instinctive reactions were designed for. Therefore our emotional reactions to the world can be inappropriate for the situation and it can even totally disrupt our lives. Few examples: chronic anxiety, uncontrollable anger and deep, decade long depression.
ANXIETY

GOOD ANXIETY

  • “Think of your anxiety as the “low oil” light, flashing on the dashboard of your car.”
  • “Its default mode is to search for what may be about to go wrong. It continually, and without your conscious consent, scans your life—yes, even when you are asleep, in dreams and nightmares. It reviews your work, your love, your play—until it finds an imperfection.”
 
BAD ANXIETY
  • “Some of our everyday anxiety, depression, and anger go beyond their useful function. In general, when the hurt is pointless and recurrent (…) it is time to take action to relieve the hurt.”
  • 1. IRRATIONAL – Is your anxiety out of proportion to the reality of the danger you fear?
  • 2. PARALYSING – When anxiety becomes strong, it is unproductive; no problem-solving occurs.
  • 3. INTENSE – Is your life dominated by anxiety?
 
TECHNIQUES TO OVERCOME ANXIETY
  1. Relaxation – Herbert Benson – The Relaxation Response
  2. Medication – Daniel Goleman – The Science of Meditation: How to Change Your Brain, Mind and Body
DEPRESSION
  • “We live in an age of depression. Compared with when our grandparents were young, depression is now ten times as widespread in the United States, and the rate is climbing.”
OUR INNER VOICE – THE “JINGLE CHANNEL”
  • All of us have an inner voice, which acts like a stream of thought. It’s like we’re talking to ourselves, making decisions, communicating preferences and making sense of the world and of ourselves. It’s like a flow of inner conversion that we carry on with ourselves all the time. Seligman calls this “Jingle Channel”.
  • It is involuntary, you “slightly below consciousness”. It means that most of the times we’re not even aware of it and we are not able to stop it completely.
  • For most of us this inner voice is not a pleasant one. For example when we’re constantly criticizing ourselves it makes us anxious, angry and depressed.
  • Even we’re unable to change or stop this “jingle channel” we’re able to challenge it, talking back to it and questioning the validity of it. It gives us the opportunity to free ourselves from destructive self-criticism.
OVERCOMING DEPRESSION
  • Cognitive Therapy (CT): our inner thoughts directly affect our mood. If we change the way we think we can change the way we feel.
  • Interpersonal Therapy: tries to deal with present interpersonal issues of the person. Focuses on the here and now, doesn’t analyze old childhood traumas.
ANGER

3 COMPONENTS OF ANGER

  1. Initial thought: “I am being trespassed against.”
  2. Bodily reaction: Sympathetic nervous system and your muscles mobilize for physical assault: muscles tense, blood pressure and heart rate increases, digestive processes stop, brain centres (amygdala) are triggered, brain chemistry changes.
  3. Attack: “Your attack is directed toward ending the trespass—immediately.”
 

WHAT TO DO ABOUT ANGER?

There are different ways of dealing with anger depending on the level of socialization.
  • attack physically
  • attack verbally
  • controlling by suppressing (not a healthy way of dealing with anger)
  • channelling it to make a positive ACTION. This can make anger a very powerful motivating force to bring change in your life.

2 THEORIES ABOUT SUPPRESSING ANGER

  • Freudians: “(…)it will increase your blood pressure, or eat an ulcer into your stomach, or cause self-hate, or be displaced until you come across a less dangerous victim—like your three-year-old daughter.”
  • Anti-Freudians: “(…) anger unexpressed simply dissipates. If you count to four hundred or turn the other cheek, before you know it the anger will be muted. Then it will be gone.”

ANGER MANAGEMENT

Supressing anger can be very harmful for your psychical and mental health. BUT ventilating anger can also have the same consequences. If you’re ventilating anger it won’t go away, it just escalates.
  • use an anger-diary: record the incidents when you were angry. It allows you to observe patterns.
  • change from ego-orientation to task-orientation. Concentrate on the solution – how can you resolve it better – rather than on your hurt feelings.
  • Try to make your interpersonal relationships better. Overcoming communicational “roadblocks”. Courses and books: negotiation and assertiveness training.

LIFE

SEX
5 LAYERS

“Erotic life has five layers, each grown around the layer beneath it.”

  • Layer I: Sexual Identity and Transsexuality: What Are You?
  • Layer II: Sexual Orientation: Do You Love Men or Women?
  • Layer III: Sexual Preference: Breasts, Buttocks, and Bisexuals
  • Layer IV: Sex Role: Social Behavior, Personality, and Ability
  • Layer V: Sexual Performance: Correcting Sexual Dysfunction

 

3 major criteria of sexual abnormality:

  1. Rationality – If your thought and sexual orientation is far from rationality.
  2. Suffering – If your sexual thoughts, orientation or preferences cause you a great deal of suffering.
  3. Mal-adaptiveness – If you feel unable to adapt to the current reality and situation you’re in.
 
DIETING
  • Everyone has a natural body-weight. If you want to change it your body will fight to maintain it.
MYTHS OF OVERWEIGHT
  • Overweight people overeat. Nineteen out of twenty studies show that obese people consume no more calories each day than non-obese people.
  • Overweight people have an overweight personality. (…) Obese people do not differ in any major personality style from non-obese people.
  • Physical inactivity is a major cause of obesity. Probably not. Fat people are indeed less active than thin people, but the inactivity is probably caused more by the fatness than the other way around.
  • Overweight shows a lack of willpower. This is the granddaddy of all the myths.
THE OPRAH EFFECT
  • You can lose weight in a month or two on almost any diet.
  • You will almost certainly gain it back in a few years.
BULIMIA AND NATURAL WEIGHT
  • “(…) the thin ideal has become thinner and thinner over time as the average female body has gotten heavier and heavier.”
EXERCISE
  • “A surprisingly small amount of exercise may lower death risk significantly.”
  • “(…) even modest exercise, as opposed to becoming fanatical, will produce the biggest reduction in risk.”
GROWING UP
“There are, I believe, only two great seasons in life: the season of expansion and the season of contraction.”

STAGE 1.

  • “(…) discover the demands of the world as you find it and to fit yourself to those demands.”

STAGE 2.

  • You will respond to your intrinsic desires. “You become less and less what others expect.”
  • “Responding at last to what is intrinsic can mean self-indulgence, frivolity, or even emptiness. But it need not. An astonishingly large part of what is truly you coincides with old notions like duty, service, generosity, and nurturance: helping to build a community center—by both laying bricks and raising funds; running for office; guiding young people—your grandchildren—to maturity; giving back much of what you have so arduously won.”

Do Childhood Events Influence Adult Personality?

  • The influence of childhood events on adult personality is less than what we think.
  • Genetics and environmental factors can have at least as much influence on adult life as negative childhood experiences and traumas.
  • “There is no justification (…) for blaming your adult depression, anxiety, bad marriage, drug use, sexual problems, unemployment, beating up your children, alcoholism, or anger on what happened to you as a child.”
HUMAN PLASTICITY – immediate situation vs predetermined factors
  • To what extent is a decision is determined by the immediate situation and to what extent is influenced by external, pre-determined factors?
  • Is character born or can it be developed?
  • Can people change, become another person and fulfil their unique potential?
  • Human plasticity means we believe that people are able to change and develop. It means that no-one is smarter or better person “in general” than the other. Just they might be in different stages of the “journey”.
  • Doubting human plasticity can nourish racism and inequality. The routs of Nazism can be found in this kind of thinking.
  • Manifests of belief in human plasticity:
    • the democratic idea that all men are created equal
    • universal schooling
    • criminal rehabilitation
    • public libraries
    • the freeing of the slaves
    • women’s suffrage
    • the idealization of the entrepreneur
EFFECTIVE THERAPY
“All successful therapy has two things in common: It is forward-looking and it requires assuming responsibility.”
  • You’re responsible for your life.
  • You can change your life and the way you think.
  • Focus on how to cope in the here and now, don’t try to “undo” the past (the exact opposite of Freudian psychoanalisis).
  • Focus on the situation.
  • Focus on solutions: How can you correct the concrete problems?
  • Sense of responsibility and commitment to hard work.
  • Exploring childhood events are a great opportunity to look for patterns,  not causes. Mistakes we’ve made and still make.
CONCLUSION
“So even if why we are what we are is a mystery, how to change ourselves is not.”

The end!