Small Business: The Role of “Learned Helplessness”

Ever wonder why in this land of great opportunity we have so many poor people?  I am not talking just about those who have had a series of tough events in life that have knocked them for a serious financial loop, or even those on Medical Assistance (or some other government assistance program) who can’t seem to quite get ahead financially.

I’m thinking about those people who live below their full potential… who have a lot of promise, but never reach the top of the hill.   Why is it that some people never have the breakthrough they desire and only believe that in order to change their fate in life that they will have to win the lottery?

Psychologists call this “Learned Helplessness” and it works like this: When we attempt to change something and fail in our attempts on more than one occasion, our brain creates the mental grove that ‘success is beyond our control’.  Once we believe that, we quit trying.  What then manifests in our life is the fulfillment of that quirky belief system… we learn to become helpless.

So what can we do?  First, we take on a belief system that we will ‘fail forward’.  The only real failure in life is to quit trying.  We can attempt any type of new endeavor and have the results turn out to be ugly.  We can either internalize this and say we are failures and will never do anything right (i.e. ‘Learned Helplessness’), or we can acknowledge things did not go according to plan and dissect what went wrong while pondering what can we do differently next time.

Secondly, we can celebrate life and what opportunities are currently in front of us.  I know that control is an illusion, that there is very little in life that I can indeed control.  But, I can choose to have a continual attitude of gratitude and appreciation for life on a daily basis.  I can celebrate the good things of every day life.  I find that when I have an appreciation for today and celebrate the good things that are happening in my midst, more good things happen (or is it that I just recognize more of them?).  I can literally feel positive energy and momentum is moving me forward.

Next time you are feeling a little blue, make a quick mental check to see if you are falling into the mental default of Learned Helplessness and know that you do not have to go there unless you really want to!

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