Customer Reviews

Learned Optimism

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I received this book several years ago and can say it literally changed my life. It gives great advice on how to deal with habitual pessimism and the free-floating anxiety that often accompanies it. I use the techniques in the book and they really do work. My copy is dog-eared and tattered from lots of use!! Thank you Martin Seligman!!!!!!!!

I cannot recommend the audio version. I got it several years after buying the book, thinking it would be a nice refresher. It was so badly done I was amazed. The abridged version of the book is read in a very boring style and LOTS of minutes are wasted in a detailed explanation of how to do a written self-test. I remember thinking "I can just read the instructions, why are they reading all the instructions out loud?" Horrible.

So definitely BUY the book and benefit from it, but SKIP the tape version.

I received this book about a year ago and I think it is the best self help book on the market. It has been fantastic and has helped me so much by giving me scientifically proven techniques to change the way I look at events or situations.

I use to read a few self help books to stay positive and ended up giving them up as I found they never gave me any help and where filled with 'take care of your self, your precious' and `say these nice things to yourself and you will have a better life'. I suppose that is all well and good but at the end of the day it never really helped me or changed anything. They could never snap me out of a downward spiral however the techniques in this book can. This book gave me concrete ways to help myself in situations where I get emotional or upset and it is something that will always need to be worked on but if you do it then it gets easier and you are in more control and you are a more rational and effective person.

The book is easily understood even though alot of it is scientific and best of all the principals are backed up by studies so the book has validation. All of the principals are pretty basic and leave you feeling `well of course' however they really do help and like most books it brings your attention to things you may already know, but may not apply. If you enjoy going to psychologists and raking up all the bad events of your life and leave with no way to help yourself in these emotional times when you are alone, then you may not appreciate this book. While it is great to get help, it is important to get the right help and understand why something may not be helping you. Cognitive therapy seems to put the responsibility back on the individual, while you may not have chosen the way you choose to perceive your life (usually from parents) it is your responsibility to change this and to make the long term commitment to change.

I have also read 2 other books by Martin Seligman and I also found these great. It is not essential to read all of these books but I found Learned Optimism so interesting, and that I got so much out of reading it and using the techniques that I wanted to see what was included in the other two books. The other books hold similar material however go into greater detail in other ways like talking about the angry person and why they are like that etc... I would recommend any of these books to everyone as there is something there for all, it would probably be best though to start with Learned Optimism.

I found the research done for the book the be stepping stones in learning why I had lost all enjoyment in life. Several Items mentioned did not register as affecting my outlook. Several days after reading them and thinking back over the comments I realized how they fit into the distorted picture I had of my life. This book caused me to look back over my life and see events for what they were, as opposed to personal attacks by some evil score keeper in the great beyond.

I haven't gotten all the way through it, because there are alot of assignments, where you have to stop the CD. I usually listen in my car, so it's taking me a while to finish. I'd recommend buying the book too, which I haven't purchased yet.

This is a book packed with science yet written in a style that is interesting and easy to understand. Reports of experiment after experiment systematically convince the reader.

Seligman's book describes how the mental attitude of helplessness can be learned and unlearned, how helplessness both results from and exacerbates a pessimistic personality style, and how helplessness/pessimism ends in depression. A test is included so you can find if you are an optimist or a pessimist. A second test reveals if you are suffering from depression. But if you are a pessimist/depressed don't despair. Just as helplessness can be unlearned optimism can be learned and this book tells you how.

Next we learn how optimistic people succeed better at work, school, sports, health, politics, religion and culture.

If I have one criticism of this book it is that Seligman strangely does not provide scientific evidence that his cognitive therapy methods for learning optimism work. Instead he simply writes: "The National Institute of Mental Health has spent millions of dollars testing whether the ... [cognitive] ... therapy works on depression. It does." (p.75). A report of at least one study would have been useful at this critical point.

I have suffered from depression and I found this book provided me with an invaluable technique that work for me. This is one of the very few books that I can say has changed my life.

This has very concrete ideas and lists for controlling the naturally pessimistic path of thoughts that are dominated by cognitive distortions rather than a healthy and realistic perspective. I would recommend getting Emotional Freedom by Orloff, and the CD Maximum Confidence by Canfield to round out the self-help library. I have repeatedly read or listened to all of these, and they have made an amazing difference in my mental well-being.

Maybe I should have known better because the audio book is only two CD's but I was disappointed that it's not the entire book on CD. These two CD's contain a fraction of information from the book. I think the book is so full of essential information that the audio CD's only contain a small piece of the author's subject.

It would be superfluous of me to add more than what has already been said about how well written and useful the book is.

I bought the abridged version on CD and now wish I'd kept my money and got the paper book instead. The audio version seems to be badly organized, meant perhaps more to reinforce the message of the book than to be a stand-alone product.

Although I'm sure most people don't mind, I found it a bit arrogant of the author to choose to read the book himself instead of hiring a professional. I find the very heavy (New York?) accent very irritating, so irritating in fact that that is the main reason I listened to it only in bits and pieces (as I had to put something else in my CD player after a little while.)

Stick to the book. If you're buying this to listen to it during your commute, be aware that there is a small paper and pencil evaluation that measures your optimism, and that the author tells you not to proceed until you've taken that step. So start it at home the evening before.

Item was received very fast. It was a little rough, but was described as such so no surprises. Excellent book! Would definitely do business again.

Brian Tracy wrote about this book:"What Seligman found was that the predominant quality of successful people is optimism.Successful people are far more optimistic most of the time than average people."