Mental Chains
The reality is that some level of learned helplessness is controlling many of our lives. So, realize that any helplessness you feel is created by your own mental prison. Rip off the shackles you voluntarily keep in your mind. You’re the warden and it’s time for parole.
Capital Thinking • Issue #558 • View online
“Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
Learned Helplessness
Billy Murphy | Forever Jobless:
What is learned helplessness?
Learned helplessness is when people feel helpless to avoid situations they perceive as negative or painful, because previous experiences have made them believe they will be unable to avoid them.
This perceived lack of control makes them fail to even attempt escaping a similar fate in the future. They’ve trained themselves to believe they are helpless, and so they don’t even try.
“Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
Martin Seligman is known for discovering learned helplessness during an experiment he was performing on dogs.
He would ring a bell, and give a light shock to a dog. After a while, the dog would react to the bell as if he’d already been shocked.
The interesting part of the study came when Seligman gave the dogs a chance to avoid being shocked.
Here’s what he did:
He would put a dog in a large crate divided by a small fence that they could easily jump over. What the dogs didn’t know was that only one side of the crate would give a shock, and the other side would not.
The dogs didn’t even attempt to jump over the fence because learned helplessness made them believe the shock was unavoidable.
He then tried the test with dogs that had not previously received a shock.
When those dogs heard the bell, they quickly learned that they could avoid the shock by jumping over to the other side of the fence.
Have you ever heard how to chain an elephant?
As a baby, if you chain an elephant, the elephant will learn that it cannot break free from the chain.
It will also be uncomfortable if they try.
So, the elephant stops trying, and accepts the fact that it cannot break free from the chain.
Even once the elephant becomes an adult, they will not attempt to break the chain, even though it would be very easy for them to do so.
They have conditioned their mind to believe they can’t break free from the chain, so they don’t even try.
Learned helplessness psychology
Most people are like the elephant and the dog.
They’ve conditioned themselves with limiting beliefs of what they think they’re able to achieve, and therefore often never even attempt to achieve anything, as they’ve trained their mind to believe they aren’t capable.
They assume that it would be uncomfortable to even attempt, due to the risk of failure.
They accept a lifelong fate of mediocrity, to avoid the possibility of some temporary discomfort trying to achieve something that again, they haven’t even allowed themselves to believe they can achieve.
Like the elephant, most people are living with a chain attached. It’s attached to their mind, and until they break free, the chain keeps them held in mediocrity.
If they just tried to break free from the mental chain, they’d realize they can literally have everything they want, they just need to be willing to break free from the chain, the one that only exists because they allow it to.
Billy
The reality is that some level of learned helplessness is controlling many of our lives.
People operate under the same learned helplessness that dogs do.
If you’re a human, which most of you reading this article are, you’re even smarter than a dog.
So, realize that any helplessness you feel is created by your own mental prison. Rip off the shackles you voluntarily keep in your mind.
You’re the warden and it’s time for parole.