Passion Struck with John R. Miles - What is Learned Helplessness and Six Ways You Can Unlearn It? with John R. Miles EP 127

Starting point is 00:00:00 the opposite of joy is helplessness. When we feel helpless and see the loss of hope in our lives, we relinquish the capacity to feel joy and believe that life cannot be more promising than its current state. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armeyles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors,

Starting point is 00:00:46 CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Momentum Friday, an episode 127 of PassionStruck, and thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And over the past week, we crossed several important milestones. First, the global popularity of the podcast increased to the top 0.05% in the world, with now over 100 countries tuning in monthly to the show. Additionally, we crossed over 5,000 five star ratings

Starting point is 00:01:32 on Apple, and we couldn't have done either of those things without you and your support of this movement. I wanted to take the opportunity to recognize one of our listeners from the United States. Johnson writes, gets it, John is nailing it. True person, vulnerable, real. Finds the wise people is open about his path.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Grateful for this interesting, compelling, and essential show. Thank you so much, Johnson, for that kind review. We appreciate that more than you could possibly know, because that is exactly the type of show we are trying to create. And in case you missed our interviews from this week, we had on Rob Greenley, who was a 2017 inductee in the podcast Hall of Fame, and one of the foremost experts in the world

Starting point is 00:02:16 on the state of podcasting. And we cover his predictions for the future of podcasting and trends that he's seeing in 2022 and beyond. And additionally, we had on 12-year-old animal activist, Kate Gilman Williams, who talks about how kids can save animals and what she's doing globally around that cause. And if you would like to watch these episodes in addition to listening to them,

Starting point is 00:02:39 you can check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel at JohnRMiles, where we have over 270 different videos for you to explore. Now, let's talk about today's episode. Do you know people who never seem to take action to overcome their negative situations for the better? For example, an alcoholic may repeatedly try and fail to quit drinking. Have you ever felt that you have no promise in future? Do you ever feel

Starting point is 00:03:05 out of control and unable to address the unpredictability of your life? Have you ever wondered what the cause of this behavior is? If you answered yes to any of the above, then you may be experiencing what is known as learned helplessness, which is when a person feels that their efforts no longer mean anything, and they feel helpless in their attempts to overcome these negative situations for the better. Instead, this perceived lack of control becomes a trained behavior, and they start believing they are helpless and unable to experience joy or optimism in their life. Last week, in my solo episode, I covered the importance of living a balanced life. And in that episode, I discuss that the opposite of joy

Starting point is 00:03:51 is feeling helpless to our surroundings. Today, I wanted to take that quote and unpack it even further. I will be unraveling the psychology of learned helplessness and enlightening you on six steps through which you can break free from its hold and become your best self. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. On a faithful day, a group of ivory-seeking poachers invaded a wildlife forest in Central Africa that played host to large animals, including rhinos, buffalo, and elephants.

Starting point is 00:04:33 The target animal of this day was the elephant. They went through their discrete processes and were able to locate a mother elephant with her calves. Soon enough, they sadly killed that mother elephant for her tusks. But since the calves were too young to have matured tusks, they decided to take them along and nurture them until they were old enough that their tusks could be harvested. After getting back to their camp, they tied one of the hind legs of each of the baby elephants with a very strong thick rope that would be unbreakable. They took this action to crush the spirits of the baby elephants with a very strong thick rope that would be unbreakable. They took this action

Starting point is 00:05:06 to crush the spirits of the baby elephants so that they would follow their orders and remain in their control. After the baby elephants' legs were tied with strong rope to an iron pole, they made numerous attempts to break free, but found themselves unable to. They kept trying for weeks and then months, and every single time just ended up hurting themselves. Slowly they learned that they were simply not strong enough to break free from the rope and escape their captivity. With time they finally stopped making any attempts at all and simply accepted the fact that they were incapable of doing so and were doomed for this life. As they grew older

Starting point is 00:05:43 this mindset continued to grow within them. This is called the baby elephant syndrome. And knowing that they had conditioned them to feel helpless, the poachers eventually changed their ropes to thinner ones to accommodate the increasing size of their legs. However, even though it was a much smaller rope that they could easily break through, the elephants still didn't attempt to break free, even though they were now stronger, bigger, and well-capable of breaking free. That's because the grown elephant clearly was remembering the wounds caused by its struggle to break free and therefore doesn't try to dislodge the rope. Then it happened one day that the poachers brought in a new baby elephant that they also wanted to breed for its tusk.

Starting point is 00:06:25 However, this time they unknowingly tied its hind leg with an older rope which was already tethered and very weak. So as expected, the baby elephant made its first attempt to break through the rope, but it couldn't. However, because it wasn't yet conditioned to give up, attempting to break free, it kept on trying. And on the fifth day, the rope broke and she began to run for her freedom. The adult elephants who had been conditioned to helplessness saw this and it dawned on them that they also could break free.

Starting point is 00:06:55 It just so happened that the male elephants were going through the yearly mass where they had heightened aggression and less predictable behavior associated with increased testosterone. They all attempted to break the ropes that were holding them, and, alas, they broke through. With this, they all began to run throughout the camp, demolishing walls, destroying homes, and trampling four of the poachers. After realizing the power that they had, and having gotten rid of many of their captors, they walked into the nearby forest to their freedom.

Starting point is 00:07:26 This story brings to bear a number of questions. What does it mean to learn helplessness? What happens when we become helpless? What factors affect our ability to help ourselves? What are the symptoms of learned helplessness? And what are some different steps that we can take to break free from the stronghold of helplessness. All things that I will now cover, we will be right back to passion struck.

Starting point is 00:07:49 I would like to emphasize that this podcast is part of my hope and desire to bring zero-cost information to the general public regarding how do you create an intentional life. And keeping with that theme, I would like to thank today's sponsors of this episode. I am so excited about today's sponsor, Athletic Greens, because it is a product that I personally use and love. In fact, Athletic Greens is completely transforming nutrition and helping so many achieve

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Starting point is 00:10:53 Slash deals now back to passion struck. So what does it mean to learn helplessness? Legendary bodybuilder, actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger said, Learned helplessness is the giving up reaction. The quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter. Learned helplessness is a mental condition in which someone believes that they are powerless, caused by either repeated failures or traumatic experiences. It is particularly acute when people experience repeat bad situations and develop like the elephants, a feeling that their lives are inevitable or unchangeable. For example, if a student tries but continually fails in school, they may

Starting point is 00:11:39 acquire a sense of personal helplessness because they believe that they deserve a good grade because they're putting in the same effort as their classmates. When they don't receive that same grade, their efforts start to drop because they start believing that they will never be able to succeed no matter how hard they try. As in the case of the baby elephant syndrome, there are times when a negative situation passes, but it's effects still live on in our minds, and it ends up controlling our actions. Learned helplessness is a powerful state that has major negative repercussions on so many different areas of our lives, including personal development, mental health, and even physical well-being. Furthermore, these implications are often visible in the short term

Starting point is 00:12:26 and long after people have left the setting that led to their learned helplessness in the first place. So why do we experience this feeling of learned helplessness? It is because of the fact that learned helplessness at its core is a trained behavior. Its conditioning is based on the premise that human behavior is learned through environmental association and responses. Simply said, if we are rewarded for doing something, we are more inclined to do it again. Similarly, if we are punished, we are more inclined to avoid repeating that same action.

Starting point is 00:13:01 It only takes a little practice to unlearn this link and de-condition the response. We'll focus on ways to reverse this pattern of thinking and behaving to learn how to grow positively and be driven to take risks and try new things out. So what factors affect our ability to help ourselves? The psychological process of taught helplessness was first explained by psychologists Stephen Meyer and Martin Seligman. They experimented by giving animals and three different control groups shock treatments. It was first hypothesized that the animals learned consequences were independent of their

Starting point is 00:13:37 responses. Basically, that nothing that they did mattered, and that this learning undermined trying to escape. However, over the years, it has subsequently been proven that myroinsilumin got it completely backwards. It turned out that the animal's acceptance of what happens in response to the shock was not learned. Instead, it is the unlearned response to extended negative events. It is mediated by the serotonin neurotransmitter activity of the Dorphal Rafe nucleus located in the midbrain, which in turn inhibits escape. This theory, which

Starting point is 00:14:12 later became known as the learned helplessness model, is one of the most studied in psychology. Part of the concept explains how the process of learning specific outcomes occurs outside of a person's control. And results in three deficits, motivational, cognitive, and emotional. Because exposure to the event isn't enough to make someone feel helpless, a cognitive deficiency must exist, which is prompted by accompanying ideas about the meaninglessness of action. Naturally, this results in a motivational deficit, in which the person has no drive to perform. Do you have a topic like today's that you would like to see us cover?

Starting point is 00:14:53 You can reach us at Momentum Friday at PassionStruck.com. Keep your emails concise. Use a descriptive subject line. That keeps things easy for us. Reach out to us if there's a topic you're interested in learning about. There's something that maybe you're going through, any big decision that you're wrestling with,

Starting point is 00:15:11 or perhaps you just want a new perspective on work, love, or life. Whatever's got you staying up at night, hit us up at Momentum Friday at passionstruck.com. We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous. Now, back to passionstruck. So you may now be wondering, what are some of the symptoms of learned helplessness?

Starting point is 00:15:32 Learned helplessness has been linked to low esteem, anxiety, phobias, shyness, loneliness and depression. According to 2021, research published in PLOS1, learned helplessness can cause symptoms of depression, including loss of interest, feelings of worthlessness, indecisiveness, core attention, melancholy, exhaustion, and sleep issues. Furthermore, research from the American Psychological Association discovered a substantial correlation between learned helplessness and various mental health issues, particularly depression

Starting point is 00:16:07 This is true in both people and animals where learned helplessness promotes unsettling and anxious behaviors linked to mental illness Learn helplessness also raises the risk of a variety of health issues and the real possibility of drug abuse also among Hospital patients the feeling of helplessness harms recovery. Here are some further issues that occur as a result of learned helplessness. The first we'll go into is low self-esteem. When you feel like you have no control over your outcomes, you are likely to feel powerless.

Starting point is 00:16:39 And it adequate about your ability to take action to reverse your situation. People who have learned helplessness feel bad about themselves and doubt their capacity to complete even minor tasks that could help them overcome their situation. The second thing that they might face is frustration. People who suffer from learned helplessness also experience a poor frustration tolerance level because they believe everything is beyond their control. For instance, when they are dealing with people or engulfed in a project, they can become quickly overwhelmed or upset.

Starting point is 00:17:13 The third thing that learned helplessness can cause is passivity. Basically, bad things just happen to me, and that becomes a mindset that saps all our drive to try to improve things. People with this mindset don't put out much effort to avoid difficulties or boost their chances of success. They simply allow life to happen to them without any reaction to change it. Another thing that learned helplessness can cause is an adequate effort. For procrastination and decision avoidance can be caused by learned helplessness. People frequently fail to complete projects or jobs because they believe that nothing or nothing positive will happen if they do.

Starting point is 00:17:52 Lastly, learned helplessness can create the feeling of giving up. Nothing seems to work out for people who have learned to feel helpless. Even when they begin to work on anything, there can be a tendency to abandon it immediately. Learned helplessness makes it difficult to follow through and can make even minor setbacks seem unsurmountable. So what are some ways that you can break free from the stronghold of learned helplessness? Martin Slygman, who I talked about earlier in the podcast, is known as the father of positive psychology. And he also identified a phenomenon that can effectively counter learned helplessness. He published his findings in his 1990 book titled, Learned Optimism. Slegment argues that through learned optimism, we can cultivate a positive perspective.

Starting point is 00:18:41 He argues that with a more joyful outlook on life, we are in a much more favorable position to improve our wellbeing. It is the polar opposite of acquired helplessness, which occurs when you internalize a sense of hopelessness about your situation. You begin to question your cognitive processes due to taught optimism and your behaviors and outcomes alter as a result. Let's look at six practical steps that can be taken to overcome learned helplessness and improve your life for the better. The first step that you can take is to see failure as an opportunity. This is the belief that failure is not a permanent condition.

Starting point is 00:19:20 So when you do fail, see it as an opportunity to learn, grow, practice, and try again. And with each success of failure, you learn better. The second step that you can take is to find your passion. You need to discover what you care about most and what drives you to wake up every day and take action. We have so many past episodes of the PassionStrike podcast that can help you on this topic. This will encourage you to fight for your dreams and overcome obstacles that come in your path. The third step that you can take is practice acceptance and compassion.

Starting point is 00:19:52 When you are compassionate and accept yourself, as well as others, you will be strengthened to rise above obstacles and overcome situations that could put you into a state of helplessness. More so, others will be kind and willing enough to help you. A four step that you can take is to choose and alter your response. Psychiatrist, an author of Victor Frankl said, between stimulus and response, there is a space.

Starting point is 00:20:18 In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Our brains often misinterpret events come to incorrect conclusions and belief things that are just downright wrong. As a result, it is so vital to just take a step back for a moment and take a more realistic view of the situation that you might find yourself in. The fifth step that you can take is to challenge your helpless feelings. By being proactive about this, you will be able to recognize both four-scene and unforeseen situations that could lead potentially to feelings of helplessness. Once you recognize those helpless thoughts and feelings, it is time to start actively

Starting point is 00:20:58 contesting and substituting them with more accurate and empowering ones. The sixth step that you can take is to reframe your limiting beliefs. If you are overly negative about your self beliefs, it will lead to a negative self-view and possibly even depression. One way to overcome your unhelpful beliefs is to find evidence to counter them. So I've talked about a lot today on this episode and given you a ton of information. So let's sum this all up and give you some last pointers on how you can break free from the hold

Starting point is 00:21:29 of learned helplessness. Mark Manson writes in the book, the subtle art of not giving a flip. The problem is, at some point, likely a long time ago, we got punched in the face and instead of punching back, we decided we deserved it. This is a self-explanatory statement that emphasizes the reason that so many of us accept helplessness and refuse to take

Starting point is 00:21:53 actions to counter our negative situations. When we prevent ourselves from feeling the intent of pain, we deprive ourselves of the capacity to feel any meaning in our life at all. According to military historian, B.H. Littleheart, helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that the loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war. As I spoke about last week, the opposite of joy is helplessness. When we feel helpless and see the loss of hope in our lives, we relinquish the capacity to feel joy and believe that life cannot be more promising than its current state. These emotions often lead to a lack of interest in life and, at its most extreme, can lead to suicidal thoughts. We must be committed to ensuring we break free

Starting point is 00:22:46 from the hold of learn helplessness. I consciously taking the required steps so that we can become our best selves. Finally, perhaps maybe more of us need to pray the serenity prayer that was written by American Theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, which says, God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change,

Starting point is 00:23:06 courage to change the things that I can and wisdom to know the difference. This prayer is such a reminder that we have the ability to choose calmness and peace in all matters of our life. We possess the ability to understand when things are within our control and when things are beyond our control. I wish you courage and strength in your journey of letting go of situations beyond your control and taking action towards things within your control. Thank you again so much for choosing to spend your time here with me today on this podcast. I hope you were able to learn a lot through today's lesson. And in the show notes, I'll put a whole bunch of information and links on things that you can explore to find out more about this topic and previous episodes that I've done that are complimentary to it. And if this

Starting point is 00:23:53 is your first time visiting the show or you would like to recommend this to a friend or family member and we truly appreciate it when you do, we now have episodes starter packs. These are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize into topics. And you can find them both on Spotify and on our website. These give you such an easy way to get acquainted to everything that we do here on the show. And you can go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And I wanted to mention some of the interviews that we have coming up next week. The first is Liz Foslin,

Starting point is 00:24:27 who is one of the duo behind the incredible Instagram, Liz and Molly, which has over 475,000 followers. And they have a new book coming out that we will be releasing next Tuesday called Big Feelings. And next Wednesday, I will be interviewing Lori Singer, who's an endurance athlete, and also an expert on behavioral change and overcoming the learn helplessness that we discussed today. Both episodes that you absolutely want to check out. Thank you again for choosing this show, giving us all these five star ratings and helping us grow

Starting point is 00:24:59 our popularity. I can't thank you enough now. Go out there and live life passion struck. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make passion go viral. And we do that by sharing with you the knowledge and skills that you need to unlock your hidden potential. If you want to hear more, please subscribe to the passion strike podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcast at. And if you absolutely love this episode, we'd appreciate a five-star rating on iTunes. And you're sharing it with three

Starting point is 00:25:33 of your most group-minded friends, so they can post it as well to their social accounts and help us grow our passion-struck community. If you'd like to learn more about the show and our mission, you can go to passionstruck.com where you can sign up for our newsletter, look at our tools, and also download the show notes for today's episode. Additionally, you can listen to us every Tuesday and Friday for even more inspiring content. And remember, make a choice, work hard, and step into your sharp edges. Thank you again for joining us. you

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - What is Learned Helplessness and Six Ways You Can Unlearn It? with John R. Miles EP 127

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