Believing in yourself is powerful!
Your perception of control over your circumstances may be more important than the actual circumstances themselves. Your mind is powerful and what you believe about yourself and your ability to influence your outcomes is powerful too.
Today I want to share two classic animal studies that reveal important insights about our ability to overcome adversity and persevere with a hopeful mindset, or conversely, to give up and believe nothing we do matters and our situation is hopeless.
In the first study from Seligman and Maier, a group of dogs were conditioned to receive a shock upon hearing a bell ring. Then these dogs were placed in a room with a small fence across the middle where one side of the floor would shock the dogs while the other would not. A second group of dogs that had not gone through the conditioning were placed in an identical room. The dogs that had not been conditioned jumped to the other side of the fence when exposed to a shock, however the conditioned dogs laid down and just accepted the shocks. They had been conditioned to believe that bad things would happen and they had no control over it, so why bother trying to escape.
In the second study, Richter put mice in a cylinder full of water to assess how long they would swim before drowning and concluded the average mouse swam for about 15 minutes. He then took another group of mice and put them in the water to swim but right before they were about to drown, he rescued them. He pulled them out, dried them off and let them recover for a bit. He then placed them back in the water and what he found was that they were able to swim for MUCH longer than before. The mice swam for 60 hours when they believed there was hope!
When the mice believed they had a chance to survive, they didn’t give up! When the unconditioned dogs were shocked, they responded by getting away from the noxious stimuli. Bad things WILL happen in life and we will all be faced with adversity but OUR perception over OUR control of these situations has a huge impact on our outcomes in life. If we believe we have the ability to overcome, we are much more likely stay the course, continue the fight, and look for solutions. Conversely, if we believe nothing we do matters and it’s out of our control, we lay down and just accept the pain and defeat.
This pain can look like many things. A job you hate, an unhealthy body that is not capable of doing the things you want to do, a relationship that isn’t working, or a physical injury. When you accept that things things are unchangeable, you give up and give in. But if you believe you HAVE control and you can make a difference, you never know what you are capable of.
Your perception of your control in a given circumstance is the first step to finding the solution so believe in yourself. Believe in your ability to change your outcomes and your life. You are powerful.
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