Every sort of mastery is an increase of one’s freedom.
-Henri Frederic Amiel
Never learn to do anything. If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.
Mark Twain
What kinds of mastery could increase one’s freedom? Think of your own personal life as well as job or school. How might Twain’s advice actually be sound counsel? Which quotation is most in keeping with your personality?
Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.
-Grace Paley
What do you gain when you choose to look on the bright side, when you choose to expect the best instead of the worst?
The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have curiosity to know why this is so: but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain and hunger, and mosquitos, and silly people.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
If optimists sail through life, pessimists trudge,
-Marain Sandmaier reviewing Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
by Matin E. P. Seligman
Why do optimists sail? Optimists believe that a setback or misforture is just temporary and caused by something specific. Pessimists trudge because they see a setback as a major disastrous condition that might never improve, caused by something pervasive like a character flaw that won’t ever change.
Which are you? Write about your expectations and attitudes, using specific examples. How would your life be different if you became the opposite type?
Ask yourself what your predominant fault is: you have discovered, in a misguided but clearly identified state, your greatest resource.
-Antonin G. Sertillanges
Try it! Looking at something from a different perpective can be very revealing.
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
-Helen Keller
What do you know about Helen Keller? What were her her sources of strength and joy? How was it that she could be such an optimist while so many other people seem to focus on “shadow”?
Each of us carries a word in his heart, a “no” or a “yes.”
-Martin E. P. Seligman
Learned Optimism: How to change Your Mind and Your Life
A “no” person, a pessimist, focuses on why something is impossible, why things won’t work out. A “yes” person, an optmist, sees the possiblities. He or she expects things to work out and looks for ways to help that happen. Write about someone who you know who definitely either has a “no” or a “yes.”
It always seems to be raining harder than it really is when you look at the weather through the window.
-Sir John Lubbock
The Pleasures of Life
Filtering life in other ways can distort perceptions, too. For example, elderly people who seldom go out but who can watch a lot of television believe there are far more violent crime than there actually is. What other kinds of “life filters” can distort our understanding?
Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges.
-Sir Walter Scott
Our workplace and schools operate on the conventional assumption that success results from a combination of talent and desire. When failure occurs, it is because either talent or desire is missing. But failure can also occur whe talent and desire are present in abundance but optimism is missing.
-Martin E. P. Seligman
Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
Write about an experience which should have had a good outcome but didn’t, because the person or people involved didn’t think it could work out. This might have been a school team losing a game, or someone failing a test he or she prepared for but believed would be too hard, or a similar instance.