About This Quote
In the 1960s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman used a method that was developed by a committee of psychiatrists to experiment with the negative effects of depression on human beings. The committee had found that depressed people who were encouraged to laugh, for instance, seemed to be a lot happier. So Seligman experimented with this idea by taking depressed people and giving them a choice between one of two treatments. One treatment involved being encouraged to laugh.
The other involved being given an electric shock. For most people, the shock was no big deal. But for some—depressed people in particular—the electric shock was unbearable.
And yet when they were told to choose between the two options, they chose to get shocked rather than have the opportunity to laugh. What happened? Well, in the process of being shocked they discovered that laughing could be difficult or painful. But when they were actually encouraged to do it, it didn’t seem so bad anymore.
And when they discovered this for themselves, their depression seemed less unbearable. The most important thing in life is what you learn from your mistakes—about yourself and about others