Just a little (link) love: Learned Helplessness edition
September 6, 2018
Matt talks about globalization and the changes we’re facing with an increasingly automated world.
I just wrote about how to harness my unbudgeted spending and Penny has her own list of things to do instead of shopping.
Sometimes you need to drop that thing you’re writing. Kind of like how sometimes it’s just not worth reading something you’re truly not enjoying even a little bit.
What I learned about weight loss from spending a day inside a metabolic chamber: One of science’s best tools for understanding obesity is debunking myths about metabolism…. The big theme in many of these studies: Our metabolism silently shifts under new conditions and environments in ways we’re not usually aware of.
Is tail walking a dolphin’s dancing? Why would a wild dolphin carry on doing it after learning from a peer? (Learned from dolphins in captivity)
Learned helplessness
We’ve experienced this learned helplessness in our lives. After she’d gotten very sick with no good diagnosis or treatment, and their businesses had crashed, Dad was basically useless (not working, sunk in his own ego problems), she was trying really hard to work but her health was in the crapper, Mom reverted to a mentality I’d never seen before: blaming bad luck.
I don’t believe that we can think or willpower our way through everything and anything. You can’t wish away ill health (the cosmos knows I’ve tried!) or systemic ills, but I do believe that a helplessness mentality will undermine everything you do.
(There was a video here but I realized I didn’t have time to vet the sources so I’d rather remove it until I have a chance to do that.)
Loved that one of Penny’s! Bad luck and good luck might be a thing, but that’s definitely not the whole story.
Yes!
As usual, an amazingly interesting collection of links. You find THE best stuff, Revanche! The metabolic chamber…strange and wonderful.
Thanks 🙂