Don’t you just love encountering new ideas? I do! Yesterday was one of those wonderfully serendipitous occasions when one of those insights came to my attention: for the first time, I heard about ‘learned despair.’ I went right home, and did some research on it. I tracked down the story that I heard (I like to go right to the source, whenever possible) and located it in the book Competing for the Future by management analysts Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad. Here’s the passage:
4 monkeys in a room. In the center of the room is a tall pole with a bunch of bananas suspended from the top. One of the four monkeys scampers up the pole and grabs the bananas. Just as he does, he is hit with a torrent of cold water from an overhead shower. He runs like hell back down the pole without the bananas. Eventually, the other three try it with the same outcome. Finally, they just sit and don’t even try again. To hell with the damn bananas. But then, they remove one of the four monkeys and replace him with a new one. The new monkey enters the room, spots the bananas and decides to go for it. Just as he is about to scamper up the pole, the other three reach out and drag him back down. After a while, he gets the message. There is something wrong, bad or evil that happens if you go after those bananas. So, they kept replacing an existing monkey with a new one and each time, none of the new monkeys ever made it to the top. They each got the same message. Don’t climb that pole. None of them knew exactly why they shouldn’t climb the pole, they just knew not to. They all respected the well established precedent. EVEN AFTER THE SHOWER WAS REMOVED!
Was this a scientifically-controlled research project, or a fabricated urban myth-in-the-making? Who knows? That’s as far back as I could trace the story. Even if it’s a fable or parable, I think that we can all relate to the underlying experience: many animals are prone to give up hope in the face of social opposition. That’s the message that researchers wanted to convey when they coined the term ‘learned despair‘: when attitudes around us turn negative, we tend to give up trying to reach our goal without even trying!
The word ‘despair‘ itself tells the story. It comes from the Latin de-sperare, meaning to turn away from, or to give up (de-) hoping (sperare). It’s a cognate of ‘desperation‘. When I’m working with people who might be emotionally allergic to hearing about the so-called theological virtues of ‘faith’, ‘hope’, and ‘love’, I replace those terms with synonyms: ‘acceptance’, ‘trust’, and ‘engagement’. Despair — turning away from or lacking hope — derives from a lack of (or, rather, from a misplaced) trust. We tend to trust what we learn from others’ beliefs (whether or not they’re grounded in facts) rather than trusting in our own experience. We turn our methodical doubt inward on ourselves at least as often we apply it to what we learn from others.
Our lack of trust in ourselves, in our own capabilities, and even in our own experience can prove to be a very serious flaw, particularly at midlife. I can relate it to another theological construct: what is known as the ‘unforgivable sin,’ or the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit.’ What kind of sin could possibly be ‘unforgivable’ in the light of an all-loving God? It’s not so much an action, as it is a belief or a mentality: one that says, “I don’t believe that God would forgive me for ______.” The ‘unforgivable’ sin is such because someone lacks the trust in a loving God that would make forgiveness possible.
Like the ‘unforgivable’ sin, ‘learned despair’ derives its power from a refusal to trust in ourselves and in a Power greater than ourselves Who loves us unconditionally and who enlightens and empowers us. In learned despair, we yield to the temptation to surrender our self-esteem to those who don’t believe in us, rather than to accept (have faith in) a God who does.
How often do those around you influence you not to try do accomplish something that would (or could) move you forward? In what ways are you allowing others’ beliefs about you to erode your trust in yourself (as well as your trust in a Higher Power who cares about you)? In what ways are you permitting others’ opinions of you to keep you stuck in a midlife rut? What do you need to do to recapture your enthusiasm for who you are and where you’re going? What do you need to stop listening to? What old, negative beliefs about yourself do you need to get rid of? What can you do today to overcome just one fear that you have about yourself?
To move forward, all you need is to recapture some of your primal hope. To recapture hope, you need re-learn to trust yourself (and your Higher Power). To learn to trust yourself, first, you need to unlearn despair. You can begin unlearning as soon as you tune out the discouraging voices around you, and start, once again, listening to (and believing in) the wisdom of your own heart.
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown
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learned despair, hope, trust, faith, acceptance, unforgivable sin, self-esteem
Tags: acceptance, faith, hope, learned despair, Self-Esteem, trust, unforgivable sin