Learned Helplessness and Self-Esteem

"Living Life on Life's Terms" means that there are certain things concerning life, about which we must adhere. For example, one of the "terms" of life is that we need to breathe air and drink water. One of the other "terms" is that sometimes bad things happen to good people. Nonetheless, we can learn from these experiences. One of the things that we often learn is that we do have choices.

Young circus elephants, for example, have often been trained to keep them from escaping, by tying them to a post, while they are still very young. After countless, fruitless attempts to free themselves, the baby elephants believe that they cannot escape. Eventually, even as strong, adult elephants, they will not attempt to flee. The elephants have leaned to be helpless, despite their new reality.
Not unlike other animals, humans can mistakenly learn to be helpless. Unlike most other animals, however, we have the unique intellectual capacity to understand the nature of our limitations, in order to rise above them.

What we focus upon tends to become our experience. If we believe that we are "bad" and "deserve to be punished," then that becomes our reality. If we understand, however, that we were "victimized," that sometimes bad things do happen to good people, we can learn from our unfortunate experience that we still do have choices, despite our initial feelings of "learned helplessness." We can eventually "accept life on life's terms" that despite what happened, that does not make me who I am. I am a good person who has positive choices and deserves good things. This new, healthier perspective now becomes our reality, as we allow things to happen and to things, consistent with this empowering belief.