Some people begin to feel that things are pointless, that they’re helpless or worthless, or that no matter what they try they’ll lose anyway. These are a set of beliefs that must never be indulged in if we ever expect to succeed and achieve in our lives. These beliefs strip us of our personal power and destroy our ability to act. In psychology, there is a name for this destructive mindset: learned helplessness. When people experience enough failure at something — and you’d be surprised how few times this is for some people — they perceive their efforts as futile and develop the terminal discouragement of learned helplessness.

A study published in 2008 by the Journal of Consumer Research found that when people feel powerless and out of control, they have a strong desire to buy things that convey high status. Why do they feel powerless? Simple. In the Slowlane, you relinquish control because time is in control, and the gates to the Sidewalk reopen. Hope is not a plan.

Psychologists call it “learned helplessness” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life. From Middletown’s world of small expectations to the constant chaos of our home, life had taught me that I had no control. Mamaw and Papaw had saved me from succumbing entirely to that notion, and the Marine Corps broke new ground. If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness.

Every time the drill instructor screamed at me and I stood proudly; every time I thought I’d fall behind during a run and kept up; every time I learned to do something I thought impossible, like climb the rope, I came a little closer to believing in myself. Psychologists call it “learned helplessness” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life. From Middletown’s world of small expectations to the constant chaos of our home, life had taught me that I had no control. Mamaw and Papaw had saved me from succumbing entirely to that notion, and the Marine Corps broke new ground. If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness.

Psychologists call it “learned helplessness” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.

There is a lack of agency here — a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself.

Are you a nice guy or gal who is having trouble processing all this bad news? Maybe that’s because not having a high status position at the office contributes to a reduction in executive function. Want that in English? Feeling powerless actually makes you dumber.

I feel powerless all the time, but I regain my energy by making a very small difference that won’t cost me much.

When we forget our ability to choose, we learn to be helpless.

...feeling her helplessness. There was nothing worse. Most people lived under the illusion that they were in control of their lives, but that wasn't completely true. Yeah, you could decide what to have for breakfast and what to wear and all those little things, but as soon as you stepped out into the world, you were pretty much at the mercy of everyone else around you, and all you could do was hope that if they were having a bad day, they wouldn't decide to take it out on you.

These are the people who hate themselves because they haven't come to terms with their helplessness. They feel threatened by helplessness itself, not by those who caused or reinforced the feeling, and this is what produces their boundless rage. Therefore, they repress their helplessness, which has made them feel rejected and despised, at the same time oppressing their 'oppressors' contempt for them.

Already then, there was in my subconsciousness as unsatisfactoriness about powerlessness, which was accompanied by being locked in a cage, whereby made taking an initiative, of any kind, impossible

If you have a life devoid of Time Wealth, you are trapped in a perpetual loop of busyness, running faster and faster but never making progress, with little control over how time is spent and whom it is spent with.

I knew that I no longer wanted to take junk. If I could have made one decision, it would have been no more junk, ever, but when it came to the process of quitting I did not have the drive. It gave me a terrible feeling of helplessness to watch myself break every schedule I set up, as though I did not have control over my actions.