A Prison Created by Your Mind

Learned helplessness can undermine your ability to take the opportunities life presents

Life can be hard—and believing there is nothing you can do about it makes it worse. Fortunately, this is rarely true if you take a moment to get out of your head and check in on reality. TheVisualsYouNeed/Shutterstock

Learned helplessness is an affliction that can torment you throughout your life.

It is a condition coined by psychologist Martin Seligman in 1967 that describes the erroneous belief that there is no solution to a problem, even when there actually is—sometimes right in front you.