Seligman demonstrated that people tend to "learn" helpless and hopeless behavior after suffering a series of bad events. Later, he discovered that if you change a pessimist’s outlook on the events that befall him, you can help him become an optimist.

Stable. Does a person see events as controllable? Or does he feel life is out of his control? Take two people whose investments in the stock market have just doubled. An optimist would call it a smart move, a success. A pessimist would say it's just a stroke of luck, like winning the lottery. If, on the other hand, a stock suddenly plummets, the optimist would deem it a fluke. To the pessimist, it could not have happened any other way. 
    
Global. The optimist feels his windfall is general proof that he's a success in life. He may sometimes even give the event more weight than it truly merits. But to the pessimist, it's just an isolated case of luck. With a bad event, however, the tables turn dramatically. Optimists dismiss each as an isolated occurrence, while for pessimists a bad event casts a dark, depressing shadow over their lives. 
    
Internal. Optimists shrug off the bad and internalize the good. Pessimists attribute the good to outside forces and the bad to themselves. 
   
  Of course, there are times reality is so clear-cut that optimists and pessimists will give the same response. In years when the job market is tough, for instance, Seligman has found that both optimists and pessimists will cite the lean market as the cause of the hypothetical event, ........

Good Health. Among 99 Harvard University graduates who were also World War II vets and have had physical examinations every five years since graduation, the men who were optimists at 25 were significantly healthier at 65 than the pessimists.

Risk taking. Because optimists have unflagging faith in their abilities, they're more likely to take risks.
  
  "It's not reality itself that's the problem," Seligman concludes from his studies. "We all suffer tragic realities, but it's how you see reality that makes the difference." We all interpret events and develop a point of view about life, which in turn colors the way we approach the future. This is why optimists [will] 'stay with it'  ......

Seligman had never intended to study optimists. Back in 1966, he developed a novel theory of depression. People, he felt, taught themselves to be depressed. They learned to feel helpless, out of control.  ......

Seligman's most controversial assertion is that explanatory style - which is simply a belief style - can be changed. Even depressed people can reshape their explanatory styles and learn to believe in their own power to mold the future. In a study of clinically depressed patients, Seligman discovered that 12 weeks of cognitive therapy (reframing a person's approach to the world) worked better than drugs because the change endured. "They were less vulnerable to depression the next time something bad happened,"

excerpted from:   [http://www.ihhp.com/positive_think.htm]

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