Zimbardo found that the only way he could stop himself from sinking into despair was imagination—he kept imagining better possible futures. And to considerable impact. After Zimbardo recovered and was released, he was shocked to realize he viewed his stay in the hospital as a positive one: the time in his life that he learned to be self-reliant. “From this experience,” he later wrote, “I…learned that the past can be psychologically remodeled to make heaven of hell. Other people learn the opposite lesson, storing and recalling only the worst of times.… The horrors and sheer ugliness of the past
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