Change the Way You Explain Your Life and Your Life Changes

One of my favorite psychology writers is Dr. Martin Seligman of the Positive Psychology movement. This movement is about looking at what's right with people rather than what's wrong with them. One of Seligman's early books was on Learned Optimism. His theis is that even if you are a born pessimist and unfornutantly some people are, you can learn to be more optimistic just by changing how you think about things and especially how you "explain" what happens to you and the world around you. He calls it explanatory style.

Explanatory Style - Explained

‘Explanatory style’ or ‘attributional style’ refers to how people explain the events of their lives. There are three facets of how people can explain a situation. This can influence whether they lean toward being optimists or pessimists:

Stable vs. Unstable: Can time change things, or do things stay the same regardless of time?

Global vs. Local: Is a situation a reflection of just one part of your life, or your life as a whole?

Internal vs. External: Do you feel events are caused by you or by an outside force?

Realists see things relatively clearly, but most of us aren’t realists. Most of us, to a degree, attribute the events in our lives optimistically or pessimistically. The pattern looks like this:

Optimists

Optimists explain positive events as having happened because of them (internal). They also see them as evidence that more positive things will happen in the future (stable), and in other areas of their lives (global). Conversely, they see negative events as not being their fault (external). They also see them as being flukes (isolated) that have nothing to do with other areas of their lives or future events (local).

For example, if an optimist gets a promotion, she will likely believe it’s because she’s good at her job and will receive more benefits and promotion in the future. If she’s passed over for the promotion, it’s likely because she was having an off-month because of extenuating circumstances, but will do better in the future.

Pessimists

Pessimists think in the opposite way. They believe that negative events are caused by them (internal). They believe that one mistake means more will come (stable), and mistakes in other areas of life are inevitable (global), because they are the cause. They see positive events as flukes (local) that are caused by things outside their control (external) and probably won’t happen again (unstable).

A pessimist would see a promotion as a lucky event that probably won’t happen again, and may even worry that she’ll now be under more scrutiny. Being passed over for promotion would probably be explained as not being skilled enough. She'd therefore expect to be passed over again.

What This Means

Understandably, if you’re an optimist, this bodes well for your future. Negative events are more likely to roll off of your back, but positive events affirm your belief in yourself, your ability to make good things happen now and in the future, and in the goodness of life.

Fortunately for pessimists and realists, these patterns of thinking can be learned to a degree (though we tend to be mostly predisposed to our patterns of thinking.) Using a practice called ‘cognitive restructuring,' you can help yourself and others become more optimistic by consciously challenging negative, self-limiting thinking and replacing it with more optimistic thought patterns.

So the next time something happens to you that could be "explained" in a negative or pessimistic way, think about how you might explain it in a positive way. Use the old, Fake it till you make it concept even if at first you don't think this will work - by the way, that lasts is a typical pesssimistic outlook.

In the psychology business we call this re-framing - so take some negative event and explain it to yourself in a positive way. For example, the government is about to do a 700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street - Well, that could certainly be looked at in a negative way - but how about seeing it as a positive in that we are in an election year and all eyes are on this problem and the candidates are going to work overtime to make sure this kind of thing does not happen again, so change will happen, new regulations will be put in place and the craziness that has been going on will stop or at least slow down - sometimes you have to have a negative before a positive can be instituted but for those who think in positive ways, the crisis is seen as an opportunity and not the beginning of a long depression. In fact, as you listen to the debates and ads for the candidates see if you can pick out the optimistic ones from the doom and gloom ones and remember optimists have better presents and futures.

Remember to vote! Blessings, Lorraine