"yes is a world

& in this world of

yes live

(skilfully curled)

all worlds"

~ e.e. cummings

Martin Seligman wrote an awesome book called, “Learned Optimism.” (Yes, you can (and should!) learn optimism!)

Big Idea? The Three P’s: Permanence, Pervasiveness and Personalization.

The Three P’s make up your “explanatory style”—how you explain what’s going on in your life to yourself. Good stuff to look into:

We’ll start with Permanence: Is it likely to continue? Is it permanent or temporary?

The permanence is pretty straightforward. Something happens. Do you explain the results as permanent, and likely to recur? Or, do you think it was temporary–just a fluke.

If it's a bad thing, the optimist tends to think it's a fluke. If it's a good thing, they tend to think it's permanent.

The opposite holds true for the pessimist: Good things are the flukes and bad things are more likely to recur.

Pervasiveness: Is it reflective of your whole life? Is it “specific” or is it “universal”?

The pervasiveness looks at whether we believe an event is specific or universal. So, do we think the results of this one event apply to everything in our lives, or just that episode?

With a good event, the optimist is more likely to extend it to her whole life. With a bad event, she will tend to isolate the incident as specific to that situation.

The opposite holds true for the pessimist. If something good happens, they think it was a fluke. If something bad happens, they think it is representative of their whole life.

Personalization: Internal vs. External: Do we believe we’re responsible for the event, or is something outside of our control responsible? The fancy psychological term for it is “locus of control”: whether you believe the control was “internal” or “external.”

Something good happens. An optimist pats himself on the back (internal)–saying he did a good job. Same thing happens to a pessimist. He is more likely to attribute the success to luck, other people's hard work, or something else outside of his control (external).

D'oh. Something bad happens. The optimist looks to things outside of himself (external) to explain the event–from bad luck to an off day. The pessimist, although they didn't take responsibility for the good event, are eager to take responsibility for the bad event (internal).

How’re your P’s?

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