Brian Johnson explains Martin Seligman's three Ps of optimism: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. When good things happen, optimists see them as lasting and broad; pessimists see them as temporary and narrow. The reverse happens with bad events. Reframing how you explain things to yourself changes your explanatory style.
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You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson, More Wisdom in Less Time. This is a mini chapter from Brian's book A Philosopher's Notes. You can find it on Amazon. The three Ps of optimism from Martin Seligman's perspective, optimism is not about whistling happy tunes to ourselves when life gets challenging. It's about disciplining our minds to create more empowering explanations of what's going on. Whether we're optimists or pessimists comes down to what he calls our explanatory styles. How we explain what's happening in our world. Specifically in this model, it comes down to three permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. So imagine something good happens at work. Let's say you get a promotion or land a big client or whatever qualifies as positive in your work world. How would you explain it? Let's look at it through the three Ps. If you're a pessimist, you think the good fortune won't last. That's permanence. It doesn't apply to the rest of your life. Pervasiveness and it's because you got lucky. Personalization. If you're an optimist, you'll tend to see it the other way around. The good fortune will probably last. It's just another example of how everything's awesome in your life. And it's probably the result of all the diligent, patient, persistent and playful hard work you've put in for quite a while. Interesting, huh? Now let's look at a negative event. Let's say you're laid off or lose a big client or whatever. How do you explain that to yourself? The pessimist, although convinced the positive stuff won't last, think thinks the negative will last forever. And although the positive event wasn't pervasive, the negative event is. And although you wouldn't take any credit for the positive event, the negative event is totally your fault. Dope. On the other hand, the optimist looks at the negative event and believes it's just a temporary setback. Permanence is just one part of your life that's not as great as it could be pervasiveness and is partly due to a poor economy, so no need to take it all personally. Explanatory styles. Really powerful stuff. Check in on the good and bad stuff in your life and see how are you interpreting them. Do you tend to have an optimistic or a pessimistic explanatory style? The exciting news is that mastering our explanatory styles like anything else, just takes practice. Next time you feel yourself swept away by a negative event or not fully appreciating a positive one, see if you can fine tune your P's please. We hope you enjoyed this mini chapter from Brian's book A Philosopher's Notes. Want more wisdom in less time delivered in your inbox? Sign up for Brian's free daily newsletter, the Optimizer, and get the full e book and audiobook at brianjohnson Me apn.
