Lessons for Living       
Weekly Lesson: The Three "P's" of Pessimism

How do you explain things to yourself?

Would you like to be a more optimistic person?

When something goes wrong how do you explain it to yourself? We all have an explanatory style, our usual way of looking at life events. Explanatory styles are learned early in life, and we take them with us wherever we go. Our explanatory style has either an optimistic or pessimistic focus, and it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. How we explain things to ourselves is important.

Three typical areas of explanation look to see whether or not a situation is permanent, pervasive, or personal.

• If it is permanent, it is not changeable and the consequences will last forever.
• If it is pervasive, it negatively affects all areas of life.
• If it is personal, it reflects a serious individual failure or fault.

The optimistic style of explanation looks at an event, such as a business setback, and says, "Well, it is unfortunate, but it’s just temporary. I have other possibilities. It’s just bad luck. I did all I could." With this explanation a person is likely to quickly bounce back from disappointment and remain motivated to keep trying.

The pessimistic style, however, looks at the same setback and says, "This is terrible. I’ll never get over it. It just ruins everything. I don’t have what it takes for this business." Such an explanation leads to despair, self-blame and the loss of hope as motivation to continue dwindles away in self-criticism.

Which style of explanation is yours? Which one do you recognize? Are you the optimist or pessimist? If you have the pessimistic style, you may be making harmful self-fulfilling prophecies, predicting failure, and robbing yourself of energy and drive.

The good news about explanatory styles is that they can be changed. It just takes awareness plus effort. If you use the pessimistic approach you can change it by learning to challenge the three elements of pessimism.

• Always look to see what can change. Look for the possibilities. See if you can make lemonade from any lemons life may hand you. Don’t think yourself into being stuck.
• Focus on the specific situation and don’t generalize. Don’t let one small, isolated problem become like a wildfire roaring through your life affecting everything.
• Don’t personalize events with self-blame. Accept legitimate responsibility and learn from mistakes but don’t beat yourself up for every setback.

The key step in changing the pessimistic explanatory style is learning that you can change it. Accept this truth and you have already opened to new possibility. Next, focus on your specific circumstances, acknowledge your positive efforts, and then watch as your life starts to go better.

©2000 Daniel H. Johnston. All Rights Reserved.

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