3 P’s of Resilient Thinking – How Resilient are You?
Three Takeaways:
This article provides an excellent breakdown of the 3 P’s of Resilient Thinking, written by famed psychologist Martin Seligman– known as the “father of positive psychology,” who shifted the field’s focus from mental illness to studying human flourishing, happiness, and strengths.
Studying the human ability to overcome setbacks, Seligman settled on the three P’s of resilient thinking— personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence — that are critical to how we process adverse events and bounce back from hardship. Let’s break them down.
- PERSONALIZATION: Not everything that happens to us is a direct result of our actions. While it’s important to take responsibility for our choices, we cannot blame ourselves for every outcome. Moving beyond over-personalization will build resilience. When we stop taking every setback as a personal failing, we give ourselves the chance not just to recover, but to grow stronger.
- PERVASIVENESS: This is the belief that a negative event in one aspect of your life will affect all other areas of your life. That a small failure is all-consuming, a total condemnation of your worthiness. This is a falsity. Remind yourself that a problem in one area of your life, no matter how prominent that part of your life is, does not color your entire existence in one shade. When you realize this, you will feel more secure in handling problems that do arise knowing that other areas of your life are unaffected.
- PERMANENCE: This is the belief that a negative situation– and our feelings about it–will last forever. To put it simply: it never does. This third P is often seen with people experiencing loss of a loved one; it feels as if the pain will never end. This P is most commonly observed by everyone who has experienced a loss. We often project our current feelings, believing they’ll last indefinitely. This can cause a cycle of being downcast, and then being downcast about feeling downcast. Instead, we must consciously remind ourselves that negative feeling can be temporary.
So, next time a negative situation befalls you, remember to think resiliently. Reframe your thoughts to overcome the three Ps. We cannot control the circumstances & situations we encounter in our lives, but we absolutely can control how we respond to them.
From Leonna DeVinne
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