How do you explain the events of your daily life to yourself? And why does it matter?

How do you explain the events of your daily life to yourself? And why does it matter?

Whenever anything happens in our day, we ascribe a reason to it. We do this fast, automatically and mostly subconsciously. Interestingly, the kinds of causes we attribute to things could have a huge impact on our mental health.

We label things along 3 axes...

• Permanence - is the cause of this thing permanent in my life or temporary?

• Pervasiveness - is it global (affecting everything in my life) or specific (affecting only one/limited areas)?

• Personalisation - was it internal (caused by me) or external (something outside me)?

Super-optimists will tend to think of something positive (like getting a promotion) as having a permanent, global and internal cause, eg, I got the promotion because I'm amazing. If they were passed over, it would be temporary, specific and external (“the interviewer didn’t like my answer to that one question”).

Clearly, always thinking like a super optimist is not the goal because you would fail to take accountability for your role in bad events and fail to give credit to others for their role in good things.

Super-pessimists will do the reverse. I got the promotion? They needed someone to fill that role urgently and I happened to be there (temporary, specific, external). I was passed over? I'm an idiot (permanent, global, internal). Clearly, like super optimism, habitually explaining the world in this way will not be accurate. Furthermore, it’s associated with poorer physical and mental health outcomes.

Optimism to pessimism is a spectrum, with more accurate explanatory styles perhaps sounding like "I didn’t get the promotion because the kinds of work I want to do are a mismatch for this organisation" (permanent, specific, internal) or the more optimistic "I didn’t get the promotion this time because I didn't prepare enough for the interview questions" (temporary, specific, internal).

Sometimes I’ll be working with someone who tends towards the more super-pessimistic style and who will say something like “But I don’t want to look on the bright side of everything – that’s delusional”. Fair – but looking for the worst case in everything is delusional as well. Neither of those is the goal.

The goal is to move your explanatory centre of gravity away from the extremes and more towards an accurate explanation for things that occur in your life. The first step is to notice and analyse your typical existing explanations for things... then, where they might not be accurate, to practice reframing into something that is.

And here’s the kicker – most of the time, we don’t actually know the reason for something. We fill in the blanks. Why didn’t your friend say hi when you saw them in the supermarket? Because they hate you? Because you’ve messed something up and they’re mad at you? Maybe. Or maybe they’re tired and don’t feel like talking, or they didn’t see you. You don’t know.

Being accurate where you actually know something, and practicing going to a more realistically optimistic hypothesis for things you don’t, is associated with a host of positive outcomes. Research by renowned psychologist Martin Seligman and colleagues back in 1995 suggested these include higher levels of motivation, achievement and wellbeing and lower levels of depressive symptoms.

Worth a go, I reckon.

Until next week,

Take care of yourself and others

Madeleine

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