Nicky Lowe [00:00:07]:

Hi. I’m Nikki Lowe, and welcome to the Wisdom For Working Mums podcast show, where I share insights and interviews that support women to combine their family, work, and life in a more successful and sustainable way. Welcome to this episode. I’m your host, Nikki Lowe, an accredited master level executive coach. And today, I’m here to share my insights and experiences with you. And today’s insight is what I would call a game changer. I don’t know about you. I’m cynical when people tell me there’s a quick hack or fix that can change my life.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:46]:

And as someone that’s studied and dedicated, really, the last 2 decades to studying psychology and human behavior, I can confidently say that humans are complex, multifaceted, and unique. However, there is one strategy that I’ve shared, I think, with nearly all my clients. And it’s a strategy that holds the potential to completely shift our perspective on life. And it’s had that impact on theirs. It’s had that impact on mine, and I think it can have that on yours too. And so this strategy isn’t just a tool. I think it’s a game changer that can really be the catalyst for changing our experience of life. So to celebrate International Day of Happiness when this podcast episode launches, I wanted to share this strategy with you.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:42]:

And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that when you learn and understand this, it can transform your experience of happiness. And I’m sharing this with you because I believe in the power of this strategy. It’s a strategy that I’m actually leaning into a lot during this season of my life when I’m experiencing perimenopause. And I found that that experience has impacted my happiness. It’s really affected my ability to feel as positive and happy as I would in the past. So I know this strategy doesn’t just work for my clients. It works for me too. And I actually first discovered this strategy when I was studying positive psychology with the Centre of Applied Positive Psychology.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:29]:

And if you’re not familiar with positive psychology, new new approach to psychology in the late nineties. And it was brought to the mainstream by Martin Seligman, who’s a renowned psychologist and really a trailblazer in positive psychology. And his research has revolutionized our understanding of human happiness and resilience. And he really created this as a reaction to past approaches and practices in psychology, which really tended to focus on mental illness and emphasized, kind of, maladaptive behaviors and negative thinking and kind of pathologized psychology. So psychology tended to study people who were suffering and wanted to understand why. But doctor Martin Seligman actually went, well, actually, there’s all these people over here that are flourishing. Why aren’t we looking at what they’re doing? And so what he did was take a revolutionary approach at the time and started to study those people who were flourishing to understand how, like, what were they doing? How were they thinking that led to them having such a positive experience in life? So Martin Seligman really is considered the father of positive psychology, and he has written kind of lots of brilliant books. And I discovered this strategy that I’m gonna share with you today in one of his books.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:59]:

Whenever I share it, I always give him full credit because I think he deserves all the credit in the world for the work that he’s done. And as I said, I’ve shared this strategy with many of my clients, because I think once you understand it, you have so much power in your own life. And it’s the strategy of knowing and shaping your explanatory style. So central to, to Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology is this theory of the explanatory style. And it draws on extensive research that Seligman and all of his professional colleagues and professors identified these patterns in how people explain the events in their lives. And that these explanations they found had profound implication for a person’s emotional well-being, their resilience, their overall quality of life, and really their experience of happiness. So your explanatory style is simply the way you explained things that happen in your life, but it shapes your perceptions, your emotions, your behavior. And actually, the core to understanding your explanatory style is 3 dimensions.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:15]:

And I’ll bring these alive with, examples. So don’t expect you to get this first off because these kind of three dimensions can be quite technical. The first dimension is how do we explain things in terms of, are they stable versus unstable? So do we perceive an event being enduring, so it lasts over time, therefore it will be stable? Or, actually, do we see it as transient and subject to change, So it would be deemed unstable. So that’s the first dimension. The second dimension is, do we see it as global or do we see it as specific? So if we see an event that impacts all areas of our lives, we would see that as global, or do we explain it as being confined to a specific domain? Maybe it’s a work domain, personal domain, family domain. It would be then cluster specific. The 3rd dimension is how do we explain things in terms of internal versus external? So how do we attribute an event happening in terms of factors within our control? So it’d be clusters internal or outside of our control being external. And, actually, how you explain events based on those three dimensions can either fuel optimism and resilience, or actually contribute to pessimism and help listeners.

Nicky Lowe [00:06:44]:

And understanding and harnessing those and your explanatory style is actually crucial for cultivating happiness and well-being. So Martin Seligman in his book, Learnt Optimism, actually shared the research that while genetic disposition, I. E. How you’re born and our personality traits influence our explanatory style, so we tend to be born with a preference for being optimistic or pessimistic. So it’s the classic, do you see yourself as life as half a glass half empty or half full? An optimist is a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something. Whereas a pessimist is a person who tends to see the worst and, predicts that the worst will happen. And what doctor, doctor Martin Seligman said is that tends to be a personality trait. So we tend to be born with a preference for where we are on the scale.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:44]:

But, whether you’re an optimist or pessimist, your ability to deal with hard things comes down to a lot to do with our explanatory style. So our explanatory style is largely learned through repeated patterns of thinking and reacting to life. So he argues we kind of learn it. So if we’ve learned to be more pessimistic, there are times and places where pessimism is really, really useful, but it can actually lead to reduction in resilience and well-being and overall happiness. So in his book, Learned Optimism, he presents this case for, if we can learn to be more optimistic, it really helps. So he talks about that through awareness, practice, and intentional effort, we can take control of our explanatory style. And as I said, it can really lead to that greater resilience, happiness, and well-being. And to explain the explanatory style, Seligman uses the concept of the 3 P’s.

Nicky Lowe [00:08:45]:

And it’s this that I believe is a game changer, and it’s this that I share with my clients. And the first p is around permanence, and it’s really about how we explain things relating to time. Do we see a situation as stable, so that enduring, or do we see it as unstable, like temporary? And an optimistic explanation. Optimists tend to view negative events as temporary, and they expect them to change over time. So if, for example, they’re encountering, I don’t know, setback at work, they might attribute it to a temporary factor such as just a temporary, like it’s a challenging project or there’s a brief misunderstanding, and they believe that things will improve in the future. Whereas a pessimist will tend to perceive negative events as permanent and enduring. So if they face criticism from their boss, for example, they may interpret it as evidence that they’re incompetent or that things will never get better with this situation and that it’s unlikely to improve. And they may also generalize it into other areas of their life.

Nicky Lowe [00:09:57]:

The second P. So the first P was around permanence and time, the second P is called pervasiveness, and this is really about space. And it’s that concept of global versus specific. Do we believe that events impact all areas of our lives? Are they global or they’re confined to a specific domain so that they’re specific. And an optimist tend to see negative events as specific to a particular time or circumstance or domain in their life. For example, if you have a disagreement with a friend, if you’re an optimist, you’ll attribute it to a misunderstanding or a difference of opinion without generalizing it to all other relationships or aspects of your life. Whereas a pessimist tends to perceive negative events as kind of pervasive and it kind of leaks and affects multiple areas of their lives. As I say, they let kinda let it leak.

Nicky Lowe [00:10:53]:

So if they experience a setback in their career, they may believe that it reflects their overall lack of competence or that similar failures will occur, perhaps, in their personal relationships or in their hobbies. So we’ve talked about permanence being, time, pervasiveness being space. And the 3rd P is about personalization. And this relates to the concept about how we explain our involvement in situations. And it comes back to that internal versus external attribute attributing. So do we attribute events to factors within our control? So it’s internal or outside of our control being external. And optimists often externalize negative events. They attribute them to factors outside of themselves.

Nicky Lowe [00:11:42]:

So for example, if they fail to secure a promotion, they may attribute it and explain it to factors such as, you know, it’s a really competitive job market, or there’s organizational restructuring, or there’s politics, rather than viewing it as a reflection of their own personal shortcomings. Whereas a pessimist tend to internalize negative events, blaming themselves for what went wrong. So for example, they might face a rejection in their romantic relationship and they might blame themselves for being unlovable or inadequate, kind of overlooking external factors such as compatibility, kind of, or timing. And I’m just wondering, as I’ve shared those 3 p’s, can you see or hear yourself in them when I share them? Because, normally, when I talk about this strategy, people at this point start to nod and share how they explain events in their own life. So do you find yourself ever attributing negative events solely to yourself, like when a project fails or a relationship hits a rough patch, and you automatically blame yourself thinking you’re at full. Perhaps you’ve had a relationship breakdown and you think that you’re unlovable or you didn’t get the job and you think that you’re incompetent. And I find that high achievers tend to have this tendency because they’ve got high efficacy, which is great because they have, like, a high locus of personal control. But it can mean that they feel more guilt and shame because they blame themselves when things go badly.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:18]:

But what if we looked at it differently? So instead of beating ourselves up, we consider those external factors. You know, my partner left because their needs weren’t being met, and that’s okay because I couldn’t or didn’t wanna meet them. I didn’t get the job because my skills didn’t align with the organizational needs, and there were many other qualified applicants. It’s about seeing the bigger picture and understanding that there are multiple that contribute to a situation. And this isn’t about diminishing your role or capabilities, but it’s about providing a more realistic view. So let’s now talk about the belief that bad situations will last forever. So that permanence piece, you know, have you ever felt like the pain from a negative event will never fail fade? You know, it’s almost like, I’ll never find love again, or my heart will always be broken, or perhaps I’ll never find a job. I’m kinda doomed.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:15]:

But a different explanation might be, do you know what? This hurts right now, but heartbreak heals with time. Love will find me again, or I will find a job. It just takes effort and patience, but it’s possible. As I said, lastly, the tendency is to set back, let a setback affect every aspect of our life, that pervasiveness where we let it leak. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had that thought that failing in one error means that you’re failing in it all and you’re failing at life. So it might be that a relationship had failed, so we think we’re gonna lose everything. Or messing up a project means that I’m a failure in every role. But remember, a breakup doesn’t define friendships, career, or hobbies.

Nicky Lowe [00:15:01]:

And work setbacks don’t reflect your qualities as a parent or a partner or a friend. It’s about recognizing that setbacks are specific and don’t define your entire life. And really by understanding how those 3 P’s shape our explanatory style, we can really become more aware of our thought patterns and consciously choose a more adaptive and optimistic interpretation of life and all the events that happen to us. So if we can cultivate an optimistic explanatory style, we can really influence our resilience, our well-being, and our overall happiness. And I think it’s important to emphasize that giving ourselves flexibility of our explanatory style is the real key here, And not getting fixed and rigid with how we explain things because that gives us the potential for positive change because we’re developing that learned optimism. And it’s really what’s at the core of psychological flexibility, that ability to adapt to different situations, have different thoughts, and have that emotional flexibility without getting entangled in them or controlled by them. And that’s when we get the real freedom, and it’s the foundation for happiness. So this International Happiness Day, I really hope that these insights help you unlock more happiness in your life.

Nicky Lowe [00:16:32]:

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Have you come across the explanatory style before? And if so, what you’ve learned from that, or if you’ve not heard it before, what the insights in this episode have given you. Do drop me a line either on social media or email. As always, I love to hear from you. As I’ve said before, sometimes putting the podcast out in the world can feel like you’re just putting it out into this black hole, and you never know how these episodes land. So please do get in contact. I respond to every single message. So, yeah, I would love to hear from you.

Nicky Lowe [00:17:04]:

And until next time, thanks for listening. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom For Working Mums, please share it on social media and with your friends and family. I’d love to connect with you too. So if you head over to wisdom for working moms.co.uk, you’ll find a link on how to do this. And if you love the show and really want to support it, please go to Itunes, write a review, and subscribe. You’ll be helping another working mom find this resource too. Thanks so much for listening.

Turning leadership and lifestyle inspiration into action one conversation at a time. Tune in wherever you listen to podcasts & leave us a review!

Listen to the podcast today

listen on apple

listen on spotify