Permanent, Personal & Pervasive

In the research into pessimisms, optimism, depression and happiness, Dr .Martin Seligman notices that people who tend to define bad things as permanent, personal and pervasive had a completely different life experience from those who explained their problems as being temporary, specific and impersonal………

The below is an exercise from the book Feel happy now-Michael Nell, will help you to use appropriate cognitive structuring.

Why things are the way they are

• Think of a situation in your life that went badly. Now answer the question, “why did it go badly?”As if explaining to a friend.
• Once again, tell the story of why it went badly, but this time take out any reference to it being your fault in any way.(this is the first P personalization)
• Now explain what happened again, but retell it as if it were a random, one time occurrence with the beginning, middle and end(This is the second P permanence)
• Finally, explain the situation as it were an isolated down point in the awesome panorama of positivity of life(This is the third P pervasiveness)
• Notice which three shifts ( personalization, permanence or pervasiveness)made the biggest impact on your state of mind, and begin to rewrite the stories of yours from this new and different point of view.