“I’m an idiot,” I said to a colleague after I had made a mistake on a report that had just been sent to several senior people at our company. “I can’t believe I did this, again. I’m always screwing up like this,” I said, thinking that this had become a habit and that I made mistakes all the time. Immediately, my thoughts spiraled into a mini-panic attack. Additional negative thoughts included:

• I’m going to lose this project.
• My career is in jeopardy.
• Everyone is going to think I am stupid.
• I’m a failure as a father and a husband.
• I have let my family down and I’m going to be out of a job…

My colleague let me finish my rant, and said, “Wow. You’re pretty hard on yourself. Did you listen to what you just said?” If he had only heard what I was thinking…

No, I had not been really listening to myself but his question hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew that much of what I was saying and thinking was completely false but I couldn’t escape the pit in my stomach.

Shortly after this happened, another colleague of mine recommended that I read Martin Seligman’s latest book, Learned Optimism – How to change your mind and your life. Within the first few pages, I came to the realization that the way I was explaining events (both good AND bad) was not very healthy – I was a pessimist.

Dr. Seligman writes that there are three dimensions of your explanatory style: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. If you look at my statements from above, there was a certain degree of permanence to them -  “always” and “I’m an idiot.”

As for pervasiveness, I took a small mistake at work and ended thinking that I wasn’t a good father or husband. Making a universal explanation for a specific adversity leads to giving up in other areas of your life.

Finally, I personalized this adversity. I didn’t take into account that several people helped me write the report and had actually signed off on it. I took full responsibility for something that I should have recognized was actually shared by others.

After determining my explanatory style, I recognized all the negative consequences that went with it. I was afraid to take risks. I didn’t take on the most difficult projects. I stayed in my comfort zone. When something bad happened, I focused on feeling bad as opposed to solving problems. Most importantly, I realized that I was planting the seeds of pessimism with my kids. (The research shows that there is a very strong correlation between a parent’s explanatory style and that of the child.)

I decided to work on my pessimism, but I wanted to get a more accurate read on my explanatory style, first. One way to to do this is to take Dr. Seligman’s Optimism Test. The test presents you with 12 different situations, asks you to come up with one major cause for each situation, and then asks you to rate the question on three different scales. A higher score indicates an optimistic explanatory style while a lower score indicates a pessimistic style.

The good news is that we can change our explanatory styles (come back next Tuesday for more on that…). All it takes is practice and some patience. But, the first step is to be mindful. Your friends, colleagues, and your kids are listening to your explanations – you should, too.

What is your explanatory style?

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