Explaining it personally.
When something happens to you, you make sense of the event by explaining it to yourself.
Each event that happens to you can be explained in many different ways.
One style of explaining is called personalization.
To analyse whether your style of explaining is personal, you ask the question: “Was this event personal or not personal”.
Was I responsible for the outcome or was I not”.
Does the event have an internal focus (me) or an external focus (not me).
We will illustrate this by making an example.
A man called Lee was walking from his house to the corner shop.
He had a twenty dollar note in his pocket which he was going to use to buy groceries.
When he got to the shop, Lee discovered that the note was gone.
He had dropped the money somewhere along the way to the shop.
Lee could explain this event in two different ways:
He could say to himself:
I am such an idiot. I lost money. I am always doing this.
Or he could say:
This was bad luck. It can happen to anybody.
In the first explanation, Lee was blaming himself for the incident. This is called personalization. This triggered emotions that made Lee feel sad. Lee felt devastated. Lee blamed himself for the event. This could lead to a low mood.
But there is an alternative explanation. In the second instance Lee still felt emotions. However, he did not blame himself for the incident. This explanation is not personal. In the second scenario Lee, felt disappointment and regret. This had less of an effect on his mood.
The two explanations result in different outcomes. In the first, Lee felt devastated and blamed himself. In the second, Lee felt milder emotions.
This example illustrates how the same event can have different outcomes as a result of how you explain the event to yourself.
In our program, you record events and the emotions that result from the event. At a later stage, you then go through your list of events and evaluate each one through this lens of Personalization.
When bad events happen to you, you analyse your explanation to see if you are unnecessarily making the event personal.
The purpose of the exercise being to find a new explanation that has less of an impact on your mood.
Finding a new explanation is called reframing. You find a new frame or lens in which to explain an event.
One habit of a person that has high optimism and resilience is the ability to view events through this lens of personalisation.
Our program gives you the opportunity to learn new skills that will lead you to greater optimism, hope, resilience and happiness.
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