It’s All About the Explanation…A Story That Illustrates…

One of the most useful tools for building resilience, I’ve found over the years, is noticing and challenging unproductive explanations we create about experiences we are having.

This comes from the outstanding work of Dr. Martin Seligman, a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology. His research revealed that people who are prone to anxiety and depression had very different “explanatory styles” than people who didn’t…and even more radically different from people who were resilient.

In this video, you will see an example of me using a story to make the concept of “It’s not what happens, it what we say to ourselves–i.e. how we EXPLAIN what happens–that determines its effect on us.”

Now, I could just make that point as a bullet point and talk in very theoretical terms or…I could give an example.

I can tell a story… (BTW…this is one of my favorite stories)

Excerpted from “Whatever Life Brings” (DVD/CD set)