"As a Man Talketh"   

 When we talk to others, even in casual conversation, we  are also talking to ourselves. And what we say influences  how we feel and how we view and experience our world.     

For example, does a person's language suggest that  s/he makes things happen  that they are causal  or that  s/he is a hapless victim of circumstance?     

I have an old college friend who talks almost  exclusively in victim language. He makes statements  such as Next week, I'm going to try to contact those  references and I should have got my Christmas  cards written. This is the language of struggle and  self-blame. Things happen to him instead of him  causing things to happen. It is not a language style  that includes choice.     

He does not use statements like Today I choose  to finish my correspondence or I want to call those  references, and only rarely I am going to  finish that job this afternoon. His talk does not  come from his center, but instead suggests outside  forces are pushing him, as in I know I should  change my internet provider. It is no mystery to  me that his tasks don't get done.     

Professor Martin Seligman has used the term  explanatory style to denote the way we think  about and explain to others why things happen to  us. In his book, Learned Optimism (1990) he  writes:     

How do you think about the causes of the  misfortunes, small and large, that befall you?  Some people, the ones who give up easily,  habitually say of their misfortunes: It's me,  it's going to last forever, it's going to undermine  everything I do.' Others, those who resist giving  in to misfortune, say: It was just circumstances,  it's going away quickly anyway, and, besides,  there's much more to life.' (p. 44) Whether you  are an optimist or a pessimist is determined by  your explanatory style.     

If you talk about bad things happening with always's and  never's  what Seligman calls Permanence  you have a  pessimistic style. For example, Diets never work  (permanent) instead of Diets don't work when you eat out.  (temporary). Conversely, when we explain good events in  permanent terms -- such as a raise at work  we'll tend to  be optimistic. I'm good at what I do is a statement of  permanence. I worked hard to complete the project  is temporary.     

A second dimension of explanatory style is Pervasiveness.  A circumstance is either universal or specific. When asked  why he failed an important examination, George might say  I wasn't as smart as the others (universal, thus pessimistic)  or I didn't prepare for it well (specific, and optimistic.)  When we explain bad events that happen in universal terms,  we make them permanent and our outlook crumbles into  pessimism. When we explain bad events in specific terms,  we are optimistic and can try again.     

People who blame themselves when they fail, when  they internalize the cause for failure, tend to have low  self-esteem and pessimism as consequences. Rabbi  Kushner's best selling book, When Bad Things  Happen to Good People, suggested that we can be  a good and worthy person even if bad things sometimes  happen. When we externalize the cause of a troubling  event (They downsized me to cut costs) instead of  internalizing it (I wasn't good at my job, and I got  laid off) we can retain our self-esteem.     

Psychologists have long known that how we think  influences how we feel and experience life. Further,  how we express our thoughts during conversation seems  to be an even more powerful influence on us than our  private, internal thoughts. As Martin Seligman points  out, one's spoken explanatory style is more real  and greatly influences whether we see ourselves  controlled by outside circumstances or whether the  point of control is within us.     

Note: If you'd like to check your own style, you can  find a short self-test in Learned Optimism (1990),  available in many public and college libraries.