Three Ps battling the three Ms

In Tal Ben Shachar’s lecture in positive psychology, he discussed the three M’s that can be detrimental when dealing with a situation:  Magnifying, Minimizing , Making up. We tend to magnify a tough situation and make it to be worse than what it is. Sometimes we minimize the importance of something and sometimes we imagine things to be worse than what it is.

To combat it we have three P’s: Permission, Positive reframing and Perspective

Permission to be human- It is important to embrace what we feel. We should not deny our feelings, they exist for a reason and hiding them can only make things worse. Example- My son broke one of my favorite salad bowls. I am frustrated, angry and sad.

Positive Reframing- The next step is we can view what initially seems to be a very negative event in a more positive way. Example- After my son broke the salad bowl, I viewed it as an opportunity for him to learn consequences for his actions. We discussed how it happened, how could we prevent something like this happening again and what would be a fair consequence.

Distraction- overanalyzing doesn’t always help. Sometimes it is useful to distract ourselves so that we don’t overanalyze or dwell upon something.

Perspective. Dont sweat the small stuff. Some stuff is very big. But to check-is this going to matter in a year? is this worth it? Most of the time it doesn’t matter. It is important to develop the ability to switch perspective. When we want to be immersed in the present, and we want to be able to shift to the future or the past. We can train our mind through meditation and cognitively reframing things. Example: The bowl that was broken is relatively not so expensive, at least more things weren’t broken, at least he wasn’t hurt, it could have been worse.