Coaching practices for Three Ps Seligman

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Three Ps Seligman, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • One bad thing happens and instantly it’s "this always happens, it ruins everything, and it’s all my fault"
  • I don’t want to lie to myself with forced positivity
  • Something about my life feels off and I genuinely can’t name what
  • When something good happens to me I instantly chalk it up to luck or someone else, never anything I did
  • When something goes wrong I spiral straight into the dark conclusion and the bad feeling, and I want an actual step-by-step way to slow that down and argue back with evidence instead of just sinking.

Practices that may help

  1. Seligman’s PERMA Model, Made Practical
    Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of well-being: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Unlike happiness models that treat well-being as a single variable, PERMA argues these five elements are each intrinsically valued and each independently improvable. Several PERMA-targeted interventions have randomized-trial support; others are mechanistically grounded with less direct evidence.
  2. Positive Psychology, Made Practical
    Martin Seligman’s positive psychology studies what makes life worth living, organized around the PERMA model — Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Several of its signature interventions, including three good things, the gratitude visit, and using signature strengths, have genuine randomized-trial support for raising well-being and lowering depressive symptoms.
  3. Learned Optimism: Seligman’s ABCDE Method
    Learned optimism, from Martin Seligman’s research program, teaches you to identify and dispute the pessimistic explanations you generate automatically after setbacks — using his ABCDE model (Adversity, Belief, Consequence, Disputation, Energization). Clinical and observational research links shifting from pessimistic to flexible explanatory style to reduced depression risk and better persistence; effects are real but modest, and the goal is accuracy, not forced positivity.
  4. Identify the three Ps in your explanation
    Check whether your explanation of a setback is permanent, pervasive, or personal — and how accurate each is.
    Learned Optimism: Seligman’s ABCDE Method
  5. Calibrate toward accuracy, not positivity
    The target is a realistic, flexible explanatory style — not Pollyannaish optimism.
    Learned Optimism: Seligman’s ABCDE Method
  6. Run a PERMA audit of your current well-being
    Rate each of the five PERMA pillars to find which is currently limiting your overall flourishing.
    Seligman’s PERMA Model, Made Practical
  7. Train optimistic causal attribution deliberately
    Practice attributing good events to stable, internal causes — not to luck or one-off circumstances.
    Three Good Things: The Evidence-Based Gratitude Practice
  8. Run the ABCDE disputation
    Map adversity → belief → consequence, then dispute the belief with evidence.
    Learned Optimism: Seligman’s ABCDE Method
  9. Three Good Things: The Evidence-Based Gratitude Practice
    In Martin Seligman’s original randomized controlled trial, participants who wrote three good things and their causes each evening for one week reported significantly higher happiness and lower depression at one month and six months — making it one of the most replicated exercises in positive psychology. Effects are genuine but modest; the practice sustains benefits best when kept specific and causal rather than performed as a gratitude list.
  10. Audit your life against PERMA
    Check well-being across all five pillars — emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment.
    Positive Psychology, Made Practical

Related concerns

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice