Have you ever pushed a door – it doesn’t open and you assume it’s locked? Until you realise you need to pull it? Your initial thought is that “I am right – the door is locked” our initial thoughts always favour the self. We assume we are right.
This is no big deal when confronted with an uncooperative door but what about when we have thoughts about more important events in our lives and businesses? We are presented with an event of some sort, we think on it, we draw a conclusion. What if the conclusion we’ve drawn is wrong…
There are many different styles of distorted thinking. Here are 5 of them…
Filtering
You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all the positive aspects of a situation
Polarized thinking
Things are black and white. Good or bad. You have to be perfect or you are a failure. There is no middle ground
Over generalization
You come to a general conclusion based on a single event or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once you expect it to happen over and over again. You use the words ‘always’ or ‘never’ in arguments.
Mind reading
Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you
Castastrophizing
You expect disaster, you notice or hear about a problem and start ‘what if’s?’ What if disaster strikes? what if it happens to you?
Do all of these hit home in some way? You’re a lost cause……not really. Being aware of these is a huge step towards understanding your own thought processes and those of other people and hence communicating with them better.
If you think in these ways then so do others.
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