Think your best think
How to reframe your thoughts to make the most of situations and opportunities
You have learned how Neuroplasticity will allow you to change, really change. You have identified the negative unhelpful beliefs that you have been dragging around for goodness knows how long and you know how, using the ABC Model, to challenge and change them. You have thought about what happens from here, what path you want to take; you have set new goals that will take you to this ‘new’ you and you have imagined yourself as the calm, confident, successful and happy person that you can be.
This chapter is about making sure that your path towards this goal is as smooth as it can possibly be; to make sure that your old self is not hiding in the shadows waiting to trip you up! The whole Mind Fitness programme is, in many ways and on many levels, about learning to get out of your own way. It is particularly true in terms of reframing old patterns of thinking and repositioning unconscious bias.
Unless you are already familiar with the ways that Cognitive Distortions or Thinking Errors work, or unless you have recently arrived from a planet further along the neural path than we are, I think this chapter will surprise you. Most of us genuinely believe that we know the way our minds work and are aware of the prejudices and biases that influence our thoughts and feelings. You might find this is not the case! But it is surprisingly easy to clear the path. Not that any of us will get to the point where we have no bias or are completely devoid of unhelpful ways of thinking – not unless we’ve come from that far away planet.
What are Thinking Errors?
Thinking Errors1 or Cognitive Distortions (both CBT terminology) are strong habitual patterns of thought that will feel to you right and normal, but are, in fact, based on false logic. Say that sentence to yourself slowly. They are incredibly important because they can determine how we see ourselves and how we view the world. They can cause us to fail even if we have set positive goals that we are working towards, and it is likely that we will be totally unaware of them. Often Thinking Errors have caused us to ‘tell’ ourselves that we are not good enough, which means that self-criticism has become our main strategy to succeed; a strategy that we know now is likely to have caused unnecessary distress. But it can be changed.
In this chapter, we are going to go through the most common Thinking Errors. There is a short set exercise that you can use at the end of each ‘error’ to reframe your thinking if this is required. We’ll also look at two mindsets that come up a lot in our training sessions, procrastination and perfectionism, and explore ways to turn these around if either of these are stopping you from realising your potential.
First, we’ll think about how we came to have illogical biases in our -thinking and how we can become aware of what they are.
As we’ve said before, our brain builds our vision of the world from past thoughts and experiences. Although the brain gathers input from both positive and negative situations, because of the way the ANTs set in negative biases are much more common. Because our emotions are often more highly charged in a negative situation, these biases, essentially negative slants on the world that would not be borne out by evidence, become stronger in times of crisis and become major symptoms in acute anxiety and depression.
Cognitive Distortions or Thinking Errors are often the beginning of an automatic loop. Thoughts lead to feelings, which lead to physiological symptoms, which lead to behaviours, which lead to thoughts, and so we go round again.
Thought
‘Nobody likes me in my new workplace.’
Feeling
‘I feel self-conscious all the time.’
Physiological symptom
‘I’m sweating and blushing far more than usual.’
Behaviour
‘I’m staying away from them as much as I can.’
Thought
‘There’s something wrong with me. People didn’t like me at my old office either.’
Feeling
‘I feel very anxious and unhappy.’
Physiology
‘My heart is beating fast and I feel dizzy.’
Behaviour
‘I eat my lunch at my desk avoiding social contact with colleagues.’
Thought
‘I might stay off work tomorrow.’
It happens because the information that exists about any topic is colossal and, in this digital culture, is growing almost exponentially. Our brain is programmed to select for us the information that it believes we require. There is no other way that we could survive. But, of course, it chooses selectively, based on the information and connecting emotional responses already stored. The automatic process works in patterns, based on the cumulative effect of everything you have been exposed to throughout your life. In other words, our brains take helpful short cuts and in doing so trip us up.
The vast majority of bias is unconscious. Think about this for a moment. We can be biased about a myriad of issues and not even know it. In fact, the most dangerous thing about bias is exactly this – our lack of awareness. Almost all of us believe we can outsmart it. I know I did. For example, just think of the number of people you know who say, ‘I don’t see race.’ This simply won’t be true if you are over five.
The ‘I Just Know’ State of Mind
At the core of the problem is the belief that you know something. Believing that you know something, in fact whole hosts of things, is fundamental to the way you navigate the world. We simply don’t look to see if there is evidence that could point us in another direction and, if we saw such a thing, we would probably assume that it was wrong.
Many scientists believe that this is considerably more of a problem in the information age. While science works as an evidence pyramid, going through several robust stages to examine, prove and test that something is a fact, we are increasingly relying on the internet and social media. In many cases it is one person’s opinion, but we have started to believe that the plural of anecdote is data.
Our intrinsic bias depends on our culture, religion, environment and, as we have said, on every experience that we have ever had. In terms of the huge amounts of information that is out there, we selectively consume that which supports our opinion and selectively ignore that which attacks it. And this happens in the automatic part of our brain.
It leads us to the incredibly powerful belief – ‘I just know’ – with masses of emotion invested in it. And of course we try to pass this on because we are convinced that it is right. Even newspapers, which have their own bias because they are written by humans, are fulfilling this drive – ‘I just know this and I want you to just know it too.’
If we are really going to stop getting in our own way we must be willing to recognise our own biases and try to see past them.
As we have said earlier, behind all the biases is a mental shortcut. The Availability Heuristic Bias is relying on information that comes to mind quickly. If there is a number of related events or situations that spring into your thoughts when you are making a decision, you give greater credence to this information. If something is in the news or has been repeated many times on social media, it will spring to mind. It is why, for example, most people would think being a police officer is a far more dangerous job than being a logger, while the reverse is in fact true. Equally surprising, due to our availability bias, is finding out that more people are killed by cows each year than by terrorists.
The Bandwagon Bias is a kind of groupthink, based on the rule that behaviours and beliefs spread among people just as trends do. As more people come to believe something others jump on the bandwagon, despite the lack of underlying evidence or sometimes even in the face of a strong counter argument. We don’t analyse the information. We just step on board. One of the strongest examples of the Bandwagon Effect is in politics, where a campaign that is on the ‘up’ can gather speed and supporters incredibly fast.
How we can change Distorted Thinking
As we have seen, irrational thoughts lead to problematic emotional states and, when we are stressed, our thinking becomes dramatic and extreme. It doesn’t match up with the reality of what is going on around us. This in itself is distressing and disconcerting which, of course, leads to more stress and more irrational thoughts. Anger management is heavily dependent on reframing distorted thinking. When you are next stressed, take a moment to notice your thoughts and try to search out any distorted thinking.
So how can we make a real and lasting change to the distorted thinking that our brains throw up, often at the most inconvenient times?
The first step is simply awareness, an understanding that, although what you are thinking feels absolutely right, it may not be logical, helpful or even true. The fact that you are reading this book means that you are already on the path.
The second step is labelling, which is why we’re going to list all the common Thinking Errors. If we can really pin them down we start to be aware of them even as they come into our mind; we can deal with them specifically, relating them to any unhelpful beliefs we may be holding.
The third step is monitoring; make a note in your notebook of when they came and how often. It is likely that you will start to see patterns and triggers. Make sure you know in what situations your three most frequent Thinking Errors usually occur.
Once you are at this level of awareness they can be reframed.
The Thinking Errors exercise detailed at the end of the Thinking Errors section can be undertaken for any one of them, as needed. You can work your way through – reading the information then doing the exercise. This will give you a full understanding of what these distortions are and how they fit together. Or you can read all of the list but just focus on doing the exercise for the two or three that you think most apply to you.
The most common Thinking Errors2
As you will see, there are a number of links and overlaps between the Thinking Errors listed below. Some practitioners group these together, while others work them separately. If you know that you habitually use one Thinking Error, it is worth testing yourself on those that seem to you to be linked.
All or Nothing Thinking
If you fall prey to All or Nothing Thinking, there is no middle ground. You are likely to frequently use words such as ‘always, never, forever’. Pay particular attention if the thinking is linked to the perception of self-worth – ‘I’m a complete failure.’
An example would be believing that you are a terrible employee because you took a day off work. This is linked to Polarising or Black and White Thinking. You will see everything in terms of success or failure; moral issues are black and white. Shades of grey do not exist. All or Nothing Thinking is also linked to Perfectionism, which we will look at later.
Overgeneralisation
People who fall prey to overgeneralisation will take an isolated case or single event, take it as evidence and use it to form a universal conclusion.
Common examples of overgeneralisation are:
‘All men/women are the same.’
‘We’re always fighting.’
Taking one unsuccessful job interview or relationship to mean that ‘I’m never going to get a job’ or believing I’m never going to find a partner’.
Mental Filter
The Mental Filter is when we magnify the negatives and filter out the positives of any situation. This is sometimes called the Magnification Bias or the Binocular Trick. This leads to the glass half-empty mindset and it is very easy to fall into. For example, if we give a presentation (a performance or any activity in a public arena) and 95 per cent of the audience liked what we did but 5 per cent didn’t, we will dwell, if we allow ourselves to, on the criticism of the few who did not. It is one of the things that most powerfully convinces us that we are never doing well enough.
Jumping to Conclusions
Jumping to Conclusions is thinking that you know the outcome (really know it) from little or no data evidence. It is often assuming the worst and commonly has its most powerful negative effects when it is linked to the way we think people feel about us. Often it can show us that our Self-Image is not as robust as it could be. We’ll look at this in Chapter 7 Feel Positive. For example, a partner arriving home late can lead us to the conclusion that he or she is having an affair. A room becoming quiet (or seeming to do so) as we walk in can convince us that everyone was talking about us. This can also be linked to Personalisation.
Jumping to Conclusions is comprised mostly of Mind Reading: He didn’t say good morning today so he must be mad at me’, and Fortune Telling: ‘It’s inevitable that I’ll fail my driving test again’.
Often the feeling will serve up evidence that simply isn’t true. For example, taking the driving test line above, it may lead to, ‘I’m bound to fail my driving test again as my driving has got worse since the last time I took it.’
We feel convinced that our predictions are an already established fact. In these situations it’s always worth making a note of what you actually know. This may take a couple of attempts at stripping back to remove all conjecture. If you had to speak impartially about it at a ‘trial’, what could you actually say?
Sometimes Discounting the Positive is looked at as a separate Thinking Error. If you know you do one more than the other, either magnify the negatives or discount the positives, then concentrate on that.
Sometimes this can be determined by a belief that we don’t deserve the positive and so we literally cannot believe it. If someone is nice to us, for example, we will assume that they have a hidden agenda.
Should Be Statements
Should Be Statements are linked to the rigid demands that we looked at when we were learning the ABC Model.
In most cases, they are linked to a belief that others ‘should’ believe our personal rules, which, as we have seen, we have no control over. We feel that people ‘should’ be grateful, ‘must’ say thank you and ‘ought’ to behave appropriately.
These may be personal rules that have been handed down to us and don’t fit in with the person we are now, leading to a huge amount of pressure and guilt – ‘I must get into university’, ‘I should be a better daughter’, ‘I have to cope better with a family and a demanding job’.
It can also be a way that we motivate ourselves: ‘I must finish this essay by 8 pm’ or in the case of bad managers, ‘a competent clerk ought to be able to work more efficiently’.
If you are using your ‘shoulds’ as a stick to beat yourself with, as we often do, it’s worth asking yourself if you would place the same demands on a loved one in a similar situation.
Labelling/Mislabelling
Labelling or Mislabelling is an extreme form of All or Nothing Thinking or Overgeneralisation. Labelling involves language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded, which often leads to a step-up in the negative emotion. An example would be saying ‘I’m a loser’ rather than ‘I made a mistake’ or ‘he’s a loser’ rather than ‘he could have behaved more pleasantly or appropriately’.
From the moment that we have defined ourselves or another person as the label, we are increasingly convinced of the justification. For example, the more times we refer to a work colleague with whom we disagree as a total idiot, the more deeply we will believe it.
Emotional Reasoning
Emotional Reasoning is one of the most powerful Thinking Errors. Almost all of us believe that if we feel something strongly it must be true. Instinctively, a powerful emotional response ‘proves’ to us that we are right to hold that opinion, and this is even more likely to be the case if what we are feeling is an Unhealthy Negative Emotion. We’ll have a look at these in Chapter 11. ‘I feel it’ translates all too naturally to ‘I know it’. The fact that we feel so jealous ‘convinces’ us that the affair we have suspected is true. It is therefore one of the hardest Thinking Errors to recognise in ourselves. In fact, sometimes it is easier to move the other way, from the negative emotion to the thought, to ask yourself next time you are angry, ‘Is there anything that my anger makes me absolutely convinced of?’ Emotional Reasoning can also lead to self-fulfilling prophecy, ‘I feel stupid so I must be stupid’, leading us to behave stupidly.
Personalisation
Personalisation is where we see ourselves as the cause of external events, often unhealthy events. It often results in us blaming ourselves for things that are out of our control and for this reason it is sometimes called the Mother of Guilt. It can lead to an enormous amount of regret, lots of ‘if only I hadn’t’ when, in fact, our actions have had little or no effect on the situation. Other emotions and feelings that spring from Personalisation are shame and inadequacy. Personalisation is also often associated with narcissistic traits as people who fall prey to this Thinking Error can see themselves at the centre of the universe. There may also be a strong tendency to worry about what other people think.
Certainly a chief cause of unhappiness is taking things personally that were not meant personally at all. For, example, a piece of constructive criticism from a manager can seem like a personal attack. Those who Personalise may see themselves as long-suffering victims. Personalisation is often linked to blaming, either yourself or other people. Try to be aware for a week or so of where you place the responsibility for the events that occur in your life. To break this cycle, never allow yourself to attribute more than 25 per cent of the ‘blame’ or ‘causation’ to any one person or event.
Low Frustration Tolerance
This springs from a belief that things must be the way we want them to be or life will be intolerable. How often do we say to ourselves, ‘I can’t stand it’ or ‘I can’t bear it when. . . .’? It’s a huge factor in the creation of both stress and anger.
Low Frustration Tolerance is often found in relation to minor situations and inconveniences, rather than crises. Because minor inconveniences happen all the time, it can lead to a state of almost constant irritation, which builds to an occasional explosion. Again, it is about changing our perspective. Think how glad we would be to stand in a queue if we were receiving provisions in a disaster zone. If you know that you have Low Frustration Tolerance, then notice your thoughts, the patterns and the language, and work, using the exercise, to change the ‘script’.
Awfulising
Awfulising is linked to Mental Filter, Magnification/Minimalisation. Some people call it Catastrophising. It is probably the most common Thinking Error and it’s well worth tackling. We almost all have a tendency to feel that situations and events are much worse than they really are. If we can get this in check, then the cup really does become much more than half full.
Addressing Awfulising is essentially about asking ourselves the question ‘How awful is it really?’ In training sessions, we use the example of a large-scale redundancy that Andy helped people with. If 100 people are made redundant, they will, of course, all have different responses. If they have to put the redundancy on a scale of 1–10, where 1 is that it’s not awful at all and 10 is that it is the worst it can be, the reactions would span the scale. It would range from those who were glad to take the redundancy package through to some who were terrified that they would not be able to feed their family. Let’s take a relatively minor event, cracking the screen of your phone. Something like this can seem ‘awful’ whereas really it’s expensive and annoying but nobody dies.
Our teams do a lot of work in schools with students just before their GCSEs and A levels. If you ask them how they rate their forthcoming exams, most will say ‘really awful’, a 9 or a 10. If they are then asked to imagine that they are living in a war zone where their family is under constant threat, where they might not have a roof over their head or enough to eat, and ask them to score this, most say 10. We then ask them to rescore their exams. Most change the number to a 2 or 3. It’s about altering our perception.
Exercise 6.1: Awfulising
Before we start, let’s take an example. Let’s say the football team you support has been relegated. Give a number 1 response – this could be, ‘Well, I suppose it was bound to happen. They have been 10 years in the Premier League.’ Now give a number 10 response – for example, ‘No! I can’t believe this; it’s all the fault of the manager, he should be shot!’ It’s actually quite fun and you get an amazing sense of control by adjusting your reactions.
Write yourself a set of 10 cards, each with an issue or situation. Perhaps two or three of these can be directly related to your current circumstances. Now write a set of cards with the numbers 1–10 and shuffle them. Place these in two piles.
First, turn over a situation and then a number. Try to give an appropriate response.
It’s a great exercise for helping us to realise that many of the problems we have in our life are not as bad as we immediately think. It helps us to see patterns and identify where our tendencies lie. It helps us to be aware that we choose, every hour of every day, how we will react to any situation.
Start to build this into your daily life. When the coffee machine is out of order or you get caught at a red light, just give yourself that moment to ask ‘how awful is it really?’
Exercise 6.2: Thinking Errors
This exercise can be done for any/all of the Thinking Errors.
- Write a statement that gives a clear example of whichever Thinking Error you are working on. If you can’t think of one, it’s fine to use one of the examples given in the paragraph describing the Thinking Error, but it’s useful if you have one that relates to you and your situation. For example – ‘Without my phone contacts no one will be able to contact me and I’ll go mad.’
Statement: __________________________________________________ - Replace the statement with one that deals with the same topic but that covers the middle ground – in other words, which states the same ‘fact’, ‘belief’ or ‘opinion’ in a less extreme way.
Statement: __________________________________________________ - Replace this statement with one that runs counter to this ‘fact’, ‘belief’ or ‘opinion’ – in other words which states the opposite.
Statement: __________________________________________________ - Imagine what a third party would say or do about this opinion. Pick a person.
What would they say or do?
Statement: __________________________________________________ - If this statement is one that you hold to or have held to in the past, identify the belief that underpins it.
Belief: __________________________________________________
Make a note of whether this belief is current or has been challenged/changed.
Note: __________________________________________________
Creative Response 1 - Write a six-line script that shows a negative consequence of practising this Thinking Error. Limit yourself to two characters, each saying three short sentences.
(If you hold to this statement, it’s useful to make one of the characters in the script you.)
Creative Response 2 - Write a six-line script that shows the positive consequence of practising the way of thinking that runs counter to this statement.
Again, limit yourself to two characters, each saying three short sentences.
We’re going to finish the chapter by having a quick look at two ways of thinking that can have a severe impact on our lives – Procrastination and Perfectionism.
Procrastination
Procrastination is the act of putting off doing something that you know should be done now. This is different from planned delay when there may be a perfectly good reason to wait until a certain task can happen. For this reason, procrastination has been referred to as the thief of time.
Procrastination can range from mildly annoying selective time wasting (I’ll just have another coffee before I get on with it) to being a serious issue that can lead to personal unhappiness, lost opportunities and chronic life-inhibiting inertia.
The assumption is that the inability to get a task done in good time can be blamed on laziness. But it’s often about busying ourselves with tasks that we prefer doing while avoiding the most pressing chores that we don’t relish. ‘I was so busy, I didn’t have time to get the job done!’ It could be classed as selective prioritisation.
The reasons why we procrastinate can be complex and varied, but understanding more about the causes of this troublesome inhibitor to productive self-management will allow us to begin making changes. Perfectionism can be a cause. It’s never going to be good enough so we delay starting. Along with that, the need for comfort – Low Frustration Tolerance. Having to be in the right mood, to feel motivated. I’ll do it tomorrow when I’m bound to be more up for it. Having the knowledge, immediate understanding or perceived capability to start a task. Many of us need instant gratification. If we’re not enjoying the task, we stop, defer to another time. These are Cognitive Distortions and therefore Mind Fitness exercises, especially the ABC Model, are highly effective in increasing our ability to get out of our own way and get moving.
Exercise 6.3: For Procrastinators
List three tasks that you have been putting off.
Imagine the future you that accomplishes the tasks.
Procrastinators often feel, when imagining a future self, that this person is somehow a stranger. This is because they know that they will not be that person without investing in change.
As you imagine your future self, build in a few recognisable traits; keep doing the exercise until this future self feels comfortable. Remember, the future you is always you. You are just releasing the potential.
Perfectionism
As we’ve seen, perfectionists are often also chronic procrastinators as they put off undertaking tasks until the conditions are perfect, which, of course, they never are. Perfection can never be achieved.
Many perfectionists also wear it as a badge of honour. ‘Oh, but I’m a perfectionist,’ they’ll tell us at training sessions. Perfectionism is, in fact, a dangerous ideal and it’s a punishing way to live, and extremely hard to be around. Most perfectionists feel themselves to be chronically failing most of the time.
When we are young and looking about for our role models, and when we are learning anything new, we follow a picture of those that have done it best – the masters. We do this in both our personal and professional lives. But we are seeing these people at the height of their success; it is a narrative of achievement. We do not see their early drafts, failures, fears and despair and so we under budget the difficulty of achieving anything close to their standards. While aiming high is good, it is essential that we look properly at the difficulty of anything we choose to undertake and allow ourselves time to get there. If we don’t, we will torture ourselves for failures that are inevitable. We have to allow ourselves to be mediocre or even inadequate on the way to success and, as we have said before, we have to recognise the necessary and legitimate role of failure in our process of learning. We must trust ourselves to keep inspired and course-correct. As you undertake a task at home or at work, give it a difficulty score. Then, afterwards, you can say,’ It was difficult, but I knew it would be.’ We torture ourselves only if we thought it would be easier.
And, of course, although many tasks, projects and undertakings of new learning are incredibly difficult and complex, they will be achieved more easily when you have changed distorted thinking to rational thinking and stopped getting in your own way.
Exercise 6.4: Thinking Errors Statements
Give a typical statement from someone who suffers from:
- I Just Know State of Mind
- Should Be Statements
- All or Nothing Thinking
- Personalisation
- Low Frustration Tolerance
- Awfulising
- Procrastination
- Perfectionism
Questions and Answers
- Is there a danger of going from being a procrastinator (or regularly procrastinating) to so super-efficient and effective that I become manically over driven?
Mind Fitness is all about rationality. So, the answer is no, not if you don’t want to be like that. I (AB) once worked with a well-known actor and author who was super productive. He planned his days meticulously, writing efficiently by day and arriving breezily at the theatre for the evening performance where he spent time off stage researching and reading. He was an incredible chap, wonderfully talented and amazingly driven. I’d say that he’d be classed as a workaholic and I’m also sure that his phenomenal output and workload gave his life huge meaning. He made those choices in his lifestyle and always appeared to be an extremely happy, balanced and fulfilled man. That approach worked well for him. But workaholism can be dangerous if it leads to anxiety and stress. Balance is the key. Will you stop procrastinating entirely? Probably not. Can you reduce the instances of procrastination in your life? Most certainly. It’s striking the balance that’s important. Being happy is the ultimate goal. - But surely if I give up being a perfectionist then I’m settling for second best?
Leading yourself away from the destructive path of perfection in no way means that you are settling for second best. It is something that people are often worried about, particularly in a professional capacity where they are expected to have the very highest standards.
We know that goals must be achievable; perfectionism is not. It can be the hardest challenge, the biggest reach, but it must be possible. You can strive for excellence and, just once in a while, you can touch its coat-tail. But demand perfectionism of yourself or others and you are condemning both you and them to failure and a huge amount of stress along the way. It is also likely that, rather than keep you motivated, the demand for perfection will do the opposite; as you realise it is unachievable, your levels of interest and engagement will begin to wane.
Chapter Recap
Spend a few minutes thinking through these questions:
- To which of the distortions are you most vulnerable?
- How does it/do they affect your life?
- Why do you think it’s harmful?
- Do you generally have a more distorted view of yourself or others?
- Why do you think this is?
Conclusion
If you catch your thoughts taking you towards the old you, just buy yourself a minute of reflection time by doing one of the mindfulness exercises – Image Breathing, NOW or Foxhole in My Mind.
The turning point comes when a distorted thought can be noticed and examined, but it has produced no emotional or physiological response. Sometimes, uncovering a distortion or bias now makes me laugh. ‘I’m thinking what? Good grief!’ It’s like being able to see into the mind of a mischievous, but not malevolent, child. So reposition, reframe, course-correct and off you go. And the best thing is the confidence from knowing that, whatever comes along (and it will), you can look after yourself by thinking your best think.