Change Your Thinking and You Can Change Your Life!!

The longer the blind man lives, the more he sees. Yiddish Proverb

Do you sometimes feel like you have blinders on? I think of a racehorse who can only see the narrow track he’s trained to focus his attention. We do the same thing in our lives. We zoom in and narrowly focus on something, often missing the bigger picture. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) suggests if we change our thinking we can change how we feel and how we behave. Check out this video to learn more about CBT. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1920052.

CBT is about learning how to look at situations from different perspectives. First, we have to recognize or be aware of what we’re thinking to even get to the point of considering other ways of looking at situations. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Pretend you get a text from a friend. It reads, CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU CAN. It might even be in all caps. It’s brief and to the point like most text messages. What’s the first thought that comes to your mind? Many people think, Oh no, what’d I do wrong? Or they think, she’s pissed. I’m in trouble. We often jump to thinking the message has to do with us. CBT encourages us to zoom out, widen our focus, and consider other ways of thinking about an event or situation.

 Here’s an easy exercise to better understand what your feelings tell you about yourself.

1. Identify and record an event or situation that made you feel and think negatively about yourself. (i.e. My boss wants to see me to talk about a project I just completed). It can be any type of event that creates anxiety, fear or worry of some sort.

2. Write down the feeling you had at the time. (i.e. scared, worried, shameful).

3. Write down your thought. What did you think of yourself at the time? (i.e. I’m an idiot, I did a bad job on that project, I messed up on something).

4. Then consider the following questions:

• Is this a feeling or a fact? Do I have all the facts or am I thinking too narrowly about this situation?
• What good things about myself am I forgetting?
• What advice would I give a friend if he was in this situation?
• Am I blaming someone for something that hasn’t even happened yet?
• Am I creating the worse case scenario in my head?

Use this form to track several events to see your pattern of thinking.