Lately I've thought of going more in depth over the perceptions surrounding this community as it is now verses the change. But in all honesty, on some level I think people need to find their own answers and their own path. Only you can determine where you are in life. You must figure out what you need to do. In reality, no one can do that for you.
Now you can get assistance I suppose, insight from others to help you see what you are missing, but this is such a delicate balance in that you have to be certain that what is being said is a perception that is as free from being biased as possible. And that includes your own perceptions and is the point of this post really.
I find it hard to clearly put this into words without going into a full length term paper, so I'm going to be rather simple about it since what I'm going to post next will speak for itself. You see I've been reading up on the cognitive aspect of how one thinks as a human being. It's fascinating material and it presents an excellent insight as to how you perceive information and process it.
Now the only one I'm interested in addressing right now is what I see as unnecessary negativity going on so I'm going to be presenting a list of ten cognitive distortions that maintain negative thinking and help to maintain negative emotions. This comes directly from Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, MD. It's a book mainly for depression, but I highly recommend reading it since it's got excellent information that is useful for everyone. Anyway... I present... the list:
Cognitive Distortions
1. All-or-nothing thinking - Thinking of things in absolute terms, like "always", "every" or "never". Few aspects of human behavior are so absolute.
2. Overgeneralization - Taking isolated cases and using them to make wide generalizations.
3. Mental filter - Focusing exclusively on certain, usually negative or upsetting, aspects of something while ignoring the rest, like a tiny imperfection in a piece of clothing.
4. Disqualifying the positive - Continually "shooting down" positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons.
5. Jumping to conclusions - Assuming something negative where there is no evidence to support it. Two specific subtypes are also identified:
* Mind reading - Assuming the intentions of others.
* Fortune telling - Predicting how things will turn before they happen.
6. Magnification and Minimization - Inappropriately understating or exaggerating the way people or situations truly are. Often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negative characteristics are understated. There is one subtype of magnification:
* Catastrophizing - Focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is really just uncomfortable.
7. Emotional reasoning - Making decisions and arguments based on how you feel rather than objective reality.
8. Making should statements - Concentrating on what you think "should" or ought to be rather than the actual situation you are faced with, or having rigid rules which you think should always apply no matter what the circumstances are. Albert Ellis termed this "Musterbation".
9. Labeling - Explaining behaviors or events, merely by naming them; related to overgeneralization. Rather than describing the specific behavior, you assign a label to someone or yourself that puts them in absolute and unalterable terms.
10. Personalization (or attribution) - Assuming you or others directly caused things when that may not have been the case. When applied to others this is an example of blame.
Now I'm sure that looking at that list each one of us does that sort of thinking, it's easy to do and hard to change when you don't know what you're doing. So my point here? The next time something really upsets you... run through that list and ask yourself if any of those distortions apply to your reaction.
I recommend highlighting that list, copying it to a word document and then printing a copy to keep with you for a bit. Trust me, you'll be amazed to realize just how much you do this without even realizing it. ^_~
On another topic... I'm wondering why the hell I keep waking up at five am lately. XP I'd much rather be asleep! Heh.
