What to do when your thoughts get in the way of your goals.
There is so much written by psychologists, mental health experts, and self-help gurus about the relationship between positive thinking
and living a good life that the subject is almost cliché. But one
wonders if this message has any impact at all. Recent reports show that depression and suicide
rates have steadily risen over the past few decades. Yet research
continues to demonstrate that positive thinking is beneficial in
numerous ways.Why is it so difficult to change your way of thinking? As a cognitive psychologist who has spent 15 years dedicated to helping people identify self-limiting thought patterns, as well as someone who has worked hard at changing my own thinking, I have learned a few things about what gets in the way.
- Simple is often confused with easy.
Much of what is written about positive thinking and techniques to
retrain your mind makes the process seem quite simple—you should be able
to easily put a list of practices into action. And the simpler behavioral changes sound, the
guiltier you feel when you don’t do them. When you think making a
change is simple, there is a tendency to not fully think about the
resources needed to do it, whether it's time, effort, or mental energy.
When you try to do something that seems simple and you don’t succeed
because you didn’t plan well, you end up feeling more discouraged than
ever. The truth is that change is hard, and even making small
modifications to our behavior is not easy.
- Understanding isn’t the same as doing.
You have to do something different to change a pattern of behavior.
There are no exceptions to this rule. However, something I frequently
witness when people are trying to improve their lives is an
assumption that understanding is all that is necessary to create change.
If you’ve ever read a self-help book or article, understood the
message, and yet skipped over the exercises, you know exactly what I
mean. This is the equivalent of going to the gym and having someone
explain how to use a treadmill but then never getting on it. You don’t
see improvement just from understanding; you have to apply the knowledge
and take an action to see change.
- Self-blame gets in the way of self-empowerment.
Harsh self-criticism is a toxic form of emotional abuse that drags
you down and prevents you from living the life you want. Most people
don't realize that when we make decisions, we make them based on what we
think is best for us at the time. Even when you make a decision that
you know you will likely regret, you do so because you're in a frame of
mind where you're unable to access the inner power needed to make a
different decision. If you were, you would have done things differently.
As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. But the truth is that
we're only able to look back because of how far we have come. If you
have the ability to look backward and recognize that you could have made
a better decision, it is because you have grown to a place that enables
you to see that. You may also have new information that you didn’t have
at the time of the original choice. Self-blame is about looking
backward at things over which you have no power to change,
which generates an even more a negative mindset and negative emotion.
This cycle prevents you from benefiting from new insights, moving
forward, and making better choices.
- Not knowing it is the only option. You cannot create a positive life with negative thinking. Negative thoughts lead to negative emotions; positive thoughts result in positive emotions. If you want to feel good and lead a happy life, the only option you have is to learn to think positively. I work with many people who argue for the “rightness” of the way they think. They are convinced that their negative view of the world is accurate and that positive thinkers are deluded Pollyannas who don’t face reality. They are convinced that positive thinking won’t work for them. However, all of these people are very unhappy, and it is their thinking that creates their negative emotions. There are no happy negative thinkers. If you want to be right, you can choose to think any way you want. If you want to be happy, you must choose a pattern of thinking that leads to positive emotions.
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