It isn't what happens to us, but what we think about what happens to us that matters most.
The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, "Men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them;" and Shakespeare said, "There is nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."
Most of us have probably heard the expression, "Looking at the world through rose-colored glasses." Sometimes, we tend to look at the world through mud-colored glasses! Most of us have one or more ways of perceiving things which make them appear to be much worse than they actually are. See how many of these thought patterns might be clouding your own view of the world.
All-or-nothing thinking: Everything is good or bad, with nothing in between. If you aren't perfect, then you're a failure.
Overgeneralization: A single negative event turns into a never-ending pattern of defeat. "I didn't get a phone call.I'll never hear from anybody again."
Mental filter: One single negative thing colors everything else. When you're depressed, it sometimes feels like you're "looking at the world through mud-colored glasses."
Disqualifying the positive: If somebody says something good about you, it doesn't count. But if somebody says something bad about you, you "knew it all along."
Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
Mind reading: You think somebody is thinking negative things about you and don't bother to check it out. You just assume that he is.
The Fortune Teller Error: You think that things are going to turn out badly, and convince yourself that this is already a fact.
Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: Imagine that you're looking at yourself or somebodyelse through a pair of binoculars. You might think that a mistake you made or somebody else's achievement are more important than they really are. Now imagine that you've turned the binoculars around and you're looking through them backwards. Something you've done might look less important than it really is, and somebody else's faults might look less important than they really are.
Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things reallyare: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
Should statements: You beat up on yourself as a way of getting motivated to do something. You"should" do this, you "must" to this, you "ought" to do this, and so on. This doesn't make you want to doit, it only makes you feel guilty. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger,frustration, and resentment.
Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. When you make a mistake,you give yourself a label, such as, "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way,you attach a negative label to him, "He's an ass." Mislabeling involves describing an event with languagethat is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
Personalization: You believe that you were the cause of something bad that happened, when you really didn't have very much to do with it.
