Ten Cognitive (Thinking) Traps

1     All or nothing thinking:

You see things in black & white categories & there are no shades of grey. If a situation is less than perfect you see it as a total failure.

2.       Overgeneralization:

Here, one unfortunate event leads to the assumption that this will happen every time, but remember there is no justification for seeing one instance as proving the rule. Recognised by thinking involving the words always or never.

3.       Mental Filter:

You pick out a single negative detail & dwell on it exclusively. One word of critics eradicates all the praise you have received.

4.       Disqualifying the positive:

You reject the positive experiences by insisting they don’t count, maybe they are a fluke. If you do a good job, you tell yourself it was easy, or anyone could have done it.

5.       Jumping to conclusions:

You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion. Two common variations are mind-reading (you arbitrarily assume that someone is reacting negatively to you), & fortune telling (You predict that things will turn out badly).

6.       Catastrophising :

You exaggerate the importance of your own problems & shortcomings to disaster proportions – “I made a mistake, how awful; I can never show myself here again.” Do you feel this way about other people when you see them make a mistake?

7.       Emotional Reasoning:

You take your feelings as facts, assuming your negative emotions reflect the way things really are, as in “I feel guilty, so I must be a rotten person”, or “I feel anxious, so there must be some real danger.”

8.       Should statements:

Based upon out assumptions, you think you should be perfect all the time, should never make a fuss or never get angry. You may assume others should always be able to anticipate your needs, or this is proof they don’t care for you.

9.       Labelling:

An extreme form of all or nothing thinking, you label yourself as a ‘useless person’ on the basis of one mistake. It makes as much sense labelling yourself a joiner, because you put up a shelf.

10.   Personalisation & blame:

You hold yourself personally responsible for events that aren’t entirely under your control, & which may involve others’ actions or decisions making too.

"Not Perfect"

This is my Earth
And I live in it
It's one third dirt
And two thirds water
And it rotates and revolves through space
At rather an impressive pace
And never even messes up my hair
And here's the really weird thing
The force created by its spin
Is the force that stops the chaos flooding in

This is my Earth
And it's fine
It's where I spend the vast majority of my time
It's not perfect
But it's mine
It's not perfect

This is my house
And I live in it
It's made of cracks
And photographs
We rent it off a guy who bought it from a guy
Who bought it from a guy
Whose grandad left it to him
And the weirdest thing is that this house
Has locks to keep the baddies out
But they're mostly used to lock ourselves in

This is my house
And it's fine
It's where I spend the vast majority of my time
It's not perfect
But it's mine
It's not perfect

This is my body
And I live in it
It's x
And x months old
It's changed a lot since it was new
It's done stuff it wasn't built to do
I often try to fill it up with wine
And the weirdest thing about it is
I spend so much time hating it
But it never says a bad word about me

This is my body
And it's fine
It's where I spend the vast majority of my time
It's not perfect
But it's mine
It's not perfect

This is my brain
And I live in it
It's made of love
And bad song lyrics
It's tucked away behind my eyes
Where all my fucked up thoughts can hide
Cos God forbid I hurt somebody
And the weird thing about my mind
Is that every answer that you find
Is the basis of a brand new cliche

This is my brain
And it's fine
It's where I spend the vast majority of my time
It's not perfect
But it's mine
It's not perfect
I'm not quite sure I've worked out how to work it
It's not perfect
But it's mine

Rules Of Being Human

Rules of Being Human by Dan Millman 

• When you were born, you didn't come with an owner's manual. These guidelines help make life work better!

• You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but make the best of it because it’s going to be with you for the rest of your life. 

• You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full time informal school called life on planet Earth. Every person or incident is the Universal Teacher 

• There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. ‘Failures’ are as much a part of the process as ‘Successes’ 

• A lesson is repeated until it is learned. It is presented to you in various forms until you learn it, then you go to the next lesson. 

• If you don’t learn easy lessons they get harder. External problems are a precise reflection of your internal state; pain is how your subconscious gets your attention. First it whispers, then it Yells. When you clear inner obstructions, your outside world changes. 

• You will know you have learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice, practice, practice, practice. Remember a little of Something is better than a lot of Nothing. 

• ‘THERE’ is no better than ‘HERE’. When your ‘THERE’ becomes ‘HERE’, you simply obtain another ‘THERE’ that looks better than ‘HERE’

• Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate in yourself.

• Your life is up to you. Spirit provides the canvas you do the painting. There are three kinds of people; those who make things happen, those who watch what happens, and those who wonder what happened. Take charge of your life - or someone else will. 

• You always get what you want. Your subconscious rightfully determines what energies, experiences and people you attract, therefore only the foolproof way to know what you want is to see what you have. 

• There is no right or wrong, but there are consequences and responsibilities. Corollary Law: no one gets away with anything; everything has a value – and a price; you pay now, or you pay later. 

• Your answers lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the laws of spirit are written. You must know more than you have heard or read or been told. All you need to do this is look, listen and trust.

• You will tend to forget all this. That’s why it’s good to remind one another.