Reflections on ice.
Thought Awareness, Rational
Thinking, and Positive Thinking
Quite often, the way we feel about a situation comes from our perception of it.
Often that perception is
right, but sometimes it isn't.
For instance, sometimes
we're unreasonably harsh with ourselves,
or we can jump to wrong
conclusion about people's motives.
This can cause problems and
make us unhappy, and it can lead us to be unfair to others.
Thought Awareness, Rational
Thinking, and Positive Thinking
are simple tools that help
you turn this around.
Introduction
A commonly accepted
definition of stress, developed by Richard S. Lazarus,
is that it occurs when
someone thinks that the demands on them
"exceed the personal
and social resources that the individual is able to mobilize."
In becoming stressed, people
must make two main judgments:
First, they must feel
threatened by the situation.
They must judge whether
their capabilities and resources are sufficient to meet the threat.
How stressed someone feels
depends on how much damage they think the situation
can cause them, and how far
their resources meet the demands of the situation.
Perception is key to this as
(technically) situations are not stressful in their own right.
Rather it's our
interpretation of the situation that drives the level of stress that we feel.
Quite obviously, sometimes
we are right in what we say to ourselves.
Some situations may actually
be dangerous, and may threaten us physically, socially,
or in our career. Here,
stress and emotion are part of the "early warning system"
that alerts us to the threat
from these situations.
Very often, however, we are
overly harsh and unjust to ourselves,
in a way that we would never
be with friends or team members.
This, along with other
negative thinking, can cause intense stress and unhappiness,
and can severely undermine
our self-confidence.
Using the Tools
Thought Awareness
You're thinking negatively
when you fear the future, put yourself down, criticize yourself
for errors, doubt your
abilities, or expect failure. Negative thinking damages your confidence,
harms your performance, and
paralyzes your mental skills.
A major problem with this is
that negative thoughts tend to flit into our consciousness,
do their damage and flit
back out again, with their significance having barely been noticed.
Since we do not challenge
them, they can be completely incorrect and wrong.
However, this does not
diminish their harmful effect.
Thought Awareness is the
process by which you observe your thoughts
and become aware of what is
going through your head.
One way to become more aware
of your thoughts is to observe your stream of consciousness
as you think about a
stressful situation. Do not suppress any thoughts: instead, just let them run
their course while you watch them, and write them down on our free worksheet as
they occur.
Another more general
approach to Thought Awareness comes with logging stress in a Stress Diary .
One of the benefits of using a Stress Diary is that, for one or two weeks,
you log all of the
unpleasant things in your life that cause you stress.
This will include negative
thoughts and anxieties, and can also include difficult
or unpleasant memories and
situations that you perceive as negative.
By logging your negative
thoughts for a reasonable period of time, you can quickly see patterns
in your negative thinking.
When you analyze your diary at the end of the period, you should be able to see
the most common and most damaging thoughts. Tackle these as a priority.
Thought awareness is the
first step in the process of managing negative thoughts,
as you can only manage
thoughts that you're aware of.
Rational Thinking
The next step in dealing
with negative thinking is to challenge the negative thoughts
that you identified using
the Thought Awareness technique.
Look at every thought you wrote down and
rationally challenge it.
Ask yourself whether the
thought is reasonable, and does it stand up to fair scrutiny?
As an example, by analyzing
your Stress Diary you might identify that
you have frequently had the
following negative thoughts:
Feelings of inadequacy.
Worries that your
performance in your job will not be good enough.
An anxiety that things
outside your control will undermine your efforts.
Worries about other people's
reactions to your work.
Starting with these, you
might challenge these negative thoughts in the ways shown:
Feelings of
inadequacy: Have you trained and educated yourself as well as you
reasonably
should to do the job? Do you
have the experience and resources you need to do it?
Have you planned, prepared
and rehearsed appropriately?
If you've done all of this,
then you've done everything that you should sensible do.
If you're still worried, are
you setting yourself unattainably high standards for doing the job?
Worries about
performance: Do you have the training that a reasonable person
would think is needed to do
a good job? Have you planned appropriately?
Do you have the information
and resources that you need?
Have you cleared the time
you need, and cued up your support team appropriately?
Have you prepared
thoroughly? If you haven't, then you need to do these things quickly.
If you have, then you are well positioned to
give the best performance that you can.
Problems with issues outside
your control:
Have you conducted
appropriate contingency planning?
Have you thought through and
managed all likely risks and contingencies appropriately?
If so, you will be well
prepared to handle potential problems.
Worry about other people's
reactions:
If you have put in good
preparation, and you do the best you can,
then that is all that you
need to know. If you perform as well as you reasonably can,
and you stay focused on the
needs of your audience, then fair people are likely to respond well.
If people are not fair, then
this is something outside your control.
Tip:
Don't make the mistake of
generalizing a single incident.
OK, you made a mistake at
work, but that doesn't mean that you're bad at your job.
Similarly, make sure you
take the long view about incidents that you're finding stressful.
Just because you're finding
new responsibilities stressful now,
doesn't mean that they
will always be stressful in the future.
Often, the best thing to do
is to rise above unfair comments. Write your rational response
to each negative thought in
the Rational Thought column on the worksheet.
Tip:
If you find it difficult to
look at your negative thoughts objectively,
imagine that you are your
best friend or a respected coach or mentor.
Look at the list of negative
thoughts. Imagine that they were written down by someone
you were giving objective
advice to, and think about how you'd challenge these thoughts.
When you challenge negative
thoughts rationally, you should be able to see quickly
whether the thoughts are
wrong, or whether they have some substance to them.
Where there is some
substance, take appropriate action. In these cases, negative thinking
has given you an early warning of action that
you need to take.
Where you have used Rational
Thinking to challenge incorrect negative thinking,
it's often useful to use
rational, positive thoughts and affirmations to counter them.
It's also useful to look at
the situation and see if there are any opportunities that are offered by it.
Affirmations help
you to build self-confidence. By basing your affirmations on the clear,
rational assessments of
facts that you made using Rational Thinking,
you can undo the damage that
negative thinking may have done to your self-confidence.
Tip:
Your affirmations will be
strongest if they are specific, are expressed in the present tense,
and have strong emotional
content.
Continuing the examples
above, positive affirmations might be:
Feelings of
inadequacy: "I am well trained for this. I have the experience, the
tools,
and the resources that I
need. I have thought-through and prepared for all possible issues.
I can do a really good
job."
Worries about
performance: "I have researched and planned well for this,
and I thoroughly understand
the problem. I have the time, resources and help that I need.
I am well prepared to do an
excellent job."
Problems with issues outside
your control: "We have thought about everything
that might reasonably
happen, and have planned how we can handle all likely contingencies. Everyone
is ready to help where necessary.
We are very well placed to
react flexibly and effectively to unusual events."
Worry about other people's
reaction: "I am well-prepared and am doing the best I can.
Fair people will respect
this.
I will rise above any unfair
criticism in a mature and professional way."
If appropriate, write these
affirmations down on your worksheet,
so that you can use them
when you need them.
As well as allowing you to
structure useful affirmations, part of Positive Thinking
is to look at opportunities
that the situation might offer to you.
In the examples above,
successfully overcoming these situations will open up opportunities.
You'll gain new skills,
you'll be seen as someone who can handle difficult challenges,
and you may open up new
career opportunities.
Make sure that you take the
time to identify these opportunities
and focus on them as part of
your positive thoughts.
Tip:
In the past people have
advocated thinking positively almost recklessly,
as if it is a solution to
everything. The approach should be used with common sense, though.
First, decide rationally
what goals you can realistically attain with hard work,
and then use positive
thinking to reinforce these.
Key Points
This set of tools helps you
to manage and counter the stress of negative thinking.
Thought Awareness helps you
identify the negative thinking, unpleasant memories,
and misinterpretation of
situations that may interfere with your performance
and damage your
self-confidence. This allows you to deal with them.
Rational Thinking helps you
to challenge these negative thoughts and either learn from them,
or refute them as incorrect.
You can then use Positive
Thinking to create positive affirmations
that you can use to counter
negative thoughts. These affirmations neutralize negative thoughts and build
your self-confidence. You can also use this approach to find the opportunities
that are almost always present, to some
degree, in a difficult situation.
Warning: Stress can
cause severe health problems and, in extreme cases, can cause death.
While these stress
management techniques have been shown to have a positive effect
on reducing stress, they are
for guidance only, and readers should take the advice
of suitably qualified health
professionals if they have any concerns over stress-related illnesses
or if stress is causing
significant or persistent unhappiness. Health professionals should also
be consulted before any
major change in diet or levels of exercise.
This site teaches you the
skills you need for a happy and successful career;
and this is just one of many
tools and resources that you'll find here at Mind Tools.
Subscribe to our free
newsletter, or join the Mind Tools Club and really supercharge your
career!
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