Learn more about personaldevelopment with this collection
Strategies for building self-confidence
Techniques for embracing your strengths and accomplishments
Tips for seeking support and feedback
Call out Your Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive distortions are errors in thinking that lead to unnecessarily painful and prolonged emotions.
We all fall into cognitive distortions from time to time. And while you probably can’t avoid them altogether, you can get much better at noticing them.
Anytime you feel your mood dropping or some difficult emotion intensifying, ask yourself:
What was I thinking just now? What thoughts led to this shift in emotion or mood?
Write down that self-talk on paper and look for any cognitive distortions. Once you find some, calmly and nonjudgmentally identify which they are
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Identify Your Negative Thinking Triggers
If you understand what types of situations or events are most likely to trigger negative thinking, you can avoid a lot of negative thinking before it even happens.
Identify the triggers for negative thinking, deal with those triggers more directly, and you won’t experience nearly as much ne...
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Identify the Emotions Behind Your Negative Thinking
The content of your thoughts determines the content of your moods:
- If you’re constantly worrying, you’re going to feel pretty anxious.
- If you’re chronically ruminating on how someone hurt you, you’re going to feel pretty angry.
Negative thinking can lead to painful ...
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Distinguish Helpful vs Unhelpful Negative Thinking
Just because you’re having negative thoughts doesn’t mean something’s wrong. In fact, negative thinking can be a very good thing!
What you want to watch out for is a specific type of negative thinking that is unhelpful.
Your brain’s primary job is to keep you safe and that requires so...
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The Downward Spiral
Everybody gets stuck in negative thinking from time to time:
- Anxious bouts of worry and catastrophizing
- Depressing spirals of self-criticism and judgment
- Angry cycles of rumination and resentment
Unfortunately, the way most people try to deal with their nega...
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Do your negative thinking intentionally, not reactively
Most people are in the habit of only thinking about their negative thinking when it shows up.
The best time to do hard, important work is when you’re feeling good, not when your life is falling apart!
And this principle applies to negative thinking as well.
Instead, you need to ...
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Other curated ideas on this topic:
Cognitive distortions
When you think about your life, it is quite possible that you mind is playing tricks on you that can distort your view.
Cognitive distortions—where your mind puts a ‘spin’ on the events you see and attaches a not-so-objective interpretation to what you experience—happen all the tim...
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