Listen to your thinking (thinking habits)

It’s easy to become trapped in familiar patterns of thinking. The way we think about things can become a strongly ingrained habit that is hard to break.

Since thinking can drag you down and keep you in a negative place, it is important to identify and change negative thought patterns.

Like everything else, the first step is awareness.

Here are two thinking styles that people commonly use, mostly without noticing.

Catastrophic thinking

When people think catastrophically they tend to exaggerate the worst aspects of the situation. Rather than thinking about reasonable outcomes, their first reaction is to think of the most upsetting or terrifying outcome and dwell on what this might mean for them. Catastrophic thinking means you are constantly focusing on fearful scenarios that feed fear and anxiety. For example, someone who feels unsure about her position at work may see a reprimand or comment as a wholly negative event, and become caught up in a whirlwind of thinking about how she would need to cope with losing her job as well as failing to find another.

What you can do

Gently bring your mind back from the worst possible scenario, telling your mind that these ideas are not likely to be helpful or help you get to where you want to be.

More useful thinking would include asking yourself what is more likely to happen (than the disastrous outcome) and thinking more about your strengths and resources.

Imagine your thoughts are spread across a long arc (like a rainbow). There are numbers representing the negative thinking along this arc — they range from mildly negative (0) to catastrophic (100). If you constantly see your thinking at 100, help your brain shift your thoughts across the arc to a lower number.

Black and white thinking

When people think this way, they tend to be extreme in their ideas. People and situations are viewed as good or bad, black or white, right or wrong. This thinking habit means people see things only in terms of these polarities, which is problematic since most things in the world exist somewhere between these two extremes. Black and white thinking underlies perfectionist tendencies and a drive to always be right. For example, it is simply impossible to be perfect and successful 100% of the time, so therefore when you do not perform in this way, your black and white thinking labels you as a failure.

What you can do

Notice the extremes in your thinking and the thinking rules that might go with it, such as “I need to be perfect at everything I do” and “I should not make mistakes.” Remind your mind that we live in an imperfect and unpredictable world, and that things are more likely to be grey than they are black and white.

Try to imagine ideas/people/situations as being in the middle of the spectrum rather than at the ends.

Open and expand your thinking — and consider a wide range of ideas and allow them to be acceptable — so that your mind becomes comfortable with the idea that you and others make mistakes or say the wrong thing.