The Top 21 Thinking Errors
Inaccurate thinking causes inaccurate feelings, usually negative ones, and this can lead to flawed behavior. Accurate and balanced thinking will serve you better. Focus on improving one or two inaccurate thought patterns until accurate thinking becomes a habit.
1. ASSUMMING: You interpret someone’s actions and don’t clarify your assumption.
2. comparing (Up/Down): A word that refers positively or negatively to something else: better/worse, more/less, bigger/smaller, smarter/dumper, colder/warmer, faster/slower.
3. Control FallacY: Externally controlled: you feel helpless, a victim, not in control or responsible; Internally controlled: you feel powerful, in control, usually ego-driven.
4. DEFENDING: You defend your point of view (ego) rather then being open and listening, attempting to understand another point of view.
5. DRAMATIZING: You exaggerate or intensify the importance of something.
6. EMOTIONAL LOGIC: You assume that when a situation feels good or bad, it is so.
7. EXTERNAL Change: You think everything would be okay if only others would change.
8. EXTREME LANGUAGE: For emphasis and effect you use words like can’t, always, never, have to, got to, constantly, every time, no way, perfect, unique.
9. FAITH FALLACY: Your faith and positive attitude is all you need to get what you want.
10. FILTERING: You screen out aspects of reality that don’t fit your belief, creating a negative or positive blind spot about yourself or others.
11. GENERALIZING: You focus on one or two aspects (neg/pos) of a person, event or situation and believe that it is totally truth or false, will dominate your life and is a never ending pattern.
12. Magical THINKING: Everything will be all right, no matter how unrealistic.
13. MANIPUATIVE THINKING: You attempt to motivate yourself or others with shoulds, shouldn'ts, musts and oughts.
14. MINIMIZING: You understate the importance of things.
15. MISLABELING: You attach an emotionally loaded label to yourself or others.
16. PERSONALIZING: You believe that you are primarily responsible for events that you were in fact, limitedly or not responsible for.
17. POLORIZING: You categorize things as absolutes, one-way or the opposite, rather than on a continuum, in degrees, or biphasically (seeing from both/opposite ways).
18. PREDICTING: You predict a situation will go poorly or well, with no evidence.
19. REJECTING REALITY: You reject a positive or negative outcome by denying its value.
20. TIME DISTORTION: You think that a consequence of a negative or positive event will quickly disappear or last forever.
21. YES, BUT…: You say “yes” indicating that you agree with something that is said, then say, “but,” which usually means, what you’re saying after that is the real truth; use “and.”
“The Top 21 Thinking Errors” © 2006, Tom Rohrer, PhD, 925-595-6433, www.successworkscoaching.com