The technique that will put you on the road to personality change!

This column is in sequential continuation of the last column. I would therefore like to begin with a brief re-cap of that last column. We saw there how our thoughts lead to our feelings and actions in any given situation; that, in order to change the way we feel and the way we act, one of the most important things we need to do is to first change the way  we think. You will already have taken the first step in that direction. In the last column, I described the A-B-C diary in which you would record your thoughts, feelings and actions in different situations on a regular basis. If you have not been keeping such a diary, or kept only very sketchy jottings, I would strongly urge you to first do this exercise (the diary nothings) before trying to take the next  step, i.e., challenging negative thinking. Why do I insist on this written record at least definitely in the beginning stages? Because, unfortunately, negative thoughts have a tendency to flit back out again, with their significance having barely been noticed. Very often why occur in a stream of- consciousness pattern, one thought running into another. We often don’t recognize these negative thoughts unless we make a conscious effort to look at the stream of self talk that flowed through our mind before we began to feel anxious or  angry or depressed, and before we began to act upon these feelings. Writing down your thoughts helps you to become aware of what has gone through your head, and this “Thought Awareness” is the first step in the process of eliminating negative thoughts. You cannot counter thoughts that you do not know you think. The next step is to Challenge the Negative Thoughts that you wrote down for each situation; and here’s how you do it. Look at every thought you wrote down and rationally challenge it. Do a reality check, thought by thought. Ask yourself whether the thought is rational way of looking at a problem, situation or person? Does it stand up to fair scrutiny? Pose the following question to yourself: what evidence do I  have for and against the thought? (E.g. If you’re sure that you will have a panic attack during the presentation you’re making to an important client in the afternoon, then ask yourself how many presentations you have successfully made and survived without a full blown panic attack.) Would my friends and mentors agree with the thought or disagree with it? How might they view my situation? What alternative views are possible? Might there not be a different, more valid, way of thinking of the situation? What thinking error/s am I making? Here’s a list of the most common types of distortions in thinking that can occur: Am I thinking in all-or-nothing terms? Am I condemning myself as a total person on the basis of a single event? Am I concentrating on my weaknesses and forgetting my strengths? Am I taking responsibility or worse, blame for something which is not my fault? Am I taking something personally which may have little or nothing to do with me? Am I expecting myself (or another person) to be perfect? Am I overestimating the chances of disaster? Am I assuming that everyone else can cope, when I don’t know how others are thinking and feeling? Am I exaggerating the importance of what a mistake will imply? Am I worrying about the way things ought to be instead of accepting and dealing with them as they come? Am I assuming I can do nothing to change my situation? Am I predicating the future with certainty when I can only guess about what may happen? Am I overlooking solutions to problems on the assumption that they won’t work? If you’re finding it difficult, in some cases, to challenge your own negative thoughts, try this: Imagine the negative thoughts are not your won, but were written by someone (say, a friend or family member) to whom you were giving objective advice; think how you would change these thoughts, and what you would say to your friend / family member. After you have used rational assessments to identify incorrect, negative thinking, the third step is to replace irrational thinking with accurate, Rational Thinking. It’s important not to get this confused with the ever-popular practice of “Positive Thinking.” Your goal is accurate and rational thinking, the kind that is based as much as possible on logic and the available facts. Most of the time this does result in a more positive outlook, but there are also times when its value lies in correcting an undesirably rosy view of things. In fact, in the process of your negative thoughts do in fact have some substance to them. Where there is substance in the negative thoughts, take appropriate action. In these cases, negative thinking has been an early warning system for you, showing where you need to direct your attention. Let’s see how someone might take these 3 steps, using a concrete but imaginary example of negative thinking. Let’s say that one of the items in our recorded entries runs like this: ACTIVATING EVENT (A) The presentation the boss has asked me to make is just a few hours away.

BELIEFS (B) “Doesn’t he know that topping my list of Things I absolutely HATE happens to be speaking in front of a group? It’s like being guest of honour before a firing squad. In fact, I would rather die than speak in public. “I’ve not been able to concentrate all morning thinking about how I’m going to mess things up. “The audience is bound to see how nervous I am. I know my legs will wobble even before I get to the mike. “And what will I do if my mind goes blank? Or my throat goes dry? Or I can’t answer a difficult question? I’ll look so foolish, and the audience will end up thinking I’m stupid, or worse, laughing at me. “I know I’ll fail. I may even have  a full-blown panic attack. This is scary. O don’t want to do it!”

CONSEQUENCES (C) Feelings/Sensations: Bodily Symptoms of anxiety and stress knuckle cracking, queasiness, nail biting. My muscles feel so taut and tense, I’m already getting butterflies in my stomach. My self confidence is so shaky, I feel like a bundle of nerves. My appetite’s shot to pieces, I don’t feel like eating anything.

Action: Decide to have another coffee to steady my nerves. My third cup since this morning… Now let’s look at Column 2 again, and the toxic load of negative thoughts it contains, which is what leads to the consequences listed in Column 3 . The negative thoughts in Column 2 fall into the following kind categories: Feelings of inadequacy (e.g. “I would rather die than speak in public”). A preoccupation with the symptoms of stress (dry throat, wobbly legs). Fear about the quality of your performance or of problems that may interfere with it (e.g., mind going blank; inability to answer a difficult question). Worry about how the audience may react to you (“They’ll think I’m stupid”, “They’ll laugh”). Foretelling disaster (“I know I’ll fail”, “I ,au even have a full blown panic attack”) And now, let’s subject thoughts to the challenge of whether they are, in fact, accurate and rational.

THE CHALLENGE Quality of performance: “I have worked hard on this presentation. I have done my research thoroughly, I know my subject well. I have anticipated the kind of questions that can be put to me, including the difficult and tricky ones. I have organized my speaking notes, I have rehearsed before a mock audience. I am well prepared to give an excellent performance.” A preoccupation with the symptoms of stress: “Let me think back to one of my previous presentations when I felt extremely nervous. Did a single audience member come up to me and comment on how loudly my heart was beating? Or how dry my voice sounded? Or what  interesting sound my knocking knees made? Come to think of it, didn’t all these symptoms simply disappear once I’d actually got symptoms simply disappear once I’d actually got started on the presentation? “And have I ever had a panic attack when I’ve made a presentation before? Never! So why should I imagine it will happen today?” Worry that the audience will know I’m nervous: “Even if I do feel a little nervous (and I know that the best of speaker do), there’s no way the audience is going to know that unless I give myself away. So what I need to do is to avoid the kind of things like gripping the mike or the speaker’s podium, or standing with my arms tensely crossed, or worst of all, standing rigid and motionless. “To quell my nervousness once I’m on stage, I’ll seek out the friendliest faces in the audience, and establish meaningful eye contact with them (but not a fixed stare!). I’ll also avoid staring fixedly at the opposite wall or reading non stop from my notes.?

Problems of distraction and issues outside your control: “I have thought through everything that might reasonably happen and have planned how I can handle all likely contingencies. I am well placed to react flexibly to events.”

Worry about negative reactions or feedback from the audience: “Fair people will respond well to a good performance. If people are not fair, then this is something outside my control, and the best thing to do is to ignore and rise above any unfair comments. I will do this in a mature and professional way, relying on the facts and keeping my emotions out of he picture.

Worry about making a mistake: “I don’t need to sweat the small stuff. So , if it’s minor mistake, I’ll ignore it. If I forget to say something important that I intended to, and I remember it late, I’ll inform the audience about it and apologize for the oversight. Everybody makes occasional mistake, and it’s really no big deal.” Time for a re think: “I’ve done as much as I possibly can to give a good presentation. Now all I need to do is go out there and do exactly that give a great presentation.

 HANDLING LETDOWNS I have space for just one more example of how to challenge negative thinking. This one looks at the churning of negative emotions that many people experience when they have too high expectations from other people and find these expectations unmet time and again.

ACTIVATING EVENT (A) Just got a phone call from Whweta  saying she will not be able to make it for the lunch we had planned this afternoon because she’s “not feeling up to it”.

BELIEFS (B) “Not feeling up to it? That’s not a good enough reason. Not for me. No way would I have done that to her. I always put my friends first, I give 100% and that’s what I expect from them in return. But time and time again I am let down by people I consider friends. They just don’t seem to care. I feel so disgusted, I sometimes think it’s best not to invest too much in relationships, it’s just not worth it, even people in your own family let you down. It’s better to keep a distance with people, that way you don’t get hurt.

CONSEQUENCES (C) Feelings: An initial wave of deep disappointment that quickly gave way to irritation, then anger against the species know as “human’, and eventually depression, dejection, a feeling of isolation. Acton: Took a decision that I’m not going to be the one to call up Shweta. Also, then she calls up next, I’ll act distant and cool so she’ll know the way I feel about being let down. Now let’s see how we can challenge the thoughts in the second column wit a good dose of Rational Thinking. Here we go: “The irritation I feel towards Sheta  seems to be because I have been deeply disappointed in my expectations of her as a friend. “What exactly were my expectations? Was it realistic to expect Sheweta to be always available for me, to never disappoint me even on something like a lunch date? Am I expecting her to be “the  perfect friend” the kind of fried I consider consider myself to be? I absolute perfection the norm by which I judge my own actions, and therefore the f\norm by which I judge others, too? If so, am I not being too hard on both, myself and others? Isn’t it a fact that no one is perfect, that we are all mistake makers? Am I always able to live up to my own expectations of perfection in myself haven’t I also sometimes fallen short of my own standards? And isn’t that what the human condition is all about one of  fragility and weakness? The pertinent question is: can I accept others, and myself, in this human condition of imperfection? “If I keep expecting others, as well as myself, to be “Perfectly perfect”, won’t my life be very painful? “There are others who live in the same world as I do, I’m sure they are also exposed to the human frailties and imperfections that I see around me. I wonder how they look at it when other  people disappoint them. They somehow seem to accept it and to go on. Maybe I should ask some of these people how they cope with letdowns, how they manage to keep their trust in relationships and to keep caring for others. “If I can lower my own expectations to meet the reality of the human condition, I may well find myself being pleasantly surprised by the goodness that I find in people, and less disappointed with the weakness that is in all of us. “And one more thing isn’t there another way of looking at what I’ve interpreted as Shwets ‘letting me down?  When she said she wasn’t feeling up to is, maybe it was because she was feeling unwell? Or low? Or worried about something? I just didn’t bother to ask I was so wrapped up in my own sense of hurt and anger. “Perhaps I should call up Shweta and find out how things are with her. That’s what friendship is all about.” These twp examples should give you a good idea of the systematic and thorough way in which you need to challenge each of the negative thoughts you have recorded in your diary. The two main challenges are: What’s the evidence that this is so? And, secondly, Isn’t there an alternative way of looking at this? (It’s no wonder that one of the psychology books that discusses this approach to personality change is called, Talk Sense to Yourself’. OUCH). This is not a quick fix method. There’s no magic wand you can wave to make negative thoughts disappear forever. But you will notice something magical happening. As you keep challenging those negative thoughts, and keep replacing then with more rational, more positive affirmations, you’ll find that your feelings also undergo a change. And Column C gets magically transformed even without your having “worked on” your feelings and actions. What you worked on were your thoughts and your feelings and actions took care of themselves. What’s more you will find as you go along, writing in you’re A B C diary and then carrying out this exercise, that not only are you beginning to think differently about the events situations people listed in your diary, but also that some things is happening at the very core of your being. As you let go of negative thoughts more and more,  you’ll begin to perceive the world as less and less threatening. And as you feel less and less threatened by other people, you’ll shed more and more of your hostile stance towards them. As you begin to look at alternative ways of perceiving the situations you’re in, you won’t need to act defensively (or offensively!) towards others all the time, and you’ll be able to interact with people on a more rational, less impulsive basis. You are, in fact, well on your way to personality change! Of course, this won’t happen overnight, and don’t expect it to. Remember, it’s taken so long to  build up your personal baggage of negative attitudes, you’ve got to work intensively and on a regular basis at challenging them. How long it will take depends on how entrenched your attitudes are, as well as on how committed you are to change which does not mean just wanting to change, but the readiness to do what it takes to achieve that change. Where your mental blocks are so strong that you simple can’t seem to make headway in challenging some negative thoughts, it helps to try working from the opposite end that is, making small and gradual changes in the way you act, and finding that you eventually begin to feel and to think differently, too. The principle is the same as in, “Smile, even if you don’t feel like it, and very soon you’ll be smiling because you feel like it!” This approach (Changing the way you Act) is what we’ll look at in the next issue. And when you work with this two pronged tool Challenging Negative Thoughts and Changing Behaviour you’ll get the best results of all.

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