Your mind often leads you astray. It is not enough to look at what you are thinking. It would help if you also examined how you are thinking. What you think is determined by how you think. We all have unique thinking patterns. Your behavioural DNA shows your preference regarding your thinking patterns. Once you gain insights into these patterns, you can manage the challenge areas and change the outcomes. Also, you will discover your superpowers—the one you can use for career success.
“I suspect you will find that a great many of your negative feelings are in fact based on such thinking errors.” ― David Burns
Are you a cup half full person (e.g., positive, optimistic, and accepting) or a cup half empty person (e.g., negative, pessimistic, and cynical)?
Our sense of well-being links to what we think — the content of our thoughts. Are your thoughts framed as calm, satisfaction, and contentment, or anger, disappointment, and anxiety?
“Certain assumptions and cognitive errors can contribute to an experience of depression and leave people feeling more unhappy about their lives. These thinking errors may leave one with a poor view of self, no interest in connecting with others, and no desire or energy to pursue goals.” — David Burns
Cognitive Distortions
Psychologists use the term “cognitive distortions” to describe irrational or faulty thinking patterns. These cognitive distortions overlap with one another, or several may co-occur.
To predict your career success and satisfaction in specific roles, we measure 85 behavioural traits. Depending on the position, scoring high, low or in the middle may be best. For example, consider the trait street sense - recognizing others' attempts to manipulate solutions for their gain. Our analytics show that high performing politicians are high in this trait while high performing directors on boards are low. Excellent directors make evidence-based decisions and are concerned with the success of the entity.
While there are about twenty common cognitive distortions, David Burns, a psychiatrist, has identified the top ten, in his book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.
Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive Distortion | Description |
---|---|
All-Or-Nothing Thinking | You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. |
Overgeneralization | You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. |
Mental Filter | You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colours the entire beaker of water. |
Disqualifying the Positive | You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. |
Jumping to Conclusions | You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you do not bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. |
Magnification (Catastrophizing) Or Minimization | You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” |
Emotional Reasoning | You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it; therefore, it must be true.” |
Should Statements | You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. |
Labeling And Mislabeling | This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him. “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded. |
Personalization | You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for. |
Thinking Patterns
Joan Rosenberg, a psychiatrist, discusses five of these thinking patterns (cognitive distortions) that drag you down in her book Ease Your Anxiety. Below, I discuss these five of cognitive distortions and supply some strategies to get you started.
After reviewing the cognitive distortions listed below, select the one that aligns with how you think. If there are more than one, consider one at a time. This process takes effort. You will need to be aware of the distortion and catch yourself using it. The next step is to replace the distortion pattern with constructive and optimistic thinking.
Decreasing these distortions creates a path toward a more fully expressed life. You will increase your emotional flexibility — the ability to be responsive to changes rather than reactive. Moreover, you increase your resilience to bounce back when things are difficult. Managing the thought patterns that artificially constrain and distract you will enable you to experience more in life.
All-or-nothing thinking
“Part of getting older is realizing that you can integrate all these different areas of your life, rather than the adolescent mindset, which for me lasted a long time, which says, 'It's all or nothing.'”— Chris Robinson
You see people, situations, and things in black-and-white categories without allowing for complexity. In other words, you see things in terms of extremes – something is either fantastic or awful; you are either perfect or a total failure.
For example,
- when your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure
- a new colleague is amazing or boring
- a night out is “the best” or “the worst”
This distortion is seen as an inability or unwillingness to see shades of grey. Our lives unfold in shades of grey.
Strategies to manage it
Notice the times that you do this. For example, you may spot yourself thinking, “I have to be perfect on the dance floor, or I’ll look like a fool.” Question the pattern by generating one possibility that exists between the two options — you might think, “I love to dance, so I’ll just go out there and try to enjoy myself.” Take this a step further by coming up with two more possibilities, such as “I may not be a great dancer, but I’ll never see most of these people again” or “I’ll get out there for two songs, and if I still feel awkward, I’ll consider sitting down.” Finding one alternative can help break the pattern, and conceiving of a few more develops your skill in seeing the nuances in every situation.
Overgeneralizing
“All generalizations are false, including this one.” — Alexander Chase
You see a single adverse event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. So, you tend to draw general rules from specific events and apply them across unrelated situations. Your rules are often negative rather than positive.
For example,
- when you do not get a job you want, you think, “People don’t like me — and I’m going to die alone, too”
- I can never be a CEO because all CEOs have an Ivy League education, while fewer than five percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have these credentials
Strategies to manage it
Every time you find yourself indiscriminately applying one past outcome to another anticipated or future situation, keep telling yourself: “This one outcome is just that — one outcome.” Dig into the data and see the shades of grey.
Disqualifying the positive
You tend to reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for one reason or another. In this way, you can support a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. This response is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking in which we filter out all the positive evidence about our performance, and only attend to the negative. Consider it as all-or-nothing thinking, without the "all"!
This distortion produces thoughts that reinforce negative feelings and explain away positive ones. Often people who are caught up in this cognitive distortion are genuinely concerned about something, but it may be something that has no apparent connection with the topic at hand.
For example,
- should your boss praise you in public — when someone mentions it to you later, you say, “She said that because I was standing in front and she couldn’t avoid me”
- you had one of your lowest rounds in golf, your colleague compliments you-you reply “everyone gets lucky once in a while” or “these new clubs made all the difference” rather than a simple thank you and feeling proud of your efforts
- If you have ever tried to argue someone out of a bad mood, you have seen this cognitive distortion from the outside
- If you have ever been in a bad mood, you may have seen it from the inside
Strategies to manage it
Whenever you disqualify the positive, you are wrongly reinforcing negative beliefs about yourself and your world. If you find it difficult to accept praise or compliments, you can start by saying a simple, sincere “Thank you” or “I appreciate that.” Then, take a little time later to imagine what your life would be like if you believed the words were true.
Disqualifying the positive also limits your ability to discuss a subject rationally. You use a double standard. Contrary evidence, no matter how weak or irrelevant, counts. Positive proof, no matter how strong or persuasive, can be explained away. The "logic" behind it goes something like this: Things are bad, so why not make them worse? Get into the grey zone.
Taking excessive responsibility and Personalization
You see yourself as the cause of an adverse event which you were not primarily responsible for, or you were not the only one responsible. Self-blame for others’ misfortunes or for everyday mishaps or relating external events to oneself when there is no basis for it, can negatively affect your daily life and how you see yourself.
This distortion can take many forms. For example,
- after making an online dinner reservation for you and your friends, but when you show up at the restaurant, your name is not on the list — you blame yourself and say, “It’s all my fault”
- you book a family beach vacation, it rains most of the week, and you say, “It’s my fault because I wished too hard for good weather”
- it is all my fault that you did not pass the exam — I should not have stayed so long on the phone yesterday with you
Strategies to manage it
You tend to personalize appeals to your sincere desire to be responsible and effective. However, you end up adding unnecessary and unjustified pressure. In a situation where you are quick to take responsibility for something that is out of your control, notice how you might have contributed to the problem. In the case of the missing reservation, you could double-check that you chose the right date and time and that you did not miss a confirmation email or text from the restaurant. Besides, consider all the other factors that may have contributed to the problem — the reservation software? The restaurant’s computer? — moreover, who else might hold responsibility?
‘If only” and “Should” statements
Your internal dialogue tends to be full of statements that include the words “should,” “ought to” or “must.” These words sting — using them often can result in feelings of frustration and anger. Let us say your boss tells you that she wants you to hand in a proposal on Friday. You tell yourself, “I should have this project completed by Wednesday; otherwise, I’m a lazy failure.”
Strategies to manage it
You have heard the phrase “Stop ‘should’-ing on yourself.” The words “should,” “ought to,” and “must” are words of constraint and constriction. These words can lead you to feeling like you have few options and too-high expectations. Expanding your sense of choice starts with changing the language you use in your self-talk. Whenever you catch a “should,” “ought to” and “must,” replace it with “can,” “choose to” or “decide to.”
Concluding Thoughts
“Self-esteem can be defined as the state that exists when you are not arbitrarily haranguing and abusing yourself but choose to fight back against those automatic thoughts with meaningful rational responses.” ― David D. Burns
Do you know the degree to which you:
- accept of yourself without self-criticism or self-abuse
- strive to maximize your authenticity
- have faith in your ability and lack of self-doubt
- exhibit the personal and emotional maturity toward authority and conformity
- are comfortable expressing your views persuasively in groups
- remain optimistic and positive when confronted with adversity
- are not conflicted about the sacrifices required to realize your career potential
- hold yourself in high regard
- prefer to think and act independently without the support of others
- possess a well-established sense of identity or self-awareness
We assess these ten behavioural traits and 75 more to determine your behavioural DNA. The insights we provide into your challenge areas make your journey of discovery much more manageable. You quickly become aware of the area where you need to develop specific strategies to manage them and the natural superpowers that you have and can leverage for career success, satisfaction and fulfillment.
Once you have a few successes dealing with cognitive distortions under your belt, refer to the table above over and over again. When you become familiar with forms of cognitive distortion, you will benefit from this knowledge all your life.
Insights About Your Behavioural DNA To Advance Your Career
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