Cognitive Distortions: And How to Handle Them, Pt: 1
What gets in the way of you doing what you want and need to do?
The circumstances?
The environment?
Your ability?
Your experience?
Your resources?
Other people?
Sure, those things may be contributors, but one thing has more impact on your progress in pursuit of personal performance than anything else.
How you think about things.
Every week in this newsletter, I give context to inform small steps that, with intention, become consistent habits.
This is the essence of behavior change.
Small positive steps repeated often, compounding into massive positive change.
As with anything, the intention behind the habit also works the other way. Small negative steps repeated often, compounding into inaction, regret, misery and depression.
Arguably the biggest culprit is what we’re talking about over the next two posts.
Cognitive distortion.
A cognitive distortion is an irrational thought pattern that involves faulty reasoning and thinking errors that contributes to seeing yourself and the world in a more negative light than is reality.
Clinically linked to depression and anxiety, before it becomes either of those things, however, cognitive distortions, repeated often enough (and they usually are), have the power to skew how we see our place in the world and sense of the future.
Informed by the work of psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and cognitive therapy scholar Aaron T. Beck, part of the danger of falling into cognitive distortions is the descending cyclical nature of thought captured by Beck’s Cognitive Triad.
Negative self judgements may seem innocuous to begin with, a mere off-the-cuff comment, but they insidiously extrapolate to form skewed, negative personal perceptions of human nature and projections of the future, strengthening confirmation bias and perpetuating that reality.
“As you think, so shall you become.” — Bruce Lee
Today, I’ll introduce the first four of eight primary cognitive distortions that — in my experience with clients from sport, business, the military, health and fitness, academia, and myself — present the biggest barriers to high performance and truly getting what you want most out of life.
The first half lineup…
- All-or-nothing thinking
- Labelling
- Overgeneralization
- Emotional Reasoning
Ok, let’s dive in.
1. All-or-nothing thinking
What is it?
Characterized by an overly binary life lens, all-or-nothing, polarized or black-and-white thinking, fails to acknowledge any possibilities or reality existing between two extremes.
There’s no grey area, which naturally limits the options for progress a person feels like they have.
“Unless I’m eating perfectly and working out 5 days a week, there’s no point in starting.”
“If I’m not working from 7am to 7pm 6 days a week, I’m not working hard enough.”
“I haven’t prepared as well as I wanted to, I’m cancelling the meeting.”
“It’s always going to be like this.”
A-O-N thinking often leads to avoidant behaviors and excuse-making that ultimately reduces effort, contributing to associated feelings of hopelessness and despair.
What can I do?
The first key is something that applies to every cognitive distortion you’ll see over the next few weeks.
Awareness.
You change what you can’t see.
So learn to slow down and notice your thoughts.
Mindfulness meditation is designed to do exactly that.
It’s not about emptying your mind — as many gurus will espouse — it’s about 1) learning to notice when your mind has wandered from your point of focus, 2) to acknowledge the thoughts that come up, 3) to let them pass, and 4) drawing your attention back to the breath, body, prayer beads, mantra etc etc…whatever you choose your focus to be.
Mindfulness is the ultimate compounding mental tool, so starting with a duration you know you can commit to daily, say 3-minutes, is the priority. Over time, add 30-seconds here and there, with the goal of hitting 10–15 minutes a day.
Don’t rush it.
Consistency’s the priority, and the key to some incredible benefits including an actual thickening of the grey matter in the pre-frontal cortex responsible for attention control and decision-making.
Once you’re consistently noticing the A-O-N thoughts coming up, the most important spanner you can put in the works is to ask yourself the question…
“Is that true?”
It’s sounds simple, and it is. It’s also powerful for cutting through the chatter and opening your eyes to other perspectives.
2. Labelling
What is it?
Whenever we define ourselves or another person based on a behavioral snapshot, we’re labelling.
“I’m undisciplined”
“He’s disorganized”
“I’m short-tempered”
“She’s rude.”
Those things might be true at times, under specific circumstances, but they’re unlikely to be true all the time, or even every time a particular circumstance pops up.
The danger with labelling is the more you say it, the more likely it is to become a persistent reality. The label quickly becomes an excuse, an easy out.
It’s far simpler to say, “well I’m just not disciplined,” than to consider what about your environment has contributed to lacking discipline in specific situations, and making conscious changes, and let’s face it, putting in the effort, to do things differently.
Letting go of self-labels and being open to nuance positions us to be far more flexible and adaptable, the hallmarks of long-term success in practically any endeavor.
Letting go of labelling others introduces more compassion into our view of them and the world. “She’s rude”, becomes, “she’s having a moment, we all have them.”
But the best place to start is at home, with ourselves.
What can I do?
Evidence. That’s what you need to create.
James Clear talks about this in Atomic Habits.
Evidence of going to the gym isn’t going 7 days a week for an hour at a time. Evidence of going to the gym is going once, regardless of how long you’re there for.
If you’re there for two minutes or two hours, you’re still going to the gym.
Getting yourself there’s the hard part.
Labelling stems from overblown expectations from the outset. We set unrealistic goals, then paint ourselves with a broad brush when we inevitably fall short.
Start small, create the shallowest on-ramp possible for what you’re trying to accomplish, and go from there.
Want to write a book? Write a sentence.
Want to run a marathon? Walk a mile.
Create evidence.
3. Overgeneralization
What is it?
The American Psychological Association defines overgeneralization as “a cognitive distortion in which an individual views a single event as an invariable rule, so that, for example, failure at accomplishing one task will predict an endless pattern of defeat in all tasks.”
The events don’t even have to be related (though often are), but the rule is applied generally to performance across all aspects of life.
Overgeneralization gets bad real quick, as we start to make predictions about future success, forecasting failure, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that exacerbates the narrative. An ever worsening cycle of cause and effect leading nowhere good.
Ever find yourself talking to traffic lights? A few reds in a row… “ugh, it’s just not my day.”
Think about it…
How many things have you convinced yourself of off the back of one or two negative experiences?
We paint ourselves into boxes far more than others do, with the faulty patterns we commit to about ourselves that serves what purpose????
To keep us safe. To avoid future perceived embarrassment, judgement, or failure.
Any time you’re projecting into the future, you’re limiting yourself.
What can I do?
Two things. One’s a one-off, the other’s a daily habit.
- Take out a pen and a notebook, and write out your personal strengths.
“Ok, simple”
“How many?”
One for every year you’ve been alive.
Oooo. Not so simple.
Think you won’t be able to come up with that many? You will. Just stick with it.
2) Take 3-minutes out of your day to write down three things you’re grateful for. There’s more to an effective gratitude practice that we’ll get into at another time, but start here.
The essence of overgeneralization is a very human, and evolutionary necessary, negativity bias.
Far less relevant now than it was 10,000 years ago. Noticing the good things in you life, no matter how small or how few, opens your awareness to the positives, to opportunities, connections and experiences.
Three minutes, three things.
Start today.
4. Emotional Reasoning
What is it?
Something I eluded to in Feelings are Fraudsters, emotional reasoning involves inaccurately evaluating yourself and your circumstances, including people you interact with, based on the emotions you’re experiencing.
When we do this, we conclude that our emotional reaction to something proves that it’s true, despite empirical evidence to the contrary.
Let me clarify by quoting Brianna Wiest’s awesome book, The Mountain is You.
“While your emotions are always valid and need to be validated, they are hardly ever an accurate measure of what you’re capable of in life.”
Your feelings serve one primary purpose, to keep you safe. I’m betting you’re here because there are aspects of your life you want to improve in.
Personal, professional, health, sport, business, whatever. You’re driven in some way to improve yourself.
This is as close to an absolute statement you’ll hear me make…
The journey to better is not going to feel good. At absolute best, it’ll be 50/50.
You’re going to have to do things you don’t feel like doing.
The essence of growth is dealing with discomfort without loss of enthusiasm.
So acknowledge and validate your emotions, 100%, and also understand that they’re a poor guidepost for future action.
What can I do?
Do more difficult things.
Coming back to the small compounding steps. Something, anything.
Turn the temperature to cold for the last 60-seconds of every shower you take for the next week.
Do the dishes before sitting down to eat/go to bed instead of leaving them to the morning.
Go for a run if you hate running.
Something small that pushes against your natural urge to avoid it or put it off.
Learn to take action despite how you feel.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
That’s it for now.
We’ll take a look at the final four next time; comparison, catastrophising, should-ing, and fortune telling.
In love and health,
Alex
