Chapter
Twelve – Activating Your Smarts
This
chapter focuses on eighteen cognitive techniques. The next chapter
will describe seven behavioral techniques.
Determining
Meaning … a technique to simply ask yourself: “What does a
particular word or specific event mean to me?” … The problem is
that we tend to talk, and think, in a form of verbal shorthand. We
use euphemisms that obscure rather than clarify meaning … It causes
problems in communicating with others because we so often simply
assume that whatever we are thinking, the other person is thinking,
too … On top of all the problems caused by the failure to convey
exactly what we mean to others are the problems that are caused by
our failure to convey exactly what we mean to ourselves.
Questioning
the Evidence … It's fair to say that jumping to conclusions is just
about everybody's favorite exercise … Feelings have a way of being
wrong at least as often, probably even more often, than they are
right … Maybe someone is a jerk. But on the other hand, if you have
no evidence to prove that one way or the other – if another
explanation is also possible – than it's just as reasonable to err
on the side of the positive as the negative. Erring on the side of
the positive is more likely to lead to questioning the evidence than
erring on the side of the negative.
Assigning
Responsibility … Rarely is fault all one way or the other. And it
is important in sorting out one's thoughts to assign responsibility
carefully … Your parents may well have made your life difficult. It
is fair to blame them for being erratic or irrational or whatever
they were or are. But once you are an adult, you also bear
responsibility for your life … Even if you cannot fix everything in
your life, you can fix a piece of it.
De-Catastrophisizing
… To de-catastrophize, you must stop and ask yourself: “What is
the worst thing that can happen?” … Just by naming the worst very
specifically, you can often calm yourself down … Checking the
evidence is also helpful here … People who live in fear of making a
mistake sometimes find actually making a mistake is the best thing
that ever happened to them, because they learn that many people don't
notice and many of those who do notice don't care.
Developing
Alternatives in Thought, Feeling, and Action … Nothing is more
paralyzing than the thought that you can do something or think about
something in only one way … Sometimes it is necessary to generate
alternative views or explanations for a given situation. You don't
have to accept those views to think of them. But thinking of
alternative views sometimes provides a way out that you did not see
before … If you have no proof that one explanation is more accurate
than another, you don't need to stick with the most negative one …
Your feelings shift as your thoughts shift.
Comparing
Advantages and Disadvantages … Life presents many choices, and
unfortunately many of them are not easy ones. You are not asked
whether you would prefer a million dollars or a bucket of mud. The
choice is between terrible and possibly worse, between one mixture of
good and bad and another mixture of good and bad, or between a big
risk and a different big risk. In other words, tough choices. In such
choices, the correct answer is not obvious. The best way to weigh
such choices to to do it in writing … Once you have written your
lists, go back and assign a number value to each advantage and
disadvantage … It is easier to live with a decision when you make a
conscious choice.
Labeling
Your Mistakes … When you can out a name to what is happening, it
becomes easier to challenge. When you recognize you are making a
mistake, it is easier to stop making it.
Then
What? … This is a useful technique for examining those imaginary
scenarios that stop you from moving ahead … We tend to leap
directly to the end of the story, and it's bad news. To use this
technique requires you start at the very beginning of the story –
and thereafter unfold it s-l-o-w-l-y by answering the question: “Then
what?” … Sometimes the imaginary scenario still ends in disaster,
yet the effect is not the same as the panic that strikes when the
mind compiles disaster in mere seconds.
Superexaggeration
… We tend to exaggerate negative consequences, which, of course,
makes us feel worse than necessary. A good technique for dealing with
this is to exaggerate even more … Superexaggeration can help you
look at things more realistically.
Scaling
From 1 to 10 … Where would you place your current problem on a
scale of 1 to 10? … You need a point of reference when assessing
the difficulty you are in. To develop these points of reference,
first think about the most upsetting event of your life. Now think
about events of periods that were pleasing, hopeful, enjoyable, or at
least less stressful … People often see every single crisis at the
same level, when this is not truly the case. It can sometimes be very
helpful, then, to put your problems in perspective.
Turning
Adversity Into Advantage … (Turning lemons into lemonade) …
Viewed from a longer perspective, adversity often turns to advantage.
Life experience is rarely wasted. And it can help you to keep this in
mind … Just by surviving adversity, you gain the advantage of
knowing it can be done … Many people are motivated by adversity.
Being turned down only spurs then on to try harder, determined to
prove that the person who turned them down was wrong.
Developing
Replacement Images … Research tells us clearly that we can practice
behavior in our imagination and translate it into actual performance
… Imagining images of success helps you become more successful. Yet
most people seem to insist on practicing images of failure … Images
if failure have a way of popping up with no practice at all … Why
not imagine success and coping images rather than failure and
disaster images?
Rehearsing
Positive Images … This technique, sometimes called cognitive
rehearsal, is an extension of the replacement of negative images with
positive ones. It calls for practicing that image a couple of times a
day, not just once before you go out, but over and over and over
again … Practice clearly enhances performance.
Self-Instruction
… Self-instruction involves giving yourself very specific
directions. It's easy enough to say something like: “I'll do
better.” But you can't depend on something that vague … You can
help yourself by making a detailed list of instructions … Try to
break down your instructions into the smallest possible steps,
because the smaller the step, the less intimidating it is to take it.
You may find it helpful to write a script for an upcoming situation …
The trick is to anticipate what instructions are needed for any given
situation.
Self-Distraction
… When a particular line of thought is upsetting you, it helps to
interrupt that line of thought. And one way to do this is simply to
distract yourself by introducing a different thought … You can
distract yourself by consciously conjuring up a success image to make
you feel better when you face a challenge … You can distract
yourself with a relaxation technique.
Playing
Defense Attorney … This technique might also be called arguing with
yourself. Sometimes that is necessary because we tend to be harder on
ourselves than we are on other people. Behavior you would find a way
to forgive in a friend, you don't forgive in yourself. Other people
can make a mistake, and you forget it. You make a mistake and
remember it for the next eighty years … (As the names suggests this
technique is where you argue on your own behalf)
