20 unhelpful thinking styles and how to fix them:
1. Binary Thinking: Seeing the world in black and white, with no middle ground.
2. Magnification and Minimization: Exaggerate or downplay situations excessively.
3. Jumping to Conclusions: Making assumptions without sufficient evidence.
4. Selective Attention: Focusing on a single detail while ignoring the bigger picture.
5. Catastrophizing: Assuming the worst possible outcome in any situation.
6. Mind Reading: Believing you know what others are thinking without confirmation.
7. Positive Dismissal: Discounting positive experiences or feedback.
8. Hasty Generalization: Drawing broad conclusions from limited data.
9. Emotional Logic: Believing something is true because it feels true.
10. Rationalization: Justifying harmful behaviors or thoughts.
11. Blame Shifting: Attributing negative outcomes solely to external factors.
12. Self-Centered Thinking: Assuming everything revolves around you.
13. Fortune Telling: Predicting negative outcomes without evidence.
14. Self-Flagellation: Excessive self-blame for things beyond your control.
15. Hindsight Bias: Overestimating predictability of past events.
16. Shoulds and Musts: Rigid thinking about how things ought to be.
17. Snap Judgments: Making quick decisions based on insufficient information.
18. Comparative Thinking: Constantly measuring yourself against others.
19. Labeling: Constantly measuring yourself against others.
20. Thought-Action Fusion: Thinking is not the same as doing.
10 ways to untwist:
1. Distortion Detective: Debugging your mind reveals cognitive glitches you encounter.
2. Evidence Excavation: If you think you never do anything right, make a list of things you’ve done well.
3. Friend-Mode Thinking: Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend with the same problem.
4. Thought Experiments: If you’re panicking about a heart attack, try running up some stairs.
5. Grayscale Thinking: Partial successes are still successes, and there’s always something to learn.
6. Reality Check Survey: You might find that what you consider a personal flaw is actually quite common.
7. Definition Debugging: Vague and harsh terms often fail to withstand careful scrutiny.
8. Language Optimization: Instead of “I shouldn’t have done that,” try “It would have been better if I hadn’t done that.”
9. Multi-factor Analysis: Consider all the factors that contributed to a problem.
10. Thought ROI: Cost-benefit analysis reveals beneficial mental habits effectively.
It really boils down to is mindset. Your mindset makes all the difference in the world.