What our inner personal strength we have requires are defined approaches from various angles. This includes regulating our emotions, managing our thoughts, and behaving appropriately and productively. We need to do so despite the various external circumstances we’re facing.
Attempting to tame them can at times be a struggle. It’s our immediate thoughts which makes it difficult for us to be mentally strong.
As we go about our day, the tasks and the routines we need to do, it’s our internal self talk we hear first. This is a directive on what we need to do next.
It’s our inner voice which guides our behaviour, along with influencing the way we’ll interact and treat others.
Doing so also plays an important role on our self-esteem, how we judge people, and how we interpret the world.
The Problem With Thinking
The issue becomes that most often, our conscious thoughts, our inner narrative isn’t realistic or sane. But instead, they’re rather inaccurate, and often irrational and egotistical.
Once you begin to believe these incoherent thoughts are true, can lead towards a host of problems such as relationship issues, poor communication, and unhealthy warped decisions.
When you’re attempting to reach your personal or professional goals, the key becomes recognizing and judging these irrational thoughts.
We Generalize Too Much
There are a variety of obscure thinking patterns which stems from our mind.
It becomes easy to take a single event and then generalize it, by lumping things all together and making assumptions.
If you failed at doing one thing then you might think, “I suck at doing this.” You pigeon hole yourself under one umbrella, including everything that’s related to it.
Or, if you’re treated badly by a relative or coworker, you might think. “Every one of my relatives (coworkers) are rude, and don’t like me.”
Instead, take note of the circumstances and the specific situation, and treat them differently.
Attempting To Read Minds
You can’t really be sure what someone is thinking at any given time. Yet, everyone on occasion assumes what’s going on in another person’s mind.
Such as, “He must of thought I was extremely stupid during the meeting,” which makes an inference that might not be true based on actual reality.
So always remind yourself you’re most likely wrong at assuming. Realize you’re not that great at reading minds.
Get Too Emotional
Your emotions overtakes you, which are usually not logical or realistic, although you might believe you’re being completely rational.
If you’re thinking about finding a new job, you might be thinking. “Since I feel a little uncertain about this, maybe I shouldn’t be changing jobs.”
Or you assume that, “If I feel I’m not good enough, then maybe I’m not.” It’s important to know impulsive emotional reactions aren’t always based on the truth.
Making Poor Comparisons
Once you begin to make bad or unfair comparisons about yourself, what can become delayed is your motivation.
When comparing yourself to someone who’s extremely successful, you think. “If he can do that, then so can I.”
This usually isn’t helpful, especially if that person has a competitive advantage, or has had some lucky breaks in his life.
It’s not fair to measure your life to someone else. Instead, just commit yourself to your own situation and success.
You Go All In
You think life in black or white abstract. Go big or go home. You think there are only two categories, win or lose.
You look at everything you do, each and every project you attempt as either a success or a failure. There’s no middle ground.
What you need is to recognize there are various shades of gray. Learn the lesson and fix the mistakes, rather than thinking everything is life or death.
Dwelling On The Negative
If a string of good things happen to you, and then one negative thing happens, what you shift your attention towards is that one bad event.
You filter out or forget all of the good things that happened. You then think you’ve had a bad day, despite all of the positives which occurred.
You might look at your performance and then decide it was “bad,” since you made that one mistake even though it wasn’t drastic.
What constantly ignoring the positives does is it prevents you from developing a realistic attitude.
So establish a balanced outlook by weighing both the good and the bad.
Things Aren’t Always That Bad
You think things are worse than they actually are. If you don’t save enough money one month for instance, you think you’ll end up poor or bankrupt.
Although there’s no evidence which supports it, thinking this way can send you in a tailspin, forcing you to think paranoid or defensively.
Once you begin to think it’s all doom and gloom, realize there’s always alternate choices you can make forcing different outcomes.
Instant Labelling
What you do is immediately place labels on people. Once a coworker makes a mistake, you might permanently label her as “incompetent” in everything else she does.
What labelling people or experiences does is it categories and judges them, although they’re most often isolated incidents.
What needs to be avoided is automatically “tagging” them and boxing them in.
Recognizing Your Mental Thinking Errors
What needs to be recognized are your errors in thinking, by challenging those thoughts which are going rampant in your mind.
Become mindful by looking for evidence your thoughts aren’t always accurate, then replace them with more realistic ones.
Altering the way you think might initially take a bit of effort, but eventually the outcome will turn out better.
You can then make peace with yourself, your past, while looking at the present more objectively. You can then plan your future more effectively to reach your goals.