You constantly think you’re not good enough, can’t measure up to others, that you’re useless and a burden. Most of your decisions never turn out that well. Everyone always appears better, smarter, and you realize you’ll never be as perfect as them.
All you want is to be liked, accepted, your contributions acknowledged, but regardless, your core feeling is you’re unappreciated.
On the surface, you appear happy and sound of mind, but you ultimately feel you’re failing at this thing called life, and the crazy sets in.
These types of mental mind traps can turn severe, which continues the mechanical cycle of hopelessness. For some, they’re so deeply ingrained in their mind, they’re completely oblivious to it.
Living in a world of these mental mind-traps is similar to living a lie. Your perception becomes tainted, and the negativity brings forth unrealistic, usually absurd and untruthful thoughts.
To overcome them, constant vigilance is needed, while mindfulness needs to be applied. What needs to be known are what the various mental mind-traps are, to eliminate them.
Constantly Making Assumptions
You make assumptions that something is true, based on what you think, which is a supposition, all without proof.
What you constantly do is make assumptions about others and yourself, and we all know what the definition of “assume” is.
This is damaging to your life because all you’re creating is unnecessary emotional and mental drama for yourself, especially since you always assume the worst.
Assumptions also leads towards you making false judgment regarding others, which can harm or destroy relationships with those you care about.
Have Certain Beliefs
You believe without a doubt something is true, even if it isn’t. These mental beliefs can be extreme, making the mental terminology falsely strong.
Like all other mental mind-traps, beliefs are held subconsciously in the mind.
They can often become so deeply rooted, they’ll spook the conscious mind as being the truth, such as, others are always trying to take advantage of you.
This can play havoc on your life since any type of belief can be extremely blinding by nature. If they’re not even true, they can affect your life profoundly, as they’re deeply held in your mind.
What beliefs have is a dramatic way of crippling you with fear, if you have enough conviction.
Your life and the enjoyment of it then becomes extremely limited, resulting in a sad lonely existence.
You Make False Comparisons
What you constantly do is compare yourself to others, to see if you measure up, both physically and mentally.
“She’s way smarter (prettier) than I am.” Comparisons also between yourself and what you think your ideals should be.
Dissatisfaction in self is what drives comparisons. What we want is to be better, to be perfect, and excel beyond others.
What comparison also does is it drives competition, as we’ll use others, or our ideals, as yardsticks for success.
This is a mental mind-trap because what making comparisons breeds is jealousy and envy.
The end result being anger, frustration, and pain. This places strain on your relationship with others, which can also destroy them.
You Desire To Much
To “desire” is you want something you don’t have. We usually desire because we feel discontent, that we’re lacking. We just don’t have enough of a certain something.
We feel we’re not adequate enough, “I want to be this way, but right now I can’t.” You want to be of a certain quality someone else has, but you don’t have it.
Desire and comparisons are similar, as we’ll compare ourselves, and then desire something that’s bigger and better. This needs to be overcome since what desire equals is pain.
What desire often results in is lust, which results in obsession. The end result being disappointment.
Every major crime in our society such as murder, theft, adultery, all stem from desire. Once we desire something that you can’t have, it results in trauma.
Your Expectations Are Too High
To expect something is having the preconceived notion something should or will happen. Expectations are created by rigid minds that once challenged, it crumbles, placing the mind in turmoil.
You subconsciously think someone will treat you nice, but it doesn’t happen.
You’re then instantly let down by your expectation. Expectations are misguided certainty, which are symptoms of a security seeking behaviour.
What you can do is instantly create expectations for yourself, such as you subconsciously thinking you’ll begin to sweat for instance, and then you do so profusely.
This is a mental mind-trap since if you’re expecting certain behaviour from others, it will usually result in disappointment, frustration, confusion, or anger. This can also place strain on your relationships.
Also, once you begin expecting things from yourself, doing so can create a host of issues.
What your expectations become are self-fulfilling prophecies, by manipulating the outcome of a situation, whether it be good or bad.
For instance, if you’re expecting to be tired, then you will be, even if you’re not.
This can have a negative effect on your life since your own mind becomes biased against you.
Your Ideals Are Not Realistic
What you’re wanting is the perfect outcome, situation, to be that ideal person, which is usually generated only in the mind. Ideals are symptoms of perfectionism.
They’re also usually unrealistic goals which are almost unreachable, and impossible to live up to.
Ideals messes with your mind since they’re usually too hard, at times impossible to achieve, then mental along with emotional frustration occur.
What ideals causes you is to live under immense pressure, which creates immense anxiety. Once disparity is realized between what’s ideal and what’s reality, dissatisfaction always results.
Someone who is a perfectionist and an idealist is often someone who’s to difficult to please, and a harder person to live with. What ideals does is they’ll negatively impact relationships.