know that negative thinking people regularly set themselves up for failure. They are hard taskmasters for themselves as well as for other people, demanding impossibly high standards and constant perfection. They often want to tackle the most difficult problems first and are not in favour of easy stages.
So we need to check that we are starting our programme with a task which has a strong chance of success and that we have a series of goals which will get progressively harder (but also progressively more rewarding) as we move on.
4. Practise – if possible this should be done in a ‘safe’ place first, that is, in situations or with people where there is as little risk as possible to your relationships, finances, self-esteem, etc.
Two alternatives to practising in real life are role-play and guided fantasy (see Chapter 13). Other options might be preparing and reading scripts at home or using a tape recorder or video to give you feedback and practice.
5. Monitor your progress – you need to have some system for regularly checking how you are getting on. This could be entries into your diary, a wall-chart, or weekly discussions with friends or a self-help group. Whatever system you choose, make sure it is fool-proof against cheating!
6. Reward yourself – it may be a long time before you reach your desired carrot so you will need to find some way of encouraging and supporting yourself along the route. We now know that rewards are much more effective than punishments in any learning process.
Make sure that the rewards you give yourself at each stage are appropriate and that you save the big treats for the harder habits.
Overcoming negative thinking
The quality of your thoughts determines the quality of your life.
Vera Peiffer
There are four steps which you can take to break your negative thinking habits and replace them with more positive patterns. These are:
1) Expose and confront your existing negative attitudes.
2) Adopt new positive approaches.
3) Expand your thinking powers.
4) Increase your exposure to positive thoughts.
Much negative thinking is essentially irrational – it is not based on well-considered facts and sound theories! It is directed by feeling and prejudice rather than logic and reason. Very often there can be some basis of truth in the arguments presented by this mode of thinking, but they rarely give the full picture. The process of censorship is often unconscious and is a habit ingrained over many years. We may be totally unaware of our discriminatory practices although sometimes the ‘madness’ of our thinking may be blindingly obvious to others. We may hear:
‘You’re just being your usual pessimistic self.’
‘Don’t be so daft – how on earth can an intelligent woman like you talk like that?’
– but still remain convinced in our pessimism because we feel we are right, and so we defiantly defend our opinion. Yet our feelings and opinions are controlled by the parts of our personality which are not best equipped to make logical and rational decisions.
In my book Super Confidence I summarized some of Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis theory, which may help you to understand more fully how your personality and its ‘censorship’ strategies work. As with many such theoreticians (including Freud!), Berne suggested that our personality has three fairly distinct sections and that each of these has a different approach to the world. In short, these are:
– the Parent, which is the part where our values and opinions lie; we use it when we are looking after, supporting, controlling, judging and taking responsibility for ourselves or others
– the Adult, which is the part we use when we are being rational, objective and calculating
– the Child, which is the part we use when we are being emotional, intuitive, creative, manipulative, rebellious, submissive, etc.
Each part has its uses and the secret of a healthy well-functioning personality is that each part is used appropriately. For example, we can use:
– the Parent to care for ourselves and others, make moral judgements and keep discipline
– the Adult to make important decisions and give considered advice
– the Child to have fun, feel the beat of the music or make passionate love.
But woe betide us if we quote too many statistics at parties, cry in a management meeting, or try to engage a mugger in rational discussion!
The ‘GEE’ strategy
Earlier, I noted that most negative thinking is heavily influenced by feeling and opinion, which are controlled by the Child and Parent parts of our personality. These two parts have invaluable uses but we have to be particularly circumspect about using them if our childhood ‘programming’ was negative. You can override conditioned responses, however, by making a conscious choice to use the Adult side of your personality rather than the Child or Parent part. So I have devised a strategy whereby you can do just this. It uses your Adult to help you analyse your thinking errors. I have called it the ‘GEE’ strategy simply so that I could use mnemonics to aid the memorizing of the three habits which need to be challenged. These are:
Generalization Exaggeration Exclusion
Generalization
This is the habit of developing a ‘no-hope’ philosophy, based on a specific subjective experience. We had plenty of examples of these when we looked at the effect childhood can have on the development of our general attitude to life, but now let’s look at the way many of us continue to reinforce these attitudes by continuing to think in a similar way as adults.
| Specific Experience | → | General Attitude |
| A boy-friend who lied | → | Men can never be trusted |
| One full bus | → | Public transport is useless |
Exaggeration
This is the habit of expecting things to be worse than they really are – worrying about a potential catastrophe before there is any real evidence to suggest that one is likely to occur.
| Signal | Fearful fantasy | |
| A headache | → | A brain tumour |
| A late arrival | → | A fatal accident |
Exclusion
This is the habit of ignoring the positive aspects of something and only seeing the problems and disadvantages.
Use the next exercise to check out your own habits and then try to use the GEE strategy on a regular basis to help you spot the irrationality of your thinking when you or anyone else spots negativity in your attitude.
| Situation | Exclusively Negative Reaction | |
| A new boss | → | ‘I’ll have to explain the problem all over again’ (and not – ‘A fresh approach to the problem might be the answer.’) |
| A pregnancy | → | ‘Hello, morning sickness, disturbed nights, big bills’ (and not ‘Hello, excitement, fun and love!’) |
| Invitation to a party | → | ‘Another late night’ (and not ‘I could meet someone really interesting there.’) |