ERRORS IN THINKING
HOW TO GET POORER RESULTS IN LIFE
Know these - and then don't do them!
Pretend for a moment that good thinking was the key determinant for the quality of your life. If that were the case, wouldn't you want to see if you are doing good thinking, see where you are erring, and then improve it?
Well, I can tell you, there is only one road to a quality life and happiness - and good thinking is it!
THE SIGNS OF THINKING ERRORS
1. Poor results, undesired results, fewer good results
2. Feeling "bad" - this is an absolute sign of erroneous thinking - it is virtually always traceable back to a thinking error.
If you're getting these signs, it means you might best look to see what thinking errors you are engaging in!
And the effective person heeds these signs as "feedback" AND immediately corrects them!!!!
THE CHECKLIST
Use this as a checklist of sorts, and decide what you will correct (to Live Life As A Life Champion. It is useful for you to acknowledge which of these that you do!
__ PARTIALISM. This error occurs when the thinker observes the problem through one perspective only. That is, the thinker examines only one or two factors of the problem and arrives at a premature solution.
__ ADVERSARY THINKING. This is a "you are wrong. So, I should be right." type of reasoning. Politicians are the masters in this type of thinking and they use it to their advantage.
__ TIME SCALE ERROR. This is a kind of partialism in thinking in which the thinker sees the problem from a limited time-frame rather than over the long term. It can be likened to short-sightedness.
___ INITIAL JUDGMENT. Here, the thinker becomes very subjective. Instead of considering the issue or problem objectively, the thinker approaches it with prejudice or bias, perhaps from having already "leaped" to the conclusion and then becoming attached to it, defending it with his/her "life".
___ ARROGANCE AND CONCEIT. This error is sometimes called the "Village Venus Effect" because like the villagers who think that the most beautiful girl in their village is the most beautiful girl in the world, the thinker believes that there is no better solution other than that he has already found. This blocks creativity. Not only individuals but societies and even the whole mankind sometimes fall prey to this error. For example, before Einstein, the whole scientific community (and thus the whole mankind) believed that time was absolute.
__ EMOTIONAL "REASONING". Preposterous conclusions abound here, plus lot of misery creating suffering. It is the opposite of Wisdom - and it gets alot of the opposite results, results that we don't want in our lives.
__ BELIEVING THE MISPERCEIVED - Believing what we see is reality, even when it is unseeable or unknowable!
Some of the big errors are in these areas:
without learning it, they could not possibly become wisemen!!!!
See, in the left column, the Wrong Thinking And Cognitive Distortions listing.
THE CHECKLIST FOR ERRORS IN THINKING
Check out your thinking to see if it falls in any of these categories, which is an absolute or strong indicator that it is or could be erroneous thinking. Ask did I do this or is this the result I got.
You're very upset (rational thinking is conducive to calmer feelings)
I:
__ Got a bad result
__ Catastrophized
__ All or nothing thinking (always, never, everyone)
__ Believe my perception of the facts are real beyond a doubt, without testing them
__ Believe my intuition or gut feel is absolutely correct, instead of just a possibility
__ Jumped to conclusion, without checking facts or using objective logic
__ Generalized, rather than attributing something with precision and specificity
__ Personalized, thought it was about me rather than just the situation not having all the right
ingredients; self-judged negatively
__ Rejected evidence to the contrary, without fully listening or gathering the facts objectively
__ Expected things to be better than a realistic assessment would suggest
__ Felt guilt or shame
__ Am biased
__ Did emotional reasoning, where it "felt" right but didn't use rigorous fact verification or
objective reasoning
