In order to become or remain resilient, it’s important to understand our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Do they contribute to our resilience or make it more difficult? Once we understand how our thoughts, feelings, and actions impact us, we are better able to make positive changes.
Thinking That Hinders a Resilient Mindset
Check the ones that you believe apply to your thinking. Think about what you can do differently to change the behaviour or thinking pattern. Do you engage in . . .
Filtering: Do you take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation?
Polarized Thinking: Do you have a tendency to look at things as black or white, good or bad? For example, do you tend to think you have to be perfect or you're a failure? That there is no middle ground?
Overgeneralization: Do you come to a conclusion based on a single incident? If something bad happens, do you expect it to happen over and over again?
Mind Reading: Do you tend to make assumptions about what people are feeling and why they act the way they do? Do you tend to divine how people feel about you?
Catastrophizing: Do you expect the worst? Do you tend to anticipate disaster? Do you notice or hear about a problem and immediately start to think about the "what ifs? “What if tragedy strikes?” “What if it happens to me (or my family, etc.)?”
Personalization: Do you have a tendency to think that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you? And do you tend to compare yourself to others, trying to determine who’s smarter, better looking, earns more, etc.?
Control Fallacies: Do you tend to feel you are controlled by external circumstances? If so, you are helpless, a victim of fate. On the other hand, do you tend to feel immense internal control? If so, you feel responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Both are control fallacies. What’s realistic?
Fallacy of Fairness: Do you feel resentful because you think you know what is fair and right but other people don't agree with you?
Blaming: Do you hold other people responsible for your pain and struggles, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem or reversal? Neither thought pattern supports a resilient mindset.
Shoulds: Do you have a list of rules about how you and other people should act? Do people who break the rules anger you? And do you feel guilty when you violate the rules?
Fallacy of Change: Do you expect other people to change to suit you if you “help them” enough? Is it possible you feel that people need to change because your happiness seems to depend on them?
Being Right: Do you continually try to prove that you are right? Is being wrong unthinkable? Do you tend to go to any length to demonstrate your “rightness”?
Heaven's Reward Fallacy: Do you expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there was someone keeping score? Do you feel bitter when the reward doesn't come?
Changing Your Mindset
Exercise: Write examples of your behaviour in these situations and how you can change it to
support a more resilient mindset.
Worrying about situations you can't control;
Failing to see choices, or having “tunnel vision”;
Being a “professional procrastinator”;
Expecting perfection of yourself and/or others;
Resisting change through inflexibility and rigidity;
Turning all situations into competitions where someone has to win and someone has to lose;
Focusing on faults rather than strengths, or being self-critical;
Failing to set limits or say “No”;
Taking poor care of yourself (not getting enough sleep or poor eating habits, stopping;
exercise, drinking/smoking more when stressed.); and
Expecting all problems should be neatly resolved.
What’s the one behaviour you think you can start working on changing right away? How will you do that?
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