Crystal's Notes 16 March

You are walking down Orchard Road and in the distance, you see a friend. You smile and wave, but your friend walks right by you.

What will you do?

I’ve run this visualisation exercise with thousands of participants at my workshops, and interestingly, and while there are individual differences, but the trend is clear - men tend to externalise more, “My friend was probably not wearing their glasses” or “They must be preoccupied with something”, and women tend to internalise more and self-blame, thinking, “I must have done something wrong or offended my friend”.

How we make sense of the world impacts our future. And we sometimes have unhelpful thinking biases that can lead to cognitive distortions.

See if you recognise anything familiar from this list of thinking biases:

1. Labelling: “I’m such a loser.”

2. Personalisation: “The project failed because I was there.”

3. Mind-reading: “She must think I am useless; I can see it in her eyes!”

4. Generalising: “Everyone from this company acts this way.”

5. Black and white thinking: “You are either my enemy or my friend.”

6. Shoulds and Musts: “She should have made conversation.” “As a girl, you must take care of the home.”

7. Exaggeration: “It was the unluckiest thing that could ever happen at the worst moment!”

8. Minimising: “Oh my promotion? It was nothing. Stay long enough and you’ll be promoted too.”

9. Negative Filter: “She only said hi to be nice.”

What can you do when you have such thinking biases?

First, be able to ‘see’ your thinking. Zoom out and go into ‘observer’ mode. Say. “I notice that I am labelling myself with negative terms.” This helps you to be more aware of your thinking patterns.

Second, work to avoid absolutes. Notice when you use words like, ‘always’ and ‘never’, or think that things are either always right or wrong, or people are either friends or enemies.

You can also try to balance your negative thoughts with some positive ones. This is so hard but according to Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, positivity researcher at the University of North Carolina, this can build a collaborative relationship between your survival mind and your thrive mind. For example, if you are upset about paying more taxes this year, you can balance that negative thought by seeing that the reason you are paying more taxes is because you’re earning more!

Finally, check the story that you are telling yourself. What are the underlying beliefs of the story? Is there an alternative story? Are you super worried about presenting during the board meeting, because you had a bad public-speaking experience as a child? Sometimes we tell ourselves the same story so many times that we internalise it, and fail to see that we have grown beyond it.

Let’s not be crippled by unhelpful thinking biases. They can be overcome, just like how the stories we tell ourselves can change with time as well. This weekend, set aside some time to think about these stories you have internalised. Are they helpful? Are they holding you back? You are your own story-teller; it is always a good time to write new chapters.

Much love

Crystal