What are the thoughts that sabotage our success and happiness?
We all have these automatic thoughts that we have been conditioned to and that we use all the time. These thoughts have been transmitted to us through our families over many generations. We may view them as “normal” although in reality they are not as "normal" as we like to believe that they are. These thoughts are irrational, and they have a very negative impact in our lives overall as they have the inherent ability to sabotage our success and happiness in a covert way. Here are some examples of these thoughts which are called “cognitive distortions” in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
All-or- Nothing Thinking: This extreme way of thinking entraps us into thinking in a very limiting way as if there are only two options available in every occasion. For example, a CEO may think that “I will either be the best CEO or nothing”, a saleswoman may think that “I will either be a top performer or a failure” and an executive may think that “I will never be promoted to a senior leadership position, I will always be stuck in a middle level position” or an investor may think that “I am only good at making money for others and not for myself”. This absolute way of thinking is typically related to unrelenting standards in families. These standards develop as a result of parents who are very strict in the upbringing of their children in terms of performance standards and expectations. For example, a parent may say to his son “You will either do an MBA at Insead or you will not do an MBA at all”.
“Should” Statements: The belief that things should always be in a certain way such as a senior leader thinking “I should be a better leader” and an entrepreneur thinking “I should be breaking even in year 1”. These thoughts have to do with transgenerational patterns from family to family about how things “should be” rather than how things in reality “are”. They have to do with societal expectations about how people “should be”, what they “should do” and what they “should have”. These thoughts about “how things should be” create a lot of shame and guilt as they somehow reinforce the sense that something very important is missing from us and that we are the only ones to blame for this deficiency.
Mind Reading: Involves the arbitrary Interpretation of the beliefs and thoughts of others without any substantial evidence. For example, a senior level leader might think that “I will never be considered as a candidate for the CEO position. They probably think that I am not smart enough”. Or a candidate for a position might think that “They will never hire me. They probably think that I am too old for this role”. These faulty assumptions are related to overly critical parents in childhood. When our parents tend to blame us and accuse us of not being enough, we internalize these accusations as adults and we get to hear an internal chatter that hinders us from realizing our dreams and achieving our goals.
Catastrophizing: Imagining the worst possible results in any given situation. For example, a CEO might think that “This merger will never happen” or a CFO might think that “We are going to go bankrupt soon”. These thoughts are related to the upbringing with parents that have been rather pessimistic in their life outlook as individuals and focused on the problems rather than the solutions.
Emotional Reasoning: The assumption that the way we feel reflects the reality of how things are. For example, an executive might think that “I feel like a bad employee for what I did and therefore I am a bad employee”. These thoughts are typically related to an upbringing in which emotions were valued as being the absolute truth indicator and children somehow internalized the belief that “I feel, therefore I am”.
Disqualifying the Positive: The tendency to focus only the negative aspects of a situation while disregarding the positive. For example, an executive might receive feedback on her performance and although the feedback was in its vast majority very positive, she solely focuses on the one and only single piece of negative feedback she received. As a result, after the feedback, she may feel inadequate or incompetent about her work. These thoughts are typically related to strict parenting which disregards positive traits and performance of the children and focuses on the negative traits and performance of the children creating a sense of inadequacy and incompetence.
Jumping to Conclusions: The tendency to interpret what a situation means with little or no evidence at all. For example, a senior leader may say “We are not going to achieve our KPIs for this quarter” or an investor may say “I will never pass my CFA exams”. These assumptions are related to parents having poor reality testing skills and making faulty assumptions about situations or events.
Personalization: The tendency to believe that we are personally responsible for events happening out of our control. For example, an executive may think that “Our CEO is constantly angry. He would be fine if I were more resourceful in coming up with ideas on cutting costs in my department. These thoughts are the output of parents who were over-blaming to their children and created a substantial amount of guilt by making them feel responsible for negative situations in the family with comments like “Your father is unhappy and it is your fault. If you were more collaborative, he would be much happier”.
Overgeneralization: Drawing general conclusions out of a single event. For example, an entrepreneur might think that “My first start-up failed. I am a failure as an entrepreneur. These overgeneralizations stem from harsh comments made by parents in childhood like “You broke this toy. You are a bad child”. These comments associate a specific negative outcome with the person overall or a behavior rather than simply pointing out the negative outcome ad hoc and seeing it for what it is.
Magical Thinking: Drawing random conclusions from unrelated events “I am a good executive. I should not be presenting bad KPIs to the executive committee”. These thoughts are related to parental answers in childhood that magical in nature and not at all grounded to reality such as “good boys do not get sick” or “good girls go to heaven”.
Magnification and Minimization: The importance of certain events is either exaggerated or minimized. For example, an executive may minimize the importance of his promotion to a senior role and maximize the mistake that he made in a presentation to the CEO. This way of thinking is very much related to the unequal treatment of positive and negative behaviors in childhood. For example, a child may be ignored for playing wonderfully the piano in a recital and may be overly criticized for being naughty in a restaurant.
These automatic thoughts are disruptive to our daily emotional wellbeing and performance and have the power to sabotage our long term success and happiness. Reading this article, one can easily see how all these automatic thoughts that we have as adults are related to all these early experiences that we had in our childhood. The good news is that through coaching and counselling, we can become aware of them and learn how to internally challenge them. The more we realize how disruptive and damaging they are, the more motivated we become to challenge them and eventually use them as little as possible.
