How Our Thinking Can Sabotage Our Success

I hope you had a good week.  Today, let’s talk briefly about how we can all be our own worst enemy.

That’s right.  Often we don’t need others to sabotage us because we’ll sabotage ourselves just fine without help from anyone.

One big way we do this is with our thinking–our belief system.

We all know how much of an influence our thoughts can have on our lives.  But are we actually mastering our thinking?

There’s a lot of debate among 2 major approaches of psychotherapy (I’m also a therapist):  Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

At the risk of oversimplifying too much, ACT approaches unhelpful thinking patterns by teaching people to allow their unhelpful thoughts to just be there and not get “hooked” onto them, and not fighting with them, while at the same time focusing on value-driven behavior, staying engaged in our day, and doing what’s important to do for that day, as defined by our values and goals.

CBT, on the other hand, approaches unhelpful thinking patterns by teaching people to dispute their “irrational” thoughts with a full-frontal assault of cognitive tactics, overcoming them with rational thinking and logic, and learning to restructure our thinking to be more useful and empowering.

ACT allows the thoughts to be there and focuses on behavior.

CBT fights the thoughts and then changes them into rational, reality-based ones.  And then focuses on behavior.

Which philosophy is better?  Yes! 🙂

In other words, they both have value to offer.

But I digress.  Let’s get back to our main idea for today:  we all have the ability to sabotage ourselves and get in our own way by clinging to beliefs about ourselves, our situation, and other people, that are irrational and false in some way–usually in ways that limit and disempower us.

There are many causes for this, but we won’t get into that right now.  But what I DO recommend, as a good starting point, is to not allow self-critical thoughts to take root in our “spirits”.

Because the FRUIT of this root is never good.

Our inner critic can take us down, and take us down hard.

Let’s not allow that.

Now, it’s important to say that there are times when we HAVE made mistakes, and we DO need to make some corrections.

But HOW we talk to ourselves about our mistakes can make the difference between making those corrections and moving forward, OR turning inward too much, ruminating on our mistakes, beating ourselves up, and getting stuck in a downward “shame spiral”.

And then, we end up living a very constrained, limited, fear-based life.

Ok this is getting long.  Let’s wrap it up here.  We’ll come back next time and continue.

In the meantime, be aware of self-criticism.  Does it happen a lot in your head?

If you’re up for it, keep a log this week, and record any self-critical thoughts you experience, the date they occur, and the situation that triggers them.  That’s for extra credit.

And we’ll say some more about this important topic next time.

Until then, stay well.