In the last post we discussed about
why some people perceive things in different manner and why some other perceive
things in entirely different manner. The reason is that all of us have some
assumption and attributes (explanation for behavior) about our own self and
others. This we learn from our parents and our own learning experience. Based
on these assumption and attributes we form fixed beliefs about our self and
others and we focus only on those information which fits our beliefs. So
here the problem is not the event, but how we see the event. If we change our thinking patterns, our view
of the problem changes and it becomes easy for us to solve it.
Everything starts from what has been
taught to us about the world, about others and about our own self. This gets
firmly rooted and forms a core belief about everything around us. Core beliefs
are generally formed in childhood and get influenced by repeated messages from
others. Similar and repeated experiences are called as themes. They are the
lens through which we see our world. Everyone has different core beliefs.
Lets see how this core beliefs
operate.
The core belief
shapes the way we see our self, the world and others. The above diagram
explains that, how our childhood experiences shape our cognitive beliefs. The
boy is always scolded by his father for his poor performance. Repeatedly the
boy gets scolding and it forms a theme, a core belief that he is useless. This
core belief gets deeply implanted in him. In his early days of childhood, to
cope with the situation he exhibits various behaviors like being angry or
aggressive and bullies others. These behaviors are also learnt. In the present
if the person is faced with a very similar situation, his core belief gets
activated and immediately his automatic thoughts gets activated. As the name
implies, these thoughts erupt automatically. They just pop up and can be in
form of verbal thoughts or images. Once the automatic thoughts are activated
our earlier forms of behavioral strategies also gets activated and leads to
various physical. emotional and behavioral aspects.
Based on these
core beliefs we tend to form assumptions. Assumptions are some basic rules we
have for our life. We always feel that “I should win” “I should be liked by
all” “Only if I win everyone will like me”. So all these rules also shape our
life. These core beliefs, assumptions
and automatic thoughts decide who we are. To be simple, they can be compared to
a plant.
Actually if you
observe very closely our emotions will last only less than twenty minutes. You
might think that, if the above said statement is true why is that many people
feel sad for weeks and how some people feel angry for months. The explanation
is that, the actual feeling last only for twenty minutes, but we never see the
event as it is. We exaggerate the events by our thoughts. The problem is in the
present, but we think for future, say we think in terms of ‘what happens?’. We
keep on adding our thoughts to the feeling.
I fail – I cry
(If we don’t add our thoughts to this, this feeling will last only for ten
minutes).But what I do is, I exaggerate the problem.
When you have these kinds of thoughts, have you ever
questioned ‘What is the probability that each of these thinking will come
true?’ If we would have assessed the probability of each thought, we would have
progressed. Actual problem is like a deflated balloon. We blow the
balloon, filling our thoughts and inflating it, and later complain that the problem is
big. Without these thoughts, our feeling will last only for few minutes.
Instead of all these thoughts, if we think that ‘what is the chances that these
thinking will come true?. "Yes. I failed. But it does not mean that I will fail
forever. It is just a bad day and not a bad life". If we think this way our emotions will quickly
settle down. But the problem is that we
are not living in the present. When a problem comes immediately we start
thinking in terms of past or future. All our core beliefs activate and we start
questioning us, instead of questioning our thinking.
Let us consider that two person has a same core
belief “I am useless”. But one person progress well in life, whereas the other
person is nailed by negative thoughts. Why is it so? Keep thinking…..Lets
discuss this in the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment