Today’s Mandala Message: Transform All-or-Nothing Thinking
This week I’m working through Principle #32 from Jack Canfield’s “The Success Principles” entitled “Transform Your Inner Critic into an Inner Coach”. I set my intention today to ponder my use of all-or-nothing thinking. Canfield states: “In reality, very few things are always or never. If you think something is always going to happen or you will never get what you want, you are doomed from the outset. When you use all-or-nothing words such as always, never, everyone, no one, every time, and everything, you are usually wrong. …When you find yourself thinking always-or-never thoughts, replace them with what is really true.”
So instead of saying something like “No one listens to me” you could say “It seems like most of what I say goes unheard” or “I know that some people listen to me, so what do I need to do to ensure that I’m being heard by more people” or “How can I make sure that people are listening to me?”
I often find myself playing the all-or-nothing game. Along with Canfield’s suggestion, I also recently learned of way to circumvent it by adding “up until now I’ve always _________” or “up until now I’ve never ________”. So using my previous example, one could say “Up until now, it seemed like no one was listening to me so now I’m going to use a different approach when speaking.” This way I’m acknowledging the all-or-nothing thought while then adding a timeframe implying that from now on it will be different.
A good mindfulness practice would be to challenge your all-or-nothing thoughts.
So how about you? Do you find yourself using the all-or-nothings words? How much of that is really true? Can you come up with a way to transform them into more truthful statements?
“All or nothing thinking
— The Gratitude Blog
is a thinking of extremes.
It’s a type of cognitive distortion
that makes a person see things
in terms that are much starker
than the actual situation.”
Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
All Things Mandalas
An Invitation
I invite you to color along with me this year as part of what I’m calling “The Year of Self-Exploration and Expansion” with all of my “Mandalas of the ___” (day, week, month, year). If you’re interested in more of a self-exploration approach to coloring, check out my “Coloring Mandalas as Meditation”. You can download this mandala at MandalaoftheWeek.com.
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