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Before we move on to the next cognitive distortion, let’s bear in mind that these distortions arise in automatic thoughts. They happen so fast and reflexively that you are usually not even conscious they’re happening. Later in this series we’ll look at techniques to expose and dismantle them.

In the last post, we looked at the second cognitive distortion on the list: Over-generalizing. Today, let’s look at the third: Mental Filter.

In the mental filter distortion, you focus like a laser on one negative or upsetting aspect of an event or situation to the exclusion of all else.

Example One: Franklin’s Drive

This morning, on his way to work, Franklin accidently cut someone off with his car in traffic. Even though in every other respect his driving was fine, he spends the rest of the day berating himself for his single mistake. He thinks: I shouldn’t have cut that person off. I’m a bad driver.

Example Two: Harry’s Unrequited Love

Harry’s life is good. He has a job he loves, a home he’s happy to return to every day, and he’s soon going on a vacation abroad he’s been looking forward to. But all he can think about, over and over, is how the woman he’d like to court has rejected him. He thinks: Why doesn’t she feel about me the way I feel about her?

Example Three: Tina at the Mall

As Tina walks through a crowded shopping mall, people are courteous, and a few smile at her as the pass by. Then someone is rude to her. She thinks: “People are so rude.”

Notice that in all three examples, the thinker concentrates solely on a single upsetting aspect of the event or situation.

In the next post, we’ll take a closer look at the next cognitive distortion on the list: Disqualifying the Positive.

In the last post, we looked at the first cognitive distortion on the list: All or Nothing Thinking. Today, let’s look at the second: Over-generalizing.

When we over-generalize, we apply something specific too broadly. It’s a destructive form of exaggeration. Perhaps it’s easiest to see in examples:

Example One: Reginald at the Supermarket

Reginald parks his car at the local supermarket and goes inside to do his shopping. When he comes out, someone has dinged his door. He thinks: Bad things always happen to me.

Example Two: Dead-end Shirley

Shirley is stuck in an unfulfilling, dead-end job. One day, while on lunch break, she runs into an old friend whom she hasn’t seen in years. It turns out, her friend is very successful. Shirley thinks: I’ll never be a success.

Example Three: Emil’s Dinner of Doom

Emil is engrossed in a television show when he suddenly remembers that he had been cooking something in the oven. He runs to the kitchen only to find his dinner is burned to a crisp. He thinks: Why do I always screw up?

Notice how each of the example thoughts above take a specific thing (“Someone has dinged my car”, “I’m not as successful as I’d like to be”, “I burned my dinner”) and over-generalize it so that it’s gigantic? (“Bad things always happen to me”, “I’ll never be a success”, “Why do I always screw up?”)

In the next post, we’ll take a closer look at the next cognitive distortion on the list: Mental Filter.

In the last post, we took a quick peek at the list of 10 cognitive distortions. Let’s dive in a little deeper.

Today we’ll look at the first cognitive distortion on the list: All or Nothing Thinking.

In All or Nothing Thinking, a single imperfection equates to total failure. It’s a view that demands total perfection in absolute, black or white terms. People who tend toward this distortion see events as completely good or completely bad, and see themselves as complete successes or complete failures.

Example One: Bob the Tennis Pro

Bob is a young, professional tennis player. He is very good and has a promising future. His record is stellar — he has many wins under his belt and no losses. But then he loses a match. He thinks: This loss proves I’m not a good tennis player. I’m a failure.

Example Two: Love-struck Sue

Sue has started a new romantic relationship. One day she suggests an outing to her new boyfriend, but he declines. She’s crushed. She thinks: Either he loves me or he doesn’t. This proves he doesn’t.

Example Three: Jeff and the Problematic Code

Jeff is a programmer. He has worked for the same well-known technology company for many years. One day at lunch, his colleagues point out a flaw in the design of one of his programs. He thinks: I always mess up.

In the next post, we’ll take a closer look at the next cognitive distortion on the list: Over-generalizing.

In the last article, we took our first glimpse at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). To review, we discussed three key points:

• All emotions arise from thoughts. All of them.
• Thoughts that cause negative emotions such as depression are automatic and easily escape our awareness.
• It’s possible to “debug” our thinking and thereby prevent negative emotions from arising in the first place.

Thoughts that give rise to negative emotions such as depression and anxiety but are incorrectly based on a distorted view of reality are called thinking errors or cognitive distortions.

Perhaps you feel you’re free of cognitive distortions. Unfortunately, this is extremely unlikely. Almost without exception, we all fall prey to them to one degree or another. If you ever find yourself depressed or anxious, it’s likely you’re suffering from one or more distortions of your making. Don’t worry; it’s perfectly natural, and the good news is you can take control of these distortions and ward them off in the future.

Cognitive therapists have identified 10 cognitive distortions. In future articles, we’ll look at each of them in depth, but for now here’s the list:

• All or Nothing
• Over-generalizing
• Mental Filter
• Disqualifying the Positive
• Jumping to Conclusions
• Magnification (or Catastrophizing)
• Emotional Reasoning
• Should Statements
• Labeling
• Personalization

For more information about cognitive distortions, read Feeling Good or come back tomorrow for the next article in this series.

Disclaimer: One of the main reasons I started this blog is to share the benefits of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I am not a therapist and I am not dispensing medical advice. If you find these concepts intriguing, you should either read David Burn’s excellent book Feeling Good or seek professional counseling.

So, what is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)? CBT is a type of psychotherapy developed by Aaron T. Beck. The key principle of CBT is that all of our emotions arise from our thoughts. All of our emotions. So, if you’re feeling happy, angry, or sad — those feelings started with thoughts in your mind.

This is all fine and well when our thoughts are reasonable and free of distortion. But what happens when our thoughts are distorted? Distorted thoughts (or “thinking errors” or “cognitive distortions”) also give rise to emotions — usually anger or depression. For example, if you meet a stranger and think to yourself, “Oh no. This person thinks I’m stupid,” you will feel sad. (We will explore why that thought may be distorted in future articles.) Another example of a cognitive distortion is: “I’m a failure. I never do anything right.” (Actually, there are two distortions in that thought, as we’ll see later on.)

The tricky part of all this is that these cognitive distortions are so automatic and happen so reflexively and quickly that we’re not conscious of them. You may think, “Oh, I don’t say horrid things like that to myself,” but, sadly, most of us do — we’re just don’t know it. We know we get discouraged, or feel depressed, but we don’t realize that we’re creating those emotions with our thoughts. Remember: all emotions arise from our thoughts.

Fortunately, with practice, we can dismantle and avoid these cognitive distortions. And that means we can head off the suffering we cause ourselves. In future articles, I will discuss techniques to help “debug” our thinking and offer exercises you can try at home. Some of these techniques will be from the world of psychotherapy and others will be from Buddhism, which is a philosophy that harmonizes beautifully with CBT.

Very few of my friends have what they would call a dream job. Some have jobs that are pretty close to dream jobs; others have jobs they actively despise. Let’s call them nightmare jobs.

Each of these friends has a scheme in mind for getting into a work situation that more close resembles a dream job, and time will tell how much success each has in that pursuit.

For those that are actively planning their dream job strategy, the Dumb Little Man blog has a great list of tips entitled 22 Secrets to Discovering Your Dream and Living It.

One of my favorites is number 20:

Set aside time each day. You will not go anywhere if you don’t devote time to your dream. Set aside an hour (or at least 30 minutes) each day for working towards your dream. If you can do more, great, but one step at a time is all it takes. Set aside time either in the morning, or in the evening, or some time when you know you will do it every day. Make it a habit, and you will succeed.

Knowing when and how to say no is a critical life skill. Not saying no when you should is a great way of setting yourself for trouble. The problem is, some situations that require a no are trickier than others. Saying no to friends is one such delicate situation. Today on zen habits, there’s a thought-provoking little article (by guest blogger Marco Adragna of the Even Happier blog): “How to Say No and Stay Friends”

The tip that resonates most for me, personally is:

1. Deliver a clear, firm, and respectful NO. You only build false hopes with wishy-washy responses. He has got the right to ask, and you’ve got the right to say no.

Yesteday, in an article on O’Reilly Radar, Jimmy Guterman raised a valuable point about working with GTD. Namely, now matter how efficient you become, your efficiency won’t save you from overextending yourself.

It turned out that my problem wasn’t that I was insufficiently efficient. The problem was that I was way too overextended. I had taken on more than even a very efficient person could handle. Efficiency is great, but it can only get you so far. I recommend Getting Things Done, as long as you don’t treat every word as immutable and inarguable. It can help you out of many bad habits. It can’t, however, stop you from agreeing to take on too many responsibilities.

I believe that overextending yourself is dangerous and that even “black belt” level GTD won’t save you from that particular pitfall. However, I also believe that there is a part of GTD that helps mitigate the problem — namely, the Someday/Maybe list. Now, the Someday/Maybe list won’t help you when the things that comprise your overextension are commitments you’ve made to others — after all, you must deliver the things you’ve promised or risk your professional or personal reputation — but it does help keep your overall list down to a manageable size and reduces the impact of getting into the overextended state. Remember, defer it is one of the valid choices for inbound stuff.

That said, I have found the need to extend my GTD system a bit by projecting availability of time and energy at least a month in advance and allocating those (unfortunately limited) resources to the projects I’ve committed to so that I’m less likely to overextend myself.

I’m still in the midst of packing up my home in preparation for my move, and I happened to stumble upon two stupendously useful and timely tips while reading my RSS feeds. (Hooray for feeds… Again!)

Both of these tips are on Unclutterer, but I originally found a pointer to one of them on Lifehacker.

The first tip comes from the Unclutterer article Digitize Your LP Collection, or Penelope Will Leave You. I have a ton of vinyl LPs (or at least they feel like a ton when I have to move them). For the last couple of decades I’ve been storing them in some milk crates I “borrowed” from the old (now non-existent) Faletti’s in San Francisco. The article has a nice tip on digitizing LPs, but that’s not my goal at the moment. The real gem for me was a link to a supplier of excellent archival storage boxes:

If you need a solution for storage, Bags Unlimited has a great selection of boxes and sleeves sized appropriately for LPs, 45s, and 78s. I label my boxes and have the contents organized with dividers that are also labeled by artist and genre.

The second tip is to photograph and throw away sentimental stuff. Brilliant!

Over the next few weeks, I went through the contents of the bin and took digital photos of the items with my camera. I organized the photos in an iPhoto album and filled in the photo’s Notes field with information about the object’s associated memory. Then, I threw away the object without any guilt or sense of loss. If I want a trip down memory lane, now I just open a file on my computer.

Both of these tips are excellent examples of how blogs can supply tremendously useful information. One need only find the right bogs. Unclutterer is obviously one of them!

I’m a huge fan of processing my email inbox only once a day. I plow through it mid-day every day, and when I’m done my inbox is totally empty. It’s amazing how much this has helped my overall workflow.

The trouble is, when I swoop into Gmail to compose an email at other times of the day or evening, just seeing the unread messages in my inbox gives me a mild but perceptible jolt of stress. Worse yet, I feel the temptation to process all that mail right then and there. Obviously, this little jolt of stress and resisting the temptation to read all that mail is a waste of energy. So, I purposefully set up a method of composing new emails without seeing the inbox at all. I do it by combining Quicksilver and Gmail’s compose page.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Launch Google Notifier. Under ordinary circumstances, I strongly advise against running mail notifiers (unless you’re, say, expecting an urgent email that requires immediate attention), but for this process we need a way to get to the compose URL and Google Notifier is one such way.
2. Set Google Notifier to use Gmail for composing email. Set this in the Gmail tab of Preferences.
3. Choose Compose Mail in Google Notifier. A new browser window will appear containing the the Gmail compose form.
4. Bookmark the page. I called this bookmark “compose_gmail” and filed it with my “just for quicksilver” bookmarks. Remember to give it a name that is descriptive, but unique so that you an do an efficient type-ahead search in Quicksilver.
5. Quit Google Notifier. You don’t want it running, do you? Nope!
6. Bring up Quicksilver and rescan.

That’s it! Now whenever you want to send an email without the distraction of seeing your inbox first, simply bring up Quicksilver, type the first few letters of your Gmail compose bookmark name, and *voila!* you land directly on the compose page.