DevYou

[Caveat: I’m not a trained therapist, and the discussions in this blog are not intended as therapy. If you are suffering from depression or other psychological problems, please seek professional help. If you don’t know where to begin, talk to your primary health care provider.]

Many years ago, I was on a casual date with an attractive woman. We were at a nightclub having fun, when I caught a glimpse of us in a mirror. To my eyes, we looked ridiculous. Or rather, she looked lovely, but I looked ugly, and the vision of this attractive woman with an ugly man such as myself filled me with revulsion and self-loathing. The thoughts that sprung into my mind were: “I’m ugly. An attractive woman like her would never want to be with an ugly man like me.” These thoughts spoiled my mood and drained enjoyment from my evening — leaving me feeling depressed and hopeless.

Can you name the cognitive distortions?

“I’m ugly” is labeling. “An attractive woman like her would never want to be with an ugly man like me” is both types of jumping to conclusions: mind reader and fortune teller.

Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy concepts, let’s deconstruct these thoughts. Remember, all of our emotions begin with our thoughts. Deconstructing our distorted thoughts is the key to improving mood and preventing distortion-based depression in the future.

If I had known about Cognitive Behavioral techniques on that evening, I would have done the following Triple Column Technique on a blank piece of paper as my worksheet:

• Column One: I’d have written the two thoughts in the first column. “I’m ugly. An attractive woman like her would never want to be with an ugly man like me.” At the bottom of that column I’d write the emotions these thoughts created and how intensely I felt them on a scale of 1-10. For example: “Depressed 8, Hopeless 9.”
• Column Two: I’d have written the distortions: labeling, jumping to conclusions (mind reader, fortune teller).
• Column Three: I’d have written the rational replacements for each thought. “I’m ugly” would have become, for instance, “Like everyone else, I’m attractive to some people and unattractive to other people.” “An attractive woman like her would never want to be with an ugly man like me” would have become something like “She may or may not be attracted to me but I don’t decide whether she is attracted to me or not; that is her decision to make and I’m not privy to her thoughts” and “It’s absurd to say attractive women will never be attracted to me. All of them? Always? No, that’s a distortion. Moving into the future, some women will find me attractive and others will not.”

There’s a third distortion here, of course, and that is: disqualifying the positive. If this woman had truly found me as horribly repulsive as I thought I was, then it’s unlikely we would have been out on the town to begin with!

I hope this article will help you in your own Cognitive Behavioral practice.

There’s a new DVD out about D.T. Suzuki. Michael Goldberg Executive Producer / Director of The DT Suzuki Documentary Project was kind enough to send me an announcement about the DVD. Here is the information they sent along:

We are pleased to announce that DVDs are now available of “A ZEN LIFE - D.T. Suzuki,” a 77-minute documentary about Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966), credited with introducing Zen Buddhism to the West. In the latter part of his life he also embraced Jodo Shin Buddhism.

D.T. Suzuki was highly successful at getting Westerners to appreciate the Japanese mentality, and Japanese to understand Western logic. The effect he had on Western psychoanalysis, philosophy, religious thinking, and the arts was profound. His numerous writings in English and Japanese serve as an inspiration even today. Daisetz Suzuki’s message is all the more important now, in light of contemporary conflicts stemming from divergent ways of thinking.

Gary Snyder calls D.T. Suzuki “probably the most culturally significant Japanese person in international terms, in all of history.”

Along with Gary Snyder, there are exclusive interviews of many people, respected in their own right, who knew D.T. Suzuki in person, including Huston Smith, Mihoko Okamura, Dr. Albert Stunkard, Elsie Mitchell, Robert Aitken, Donald Richie, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and rare footage of Thomas Merton, John Cage, Erich Fromm, and Suzuki himself.

The DVD contains an additional 10-minutes from a hitherto unknown interview of Daisetz Suzuki by Huston Smith. There is also a printed “Supplementary Text” inserted in the case, with quotes from Dr. Suzuki’s talks in English never before published.

“A ZEN LIFE - D.T. Suzuki” can be ordered at:
www.martygrossfilms.com.
Individual price (for personal use): US$40.00.
Institutional price (for internal use only): US$150.
Plus shipping & handling.
Delivery in February 2008.

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Paul Plamondon: life coach, workshop designer, and author of Invisible Lives.

It is a fundamental, human dynamic - what we believe influences what we do. Our beliefs can limit or can enhance the results we get in life. When we change our limiting beliefs, we change our lives.

One way to examine and transform our beliefs is by using questions – actually, powerful questions. That’s because powerful questions tend to create connections and inspire possibilities.

Here are six powerful questions that will transform a limiting belief into an empowering belief. Spend 15 minutes on these six questions, and change your life.

Question 1 – Current Belief (2 minutes)

What belief do you currently hold about yourself, others, or the world that seems to limit you in some way?

[Example: I don’t deserve to be successful.]

Question 2 – Current Behaviors (3 minutes)

What adverse behaviors does this limiting belief generate?

[Example: I skip around from job to job about every six months; I leave one job for another at the point when I start to feel comfortable with the work; I avoid making friends; I spend a lot of time playing computer games; I’m eating too much junk food and I’m not exercising enough.]

Question 3 - Current Results (3 minutes)

What adverse results have you been getting from these behaviors?

[Example: Some months, I don’t make enough money to pay all of my bills; it’s getting harder and harder to find new jobs; I have gained 30 pounds in the last 2 months; I’m uncomfortable in my body and my clothes are too tight; I think I’m drinking too much; I’m overeating and not exercising at all; I sometimes feel depressed; it’s hard to wake up in the morning.]

Question 4 – Desired Results (3 minutes)

What positive results would you prefer to be getting?

[Example: Make more money; be able to save enough money to buy a house; pay off my bills; feel more confident; find someone to date; improve my writing skills; stop drinking; feel happy; wake up feeling refreshed; lose 30 pounds; start exercising.]

Question 5 – Replacement Behaviors (3 minutes)

What behaviors will help you achieve these positive results?

[Example: Enroll in a self-development class at the Community College; buy some work-out videos for home; check out the community clinic’s counseling services; find a better-paying job in construction; take a class on architecture and on developing my writing skills; prepare a monthly spending plan or budget; make a weekly low-calorie meal plan and exercise at least 4 days every week; commit to a single job for at least one year.]

Question 6 – The Replacement Belief (1 minute)

What empowering belief will stimulate these behaviors?

[Example: I am in the driver’s seat of the one and only life I have. If I don’t steer the car, no one else will.]

A Few Things to Notice

There are three important elements of this activity to notice:

1) The last three questions are similar to the first three questions, but they are in reverse order. Essentially, once the results of the limiting belief are identified, then you work back through the process;

2) The replacement belief is NOT just the opposite of the original limiting belief – that is, the replacement belief was not I deserve to be successful. Instead, the replacement belief was visually stimulating by virtue of the driving metaphor, which makes it memorable.

3) When answering the questions, avoid getting stuck on the “right” answers. Whatever you come up with will be right. Take a brainstorming approach to answering the questions, avoid judging your answers, and simply enjoy the process.

Try working through this activity with someone else – someone you trust and with whom you can be totally honest and open. Have the other person ask you the questions and, as you verbalize your answers, write them down for you. Working through this process with another person can create a deeper sense of reflection and accountability.

Today, Web Worker Daily features part 1 of an interview with David Allen (of GTD fame). The topic: Health and Stress.

The Simple Dollar is running a great series of articles on “investing in yourself” that I recommend. Today’s article is particularly good. In it, the author discusses a variety of great, practical tips for improving and sustaining your mood.

Accentuate the positive things you do and minimize the negative ones —
No one in life does everything absolutely right, nor do they do everything absolutely wrong, either. While it’s useful to know what your faults are, dwelling on them creates a false impression in your mind that you’re somehow less valuable than you are. Instead, spend time focusing on the positives in your life.

Investing in Yourself: Feeling Good

Been by Walking the Black Dog lately? No? Well, now’s a great time to pop by. He’s embedded a couple of great videos of Jon Kabat-Zinn that I think you will enjoy and learn from.

I have this habit of cramming so much stuff into each and every day that I can’t possibly do it all. The good part about that is I get alot done, but the bad side is that I tend to feel mildly bad about the things I wanted to get done but didn’t. It’s not an overwhelming feeling, but it’s unpleasant and can add up over time and nag at the back of my mind.

A little trick I’ve learned is to plan my day by “looking back” at it.

Here’s what to do:

In the morning, write a paragraph or two about your upcoming day. Use a conversational tone and describe all the things you did and how it went. In other words, pretend you have a time machine and have transported yourself to the end of the day and are looking back at it and describing what happened.

For example:

“Today was great. In the morning, I worked on the Defobrinicator project and made a ton of progress. Then I returned those phone calls and replied to a few emails. I had lunch at Bruno’s Luncheteria. Afterward, I went jogging. In the afternoon, I worked on my taxes, wrote that article about Patagonian tree lichen, and cleaned the rain gutters. Finally, before taking a break for dinner, I followed up on some new client leads and cleared my GTD inboxes.”

The benefit of writing about your upcoming day in the past tense is that you’ll tend to get a much better idea if all the things you’re planning realistically fit into your day — much more so than if you scribble down a list of things you want to accomplish. If you describe a day that’s totally unrealistic, you’ll feel it as you describe it.

Give it a whirl, and see what you think!

The other day, I overheard a conversation in a coffee shop that made me think. Two women were sitting at a table near mine, and said, “I’ve been trying to meditate but I can’t do it. I hear people tell me all the time how great it is to clear one’s mind for 10 minutes every day, but I just can’t do it. When I try to meditate, my head is full of so many thoughts, and I can’t make them stop.”

I think this is a fairly common experience. After all, our minds are pretty unruly and don’t just stop thinking when we tell them to.

What I wanted to tell her was this: Just as an experiment, don’t try to stop your thoughts. Let them arise. Notice them. Let them pass. Don’t try to stop them. Don’t cling to them when they appear.

The idea here is that meditation isn’t an act of sanitizing your mind, forcing it to be sparkling clean when it’s not. Rather it’s an act of familiarizing yourself with how your mind works. Familiarizing. Not sanitizing.

Rather than be discouraged by the unruly nature of her mind, this beginner meditator would do better not worrying about all those thoughts (after all, those worries are thoughts too) and just let them arise and pass. Worrying about her uncontrollable thoughts can only lead to one result: she stops trying. Rather, being tolerant of them — learning to let go of them while gently bringing her attention repeatedly back to some of single thing to focus on such as her breath is more likely to allow her to strengthen her meditation practice. And a stronger, more balanced practice, is more likely to bestow the benefits she seeks.