Question: How powerful is the human mind exactly? Answer: Immensely. They say that one positive thought in the morning can turn around your whole day. So why, fellow college ladies, do we put these negative, automatic, irrational thoughts into our heads faster than Kim Kardashian moved on from Kris Humphries? Our minds are almost trained to automatically look towards the worst and it would be in our best interest to change it. The psychology major in me finds this list to be fascinating, and the college girl in me finds it to be so completely true. Below is a list of thirteen different styles of thinking that are subconsciously ruining your happiness:
Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation.
-Girls, we do this ALL the time. You know, like, everybody and their mother could tell you that you have a nice body. Every girl ever always tells you how skinny you are and even goes the length to say she wishes she had your body. Then, just picture it, ONE asshole guy makes remark about you being “fat” and all hell breaks loose. You’ll genuinely begin to wonder in your head if you need to lose weight. Maybe you’ll even stop eating Friday late night pizza. Every outfit you put on from here on out you’ll be skeptical about. Do we realize how bizarre this is? This one ignorant d**che is going to actually make us even think twice? Stop filtering in the bad and out the good, it’s actually making you miserable, and you’re beautiful just the way you are. (Plus, late night pizza is fantastic).
Polarized Thinking: Things are black or white, good or bad. You have to be perfect or you’re a failure. There is no middle ground.
-FALSE. In reality, most everything in life these days is not black and white, but in fact grey. As uneasy as it seems, it’s better this way. Girls think this way a lot when it comes to guys. We always think we have to be perfect: have the perfect outfit, the perfect hair, the perfect smell, the perfect text to send, the perfect thing to say. We focus on this so much because we believe it is the only way to impress a guy. Don’t get me wrong, as important as all these things are, if a guy is into you, he’s going to be into you no matter what. You could be walking from your apartment to his car on your way to a date, trip miserably in your 6-inch heels that you wore to impress him, embarrass yourself eternally, and if this guy is for real, he will STILL like you. Yeah, he might give you shit about it for the rest of your days, but this minor detail isn’t going to sink the ship. Perfect isn’t sexy, but real is.
Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens to you once you expect it to happen over and over again.
-This is a big one. We have all done this before. You take an exam and get your grade back only to see that it is lower than you’d like it to be. Your first automatic thought: “I’m stupid.” NO! You’re not stupid. There are a billion reasons why you failed that test, and one of them may be because you were being a lazy betch and didn’t study long enough. Maybe, the exam was hard and everyone else also got a bad grade too? Who knows? Just because you got a bad grade this time does not mean it is going to happen every time, and most certainly does not mean you’re stupid.
Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to define how people are feeling toward you.
-Girls love to mind read (just ask guys, they hate it). Some may consider this one extreme empathy and, in some ways, it is. It is a good quality to be able to acknowledge how somebody else may be feeling, even if you have not gone through that particular situation before. However, when it gets to a point where you make false assumptions about how your boyfriend or roommate feels towards a given situation, it’s going to piss them off. Allow them to explain how they feel instead of assuming you already know.
Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear a problem and start the “what ifs”.
-This one is actually a bit comical if you think about it. You know, you’re seeing a guy and things have been going pretty well. You hung out last night and have been texting him all day. He has given you every inclination to think that he’s into you and maybe he even invited you to his cocktail next weekend. But then, all of the sudden in the middle of the conversation, he stops texting. It has been twenty minutes and you DON’T. KNOW. WHAT. HAPPENED. Panic sets in. The thoughts begin to stir. “OMG he doesn’t like me anymore. Did I say something weird? Did someone tell him something bad about me?” Extreme paranoia. But fear not baby girl! The apocalypse did not just occur, his phone probably just died while he’s in class and he’ll get back to you once he reaches a charger…
Personalization: Thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you.
-Picture it: you’re roommate comes home and she’s in an undeniable pissy mood. She’s slamming things, sighing, and giving you one-word answers when you try to ask her about her day. Most anyone would think, “What did I do?” Instead of feeling that way, try to take a step back and think that maybe she is just in a bad mood about something else and needs a second to sit on it. If you cannot think of one thing you could’ve done, then the chances are it isn’t you. Let her do her thing and she’ll open up to you about it once she’s calmed down.
Don’t forget to read the second half on Wednesday :) stay positive friends!