Our habitual thoughts can leave us in a a bind. We can be so sure of ourselves and still experience consistent, unwanted results and consistent, unwanted behaviors from others. The plain evidence points us back to our way of thinking. We can no longer blame others, the circumstances, or the weather.
As promised, there is a happy way out of this bind. We can gently admit to ourselves the possibility of a better way. We can allow that the way we’ve been thinking about things may be less effective than we had thought. Next we ask ourselves what another, better-feeling way of thinking might be.
These two simple steps give us both the mental breathing room and the confidence we need for the last step: asking others for their help. Now this is easy to do. We can simply say, “I may have been thinking about this in a less than useful way. What’s another way I can look at it?”
In your corner,
Mike
PS: You will know this is working because it will feel great. It will feel like freedom.
PPS: We ask others because they will know. They have been watching us struggle and have not known how to intervene. And we ask others because most of the things we have been tripping on are our thoughts about other people.