What are the mistakes that impede our happiness and that we make in everyday life? You simply need to change the way of thinking, and then you will become happy.
Psicologia e Salute, a popular Italian magazine about psychology and health, has recently reprinted the article by the American psychologist Arthur Freeman, who specializes in cognitive psychology, devoted to the most common errors of people’s thinking that prevent them from being happy.
These failures, according to Freeman, lead to an incorrect interpretation of life experience, incorrect conclusions, exacerbate already existing problems, but at the same time, they actively create new ones.
The top-list of small and large human mental errors looks as follows, according to the author:
- Disastrous conclusions: when a person blows out petty troubles into a global problem, plunging himself into a state of despair and emotional paralysis.
- Mind reading: when a person not only believes that he clearly understands all the motives of another person, but also requires understanding of the motions of his own soul, refusing to explain what is required of that other person – let him guess! Such an approach, Freeman says, leads to deep disappointment and mutual resentment.
- False responsibility: when a person is inclined to accept everything that happens as if he were guilty. Assuming that he is responsible for someone else’s bad mood or even more global things when people doom themselves to stress.
- Self-confidence caused by flatteries: when a person receiving other people’s recognition in some area, begins to assume that this automatically guarantees him success in other areas of life.
- Excessive relying on criticism: when a person undoubtedly believes in all negative judgements about him, no matter where they occur.
- Inflated standards: when a person is so maximalistic that he himself can not grow up to a definite height.
- Painful comparison: when a person constantly compares himself to the people, who are better than him in the process of comparative analysis, it inevitably leads to a drop in self-esteem.
- Anxiety: when a person is concerned about non-existing problems, and gives every effort to get rid of anxiety, rather than to solve real problems.
Source of the image: Photl.
