Live Life With No Regrets!

If a drunk, reeling in the steet, shouted at you, "You always screw up! You have no talent! Quit your job!" How would you react? You wouldn't take the accusations very seriously. You'd either dismiss them out of hand and go about your business or, if they happened to strike a nerve, you'd dispute them to yourself: "I just wrote a report that turned around our red-ink situation"; "I was just promoted to vice-president"; "Anyway, he doesn't know the first thing about me. He's just a drunk."

What but what happens when you shout equally damning things to yourself? You believe them. You do not dispute them. After all, if you say them about yourself, you reason, they must be indisputably true.

This is a bad mistake.

The things we say to ourselves when trouble strikes can be just as baseless as the ravings of a drunk on the street. Our reflexive explanations are usually not based on reality. They are bad habits that emerge from the mists of the past, from ancient conflicts, from parental strictures, from an influential teacher's unquestioned criticisms, from a lover's jealousy. But because they seem to issue from ourselves--could there be a source with higher credibility?--we treat them like royalty. We let them run our lives without even shouting back at them.

Much of the skill of dealing with setbacks, of getting over the wall, consists of learning how to dispute your own first thoughts in reaction to a setback. So ingrained are these habits of explanation that learning to dispute them effectively takes a good bit of practice. To learn how to dispute automatic thoughts, you first have to learn to listen to your own internal dialogue at work.