KEEP A DAILY JOURNAL for your Self Improvement
Spend 10 minutes a day jotting down the following pieces of information about specific events that left you upset or disappointed. After 1-3 weeks, you will start to see patterns in your thoughts and relationships.
Sheila Bender is a poet, essayist, author says, “Use the journal to write whatever it is you want to write! There is no wrong way to keep a journal; it is for your eyes only or for the eyes of exactly who you want to see it.”
Follow these guidelines as you write to self improvement.
1. Scene: Describe (just the facts) the upsetting event.
2. Thoughts: Write down what you were thinking or imagining.
3. Feelings: Put your feelings into words. For example say, “I am feeling ____________________.”
4. Symptoms: Did you have physical reactions. Such as sweating, muscle tension, stomachache, headache, or other?
TAKE OR MAKE A REALITY CHECK
Review what you have written when you are calmer. This could be the next day. In your writings look for thinking distortions and begin to question those distortions. Ask yourself, “What can I learn from this event? How can I change my way of thinking?”
Use the following tools to help you adjust your thinking so that it is more balanced.
1. Check for irrational beliefs and these are listed below.
2. Examine the evidence.
3. Practice being an observer of your own behaviors. Ask yourself, “If my friend were in this stress, what would her or she say to me?”
IRRATIONAL BELIEFS OR COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS CAUSE EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL PAIN.
James J Messina, PhD, is a licensed psychologist with more than 35 years of experience counseling individuals and families, says these are messages about life we send to ourselves that keep us from growing emotionally.”They are Scripts we have in our head about how we believe life “should” be for us and for others. They are unfounded attitudes, opinions and values we hold to be true and yet these lead us to experiencing a funk.
1. All or Nothing Thinking: You look at things in absolute, black or white categories.
2. Overgeneralizations: You look at a negative event as a never-ending situation of defeat.
3. Mental Vice: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positive in your life.
4. Discounting Yourself: You insist that your achievements or positive qualities “don’t count for much.” You may say, “That success wasn’t really earned by me.”
5. Jumping to conclusions: You use mind reading and insist people are thinking negative about you when there is no definitive evidence. Or you use fortune telling where you arbitrarily predict that things will turn out bad for you based on past experiences.
6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things out of proportion or you inappropriately shrink their importance.
7. Emotional reasoning: You reason by using what you feel. I feel stupid, so I really must be stupid.
8. “Shouldn’ts”: You self criticize or criticize other people using should, musts, oughts, and’ have tos’.
9. Labeling: You identify with your faults. Instead of saying, “ I made a mistake.” You call yourself a jerk, a fool or loser.
10. Personalization and blame: You blame yourself for things you are not entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that your own thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors might be part of the problem.
11. Personalization: You believe a comment wasn’t random but that it was directed at you.
12. Perfectionism: You believe that doing a merely adequate job is the same as being a failure.
13. External Self-Worth: You believe and feel your self-worth or self esteem is dependent upon what others may think of you.
