Have you ever noticed that perception is more important than reality?
Think about it: two people lose their jobs. One gets depressed and shuts down while one shrugs it off and finds a better job. What is the difference? Their perception of what the event means to them, what it means about them, and about the world.
It is the interpretation of events in life that are crucial, not the events themselves. All of us are prone to making mental errors or mistakes when confronted with circumstances that are beyond our control. We have a natural habit of going to the worst case scenario and then we begin “awfulizing” the situation, or going to the worst possible scenario.
Psychologist Albert Ellis coined the term awfulizing to refer to a distortion of thinking. When we awfulize an event or situation, it is thought of in overly negative terms. It’s a negative exaggeration where, for example, a minor setback is seen as a major catastrophe or a feared event is seen as so awful it seems impossible to endure.
Awfulizing can set into motion a chain of self-fulfilling thoughts, feelings and actions; the mere expectation that things will get worse will cause them to get worse.
In this week’s episode; “Do You Limit Yourself by Awfulizing by Bill and Kris Barney” we cover this in great detail.
One of the best examples of this is the old folktale of Chicken Little. It is a classic example of Awfulizing! When a nut falls on his head, Chicken Little takes that singular event out of context and blows it out of proportion. He begins to think and say that the sky is falling and even then begins to believe it. Because he
keeps obsessing about it, he turns the whole kingdom into an uproar. It is easy to look of the story of Chicken Little and think, “silly bird!” That is how it is for us. It is quite obvious when we see another person obsessing about a small thing until it becomes a catastrophic event in their mind. But when it comes to ourselves, we are so used to doing it that we start to not recognize that we are doing it very often and creating the negative in our lives.
I invite you to do a little self-analysis and notice if you do this too. Do you notice yourself saying phrases such as;
- “I’m always doing this wrong.”
- “He’s never going to stop!”
- “Why does it always have to be this way?”
- “There’s never enough money.”
- “I can look at a doughnut and gain weight.”
- “Nobody ever listens to me.”
- “I will never have a good marriage, a new car, a thin body, a happy life…..”
You may also catch yourself:
- Thinking that you can’t tolerate an unpleasant emotion or that you will go crazy or die if you experience one.
- Thinking that a problem is more severe than it is; exaggerating how bad something is.
- Thinking that bad things will certainly happen.
- Overlooking or ignoring the positive, advantages, benefits, or good points when you evaluate something (i.e. considering only the negatives, disadvantages, costs, detriments, or bad points.)
Those are just some examples of awfulizing. It is what happens when we turn every negative into an absolute. Everything is always at its worst. That’s awfulizing in a nutshell.
Do you find yourself awfulizing?
The biggest way to change this behavior is to become aware that you are doing it! You cannot change something that you are not acutely aware you are doing. Here are four suggestions to change this destructive behavior:
- Each time you hear yourself “awfulizing,” write it down. Write down the exact phrasing you used.
- Be conscious of your thoughts and words. Stop them in the moment before you make a mountain out of a molehill.
- Set a goal to go for one hour without having a negative thought. Then try to do it for a whole day or a week. As you work on this goal, you will become acutely aware of the positive or negative charge of your thoughts.
- Play the ‘What’s the worst possible thing that could happen?’ game.
How do you play the ‘What’s the worst possible thing that could happen’ game? It Is similar to the ‘Why is the sky blue?’ game. When you find yourself Awfulizing, just stop and ask yourself “What is the worst possible thing that could happen?” Then continue repeating that line of questioning until you get to the ultimate conclusion. Once you get to the ultimate conclusion, you will realize that it is ridiculous and therefore, not such a big deal after all.
If Chicken Little had sat down and calmly thought about his situation, he would have realized his ultimate conclusion that the sky is falling was absurd. Had he spent some time contemplating his situation and looking at the facts from a rational point of view, he might have discovered that having an acorn fall on your head is not such a big deal after all. Just think, we could be reading in our history books that it was Chicken Little who discovered the law of gravity instead of Isaac Newton!
Here is a simple truth; we create what we think about. We all set goals every single day. We may not be aware of it but every time we have a thought or verbalize a perception or belief, we are setting goals. Think of goal setting like driving a car. When we think or speak it is like turning the steering wheel toguide your car toward a specific point. There is a direct correlation between the strength of the emotions we have behind
our thoughts and words, and how fast it becomes a reality in our lives. It’s called the Law of Attraction! Going back to the analogy of goal setting and driving a car, the intensity of your emotions and passion is like pressing down on the gas pedal in your car. The more you obsess, the faster you go. The more you get worked up in it, the more passion you have about it. This creates the fuel behind the gas pedal and you begin to quickly get what you are obsessing about. Why not use this to our advantage and go after the positive things that we want? We can consciously create our own reality!
The reason many people don’t achieve their goals is they write them down and take action steps towards getting their goals without creating an intense passion and strong emotions within themselves for achieving the goal.
When we start Awfulizing or focusing on the negative we are setting a goal to have that become a reality in our life whether we think we want it or not.
Let’s review; what we think and talk about is like steering the car. The intensity of our emotions while thinking about it would be in direct proportion to the amount of pressure applied to the gas pedal. Whenever we get caught up in negative thinking it is always with a lot of passion and strong emotions. It’s like driving around with your foot mashed on the gas and aiming your car at things you really don’t want to hit! It doesn’t make sense when we think about it like that, but that is exactly what we’re doing when we get caught in the trap of Awfulizing!
Join us in our video episode, “Do You Limit Yourself by Awfulizing by Bill and Kris Barney”. Make sure you watch the video in its entirety. Bill gets pretty funny as he gets very passionate about this whole topic! Join us and have some fun with this video.