Get Out of Your Own Way

September 14, 2008
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Do you ever catch yourself behaving in a way you don’t quite understand? The other day I caught myself surfing the internet, when I had really sat down at my computer to complete a specific task. What happened?

Sometimes patterns of behaviour reside just below our consciousness. To understand them, we need to stop and analyse why we are doing or not doing something. Next time it happens to you, try this simple exercise to see if you can tie your behaviour (ie surfing the net instead of working toward a deadline) back to a dysfunctional belief.

Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis introduced the concept of dysfunctional beliefs and established a connection between thoughts and feelings. Ellis in particular used a model of ABC where:

‘A is the actual event, ‘B is the belief about the event, and C is the consequence : the emotion or behaviour that results.

The easiest application for me to remember (thanks to the scholar Peltier) is to imagine your behaviour in terms of a simple Kantian poem:

I see tiger (event)

I think I am in danger (belief)

I feel fear (emotional consequence)

I run (behavioural consequence)

The belief that I am in danger from the tiger causes me to run, and is probably a useful response. But what if I have neglected to notice that the tiger is actually behind bars? Then, my belief that I am in danger is no longer accurate and my fear and running responses are no longer useful.

When you catch yourself in a behaviour that you don’t quite understand, try tracing it back using the 4 steps of the tiger poem. For example, here is what I learned about my own behaviour:

The task on my todo list is something I have never done before

I think I don’t know what I am doing

I feel fear of failure

I surf the net to avoid doing it

Once I identified my dysfunctional belief (ie I don’t know what I am doing), I was able to practise a more useful pattern:

I see the unfamiliar task

I think about other experiences that will be helpful to me

I feel excited to try

I do my task and learn something new

Next time this happens to you, see if you can trace your behaviour to an unhelpful pattern of thinking and then replace it with something more useful. It’s an easy trick for getting out of your own way!

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