Learning to think better is an essential part of becoming better. It makes you happier and more productive. It leads to better relationships with other people and a better relationship with yourself.
But learning to think better is tough. We have to overcome automatic negative thoughts, the tendency to self-identify with our thoughts, and the habitual ways we interpret reality. Plus, via human nature, we have inherited a host of cognitive distortions and biases that cause us to see the world through irrational eyes.
For instance, we are all subject to confirmation bias: We filter information in such a way that the facts we pay attention to and believe are those facts that reinforce our current worldview. Normally we think about how this plays out in the realm of political beliefs, but consider this example of how confirmation bias relates to motivation and my beliefs about myself:
If I believe that I’m lazy, my brain will readily find evidence to support that belief (all those times I chose to sleep in or all those days I didn’t do any writing), and my brain will ignore, discount, or forget evidence to the contrary (all those days when I got up early to exercise, meditate, and write). Overcoming this bias is critical if I want to reinforce my chosen identity of being a hard worker.
Or there’s the fundamental attribution error, wherein we attribute other people’s shortcomings to permanent character flaws and our own shortcomings to situational factors. So if someone is rude to you, it’s because they’re a jerk, but if you’re rude to someone, it’s because you didn’t sleep well last night. Obviously, if we want to have better relationships, we need to work on countering this tendency.
(By the way, if you’re thinking you’re not prone to such biases, one of the most common biases is the inaccurate belief that we’re uniquely unbiased. It is the nature of these biases to be difficult to self-diagnose; self-deception is the norm.)
Self-Administered Cognitive Therapy
Cognitive therapy often revolves around addressing our cognitive distortions. Therapists help you identify and correct biases, blind spots, and irrational thoughts. And while I do encourage people who are struggling to see a therapist, I also want to encourage you to learn how to do this for yourself.
Learning to self-administer cognitive therapy is critical because, even if you’re seeing a therapist, you’re only seeing them for an hour or two a week, at most. The rest of the time, you’re on your own.
Humans are prone to many different cognitive distortions and biases.1 (Here’s a collection of them.) But you don’t need to memorize that giant list to start making serious progress. There are three big ones, know as “the 3 M’s,” and there are three remedies, known as “the 3 P’s.” Special thanks to Tal Ben-Shahar for teaching me this concept.2
With these in your toolkit, you’ll be well prepared to correct your unhelpful thoughts and alleviate the bad moods they produce.
The 3 M’s
The 3 M’s are three of the most common types of cognitive distortions. Whenever your emotional reaction to something seems out of proportion to the situation, it’s a good time to check the 3 M’s.
1. Magnifying
Magnifying means zooming in on something so much that you blow it out of proportion. It’s like taking a problem and looking at it through a magnifying glass: The problem is enlarged, and it’s all you can see. So not only does magnifying make bad things seem worse than they really are, it also blinds you to all the things that aren’t so bad.
One version of magnifying is exaggeration: “This is the worst thing that could have happened!” Another version is overgeneralizing: “This always happens!” These sorts of thoughts are signs that you’re irrationally magnifying a problem.
Magnifying often causes us to see a fault in our performance or flaw in our appearance as the most prominent thing other people will notice. If you screw up part of your presentation, that’s all you can think about, even if most of the presentation went well. Or if you have a pimple on your forehead, you mistakenly assume other people are constantly looking at it, even though they’re experiencing you as the whole person you really are.
2. Minimizing
Minimizing is basically the opposite of magnifying, and instead of applying it to bad things, we usually apply it to good things. We mentally shrink down whatever is going well, making it easy to ignore and diminishing its importance.
This can go hand-in-hand with magnifying. We minimize our successes while magnifying our failures. We minimize our strengths while magnifying our weaknesses. We ignore the good while focusing on the bad.
Minimizing can negatively impact our relationships with other people. We might minimize the contributions of others and so feel upset with them for not pulling their weight, or we might minimize our own contributions and feel guilty. You might minimize the praise others give you and so feel unappreciated, or you might minimize the criticisms others give you and feel justified in behaving badly.
3. Making Stuff Up
Making stuff up means letting your imagination get the better of you. We often feel certain that our thoughts are true without any supporting evidence. And we routinely make up stories about ourselves, other people, and the future – stories that are either false or unlikely to be true.
We like to engage in mindreading. We assume we know what other people think and feel, what their beliefs are, and what their intentions are. And since we can’t actually read their minds, we’re just making stuff up.
We also like to predict the future. We create stories about how things are going to turn out, and then we believe those stories, despite the fact that we cannot know the future. Notice how often you imagine the worst-case scenario and then fixate on it as if it were the only possibility.
We often turn our emotions into beliefs, even though the way we feel is often a poor reflection of reality. For example, if you’re scared of failure, you might mistakenly conclude that failure is guaranteed to be disastrous. Most of the time, failure is not nearly as bad as we imagine. Or you might feel jealous, selfish, or angry, and mistakenly conclude that you’re a bad person. In reality, you’re just human.
So those are the 3 M’s of irrational thinking. Let’s turn now to the remedies:
The 3 P’s
These are tools to use whenever you catch yourself under the spell of one of the 3 M’s or whenever you’re stressed, angry, anxious, or otherwise unhappy. (It’s not necessarily bad to feel negative emotions, but if such feelings seem stronger/longer-lasting than is warranted by the situation, apply the 3 P’s.)
1. Perspective
If you’re magnifying or minimizing, try to look at things differently. Zoom in, zoom out, look around. Consider alternative ways of seeing the situation. Ask another person for their perspective.
If you’re overly focused on one thing and failing to see the big picture, you’ve got tunnel vision and you need to zoom out.
Let’s say you’re a middle-class American adult, and you’re having a bad day. Lots of things seem to be going wrong and nothing seems to be going your way. So you’re unhappy. Perspective can mean remembering that you live in the wealthiest society that has ever existed. Most humans, for most of history, lived in abject poverty. You have access to clean drinking water, consistent food, and effective medicine. You have a high degree of political freedom, and you mostly live without fear of violence. By zooming out and looking at the big picture, you see that things are actually going quite well.
Another way to zoom out is to think about the distant future. Sure, the thing that’s upsetting you right now feels like a big deal, but will you care about it in a year? Will you even remember it in five years? Almost everything that upsets in the moment will be completely forgotten in the distant future, and that simple fact means that most of the things that upset us aren’t very important.
Alternatively, you might be overwhelmed by the big picture because you’re thinking about a huge project you have, or because you’re worried about your child’s future, or because you’re thinking about your health or politics or global warming. In such cases, you need to zoom in and focus on the present moment. What action can you take right now that would be a step in the right direction? You can’t solve any of these problems in an instant, but you can apply the principle that everything counts, and be proactive.
2. Find the Positive
Finding the positive means actively looking for good things: things that are going well, things that aren’t going wrong, things to be grateful for. Our brains like to latch onto the bad and ignore the good, so we have to deliberately counteract this tendency by looking for – and savoring – the good.
When a few things go wrong, it often feels like everything is going wrong, find the positive is a tool that can help you notice all the things that aren’t going wrong.
For example, you get stuck in traffic on your way to work, and it’s probably going to make you late. In that situation, it’s really easy to focus the bad, but there is also a lot of good to notice too. You just have to make a point of trying to notice it. You’re in a car – a modern marvel we too-often take for granted. You have instant access to an astonishing variety of music that can help you with the boredom of waiting. You have a job – generally a good thing. And you’re alive – also a reasonable thing to be grateful for. See, a lot of things are going right.
In the long run, you can train your brain to get better at finding the positive through gratitude journaling. In the short run, if you can’t see the bright side, you might need to distract yourself. Rather than ruminating on everything that’s going wrong, watch some standup, read a book, listen to a podcast, watch a movie, go rock climbing, or play a game. Do something fun that absorbs your full attention, and you’ll probably find yourself feeling better.
3. Permission to be Human
The last of the 3 P’s is permission to be human. This means giving yourself and others permission to be imperfect. This means giving yourself and others permission to struggle, to screw up. This means giving yourself and others permission to have irrational thoughts and unpleasant emotions. This means giving yourself and others permission to ask for help.
The Practice of Better Thinking
The tendency to see the world through biased eyes and have irrational thoughts is a human universal. In other words, the problem is not you; the problem is human nature. Recognizing the 3 M’s and applying the 3 P’s is a mechanical solution to this problem.
But noticing the 3 M’s isn’t easy. Heck, just remembering to check for them is tough. And, in the heat of the moment, applying the 3 P’s is tough. However, like any skill, you can get better at using these tools of better thinking with practice.
1 If you want to dig deeper into the therapy side of this, you could read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns
. Or if you’re curious about human irrationality in general, check out Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
(deep, academic look), or Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
(a humorous, lighter read).
2 I learned about the 3 M’s and the 3 P’s from Tal Ben-Shahar’s positive psychology class, which you can watch here. For more Tal Ben-Shahar goodness, check out Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment
and Being Happy: You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Lead a Richer, Happier Life
.