Happiness Tool : Defeating Faulty Thinking

Happiness Tool : Defeating

Faulty Thinking

One of the best things I ever learned about

being happier is “don’t believe everything you

think.” We all know that our eyes and ears

can deceive us, our hearts don’t always have

the best judgment, and our hormones can lead

us astray. But our thoughts are sacred! We

have to listen them because they’re the

rational part... right?

Not necessarily. Our thoughts are shaped by

our assumptions about the world, and

sometimes those assumptions are just plain

wrong. Our thoughts are also shaped by what

we’ve been in the habit of thinking about in the

past. The pathways in your brain become more

established each time you go down them, and

the ones you don’t use fade away. That’s why

many of us can sing the words to our favorite

songs with almost no effort, but hardly

remember any world history or trigonometry.

Each time you think about something, you’re

reinforcing that path in your brain.

This means that if you spend a lot of time

thinking about the good things in your life, it

gets easier and easier to do so, and if you

spend a lot of time thinking about the bad

things in your life, that gets easier and easier,

too.

Also, your interpretation of events may simply

be inaccurate. This is especially true if you’re in

the habit of thinking everything is awful or

terrible. If you find yourself thinking something

like “I’ll never again be as happy as I was

when [whatever],” dispute that thought. I don’t

mean cook up some happy lie to tell yourself, I

mean get factual. Do you know for sure that

you’ll never be that happy again? How do you

know? Were you really that happy in the first

place? 

Any time you catch yourself feeling down,

examine your thoughts. Ask yourself: what am

I thinking? Is it really true? Do I know for

certain? Is there another way I could look at

this that’s also true but less painful?

We have great power to make ourselves

unhappy with our thoughts. In fact, there are

ten common things that people think, that

make them miserable and just aren’t tru