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can't understand the person who wants to quietly stay at home. Many
of these differences can cause serious conflicts if one person or both
start to assume the other person has a problem and is weird, a nerd or
boor, a social neurotic, etc. Lastly, there is the very inhibiting belief
that you can't change (see chapter 1) and that others won't change.
These beliefs exist because they meet certain needs, like a need to be
right or accepted, or reflect wishful thinking, like wanting to be very
happy. Instead, they may cause unhappiness.
n. Blocks to seeing solutions --a very clever book by James L.
Adams (1974) describing many blocks to perceiving and solving a
problem. These may be perceptual blocks, such as stereotyping and
inflexibility, or emotional blocks, such as a fear of taking a risk and a
restricted fantasy, or cultural blocks, such as thinking intuition and
fantasy are a waste of time, or intellectual blocks, such as lacking
information, trying to solve the problem with math when words or
visualization would work better, and poor problem-solving skills.
Adams also suggests ways of overcoming the blocks and cites many
other good books.
It is so easy and there are so many ways to be wrong, but it is so hard and there are so
few ways to be right.
By reading this bewildering collection of unreasonableness, it is
hoped you will detect some of your own favorite errors. Unfortunately,
I was probably able to gather only a small sample of our brain's
amazing productivity of nonsense (for more see Gilovich, 1991, and
Freeman & DeWolf, 1992, and for overcoming it, see Gula, 1979).
Next, you need to diagnose your unique cognitive slippage.
STEP TWO: Recognize the cognitive factors that affect your
coping with problems and managing your emotions. Discover
your self-help Achilles' heel.
It is obvious that some mental errors are self-inflating, others are
self-defending, some are "leftovers" from emotional experiences, and
some may be due to the quirkiness of our cognitive processes. What
are the more common obstacles to living wisely and effectively?
Seymour Epstein (1993) tried to answer that by asking his students to
record their most pleasant and most unpleasant emotion each day for
a month. They also recorded their automatic thoughts associated with
these emotions. From this data and further research, he identified six
characteristics of "constructive thinking," i.e. the most successful
players in the game of life. He found two constructive ways of thinking
and four destructive ways. Here are sample items:
