Cognitive Truths
The following are cognitive restructuring thoughts that can be found in manualized cognitive lifeskills workbooks to help people change faulty thinking and self-defeating behaviors.
If you continue doing the same things that you have been doing; you'll continue getting what you have been getting. To change what you have been getting; you must change what you have been doing.
Life is short and fragile. A healthy person will only live 800 to 900 months. Birth and death aren't the important parts, but what you do in between.
Much of the people we are today was scripted while we were children. Scripting, whether good or bad, continues to be handed down from one generation to another. Some of our relations who are now dead are still having a great influence over personal lives and values.
People have a choice about their own children and others. They can choose diminish the wrong that was done to them, they can be neutral and pass on what happened to them or they can be magnifiers and make things worse. They can stand between the past and the future and rewrite the future for themselves and their children. They may affect their posterity in a negative or positive way. It's all up to them.
If a person is seen acting in a negative or self destructive way, lift his/her lid and look underneath to see a person who is hurting. And, under that will be found usually a worthwhile person.
One can discern right from wrong by what it produces. Doing wrong does not bring true happiness. One may choose to do wrong, but one cannot decide the consequences that those actions will bring.
There are 6 basic emotional needs that people must have in their lives. People who do not get these needs met usually become emotionally damaged or handicapped. However, they have the ability overcome their emotional handicaps by forgiving and forgetting the wrongs done to them by others and continuing on with their life. Life moves forward once the past is released.
Life can be unfair. Often bad things happen to decent people.
Anger is a secondary emotion caused by primary emotions caused by one or more of the four basic sources. Those who anger us control us.
The most important thing in a marriage are the people. When a couple wants to improve their marriage, they must change themselves.
Successful communication requires seeking to understand and then seeking to be understood.
When you decide to do what is wrong, you let others and circumstances control your life.
Doing what is wrong will ensure that your life will not get better. Offenders will have to suffer the consequences of their poor decisions.
Many people with terrible beginnings have terrible endings. Their past will equal their future unless they make the choice to make a permanent change.
Who we are is what we do. What we do is who we are. We can�t hide who we are because ultimately we will be discovered by our bad choices and actions. Behavior is a direct indication of our values and who we are.
Emotionally damaged people are better people than they believe they are. They have bought into lies about themselves and have been programmed into believing the untruth about themselves. If they do not understand this and make an effort to change they'll continue getting what they have been getting.
Cecil B. Demille once said, "We cannot break the laws; we can only break ourselves against them." These laws are love, affirmation, understanding, gratitude and security. If these are missing in our lives, we become damaged.
About the Author
Larry Lloyd is the founder of American Community Corrections Institute (ACCI), which sponsors a blog about anger management and related issues.
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