Happy Thinking is about overcoming negative thoughts. The first step is to be able to recognise such thoughts when it happens in oneself. For this purpose, on this page, I will briefly describe common negative thoughts that people have. You may not have all these negative thoughts, and/or you may have ones that are not mentioned here. This description is just to give you a rough idea of the common ones.
Magnifying the negative
This is when the mind focuses on negative events in one’s life while ignoring positive ones. For example, imagine that a person is told one day that they will get a pay rise, but unfortunately, on that day, they also lose their expensive phone. By magnifying the negative, the person will fixate on the loss of their mobile phone while overlooking the positive event of a salary increase.
This type of negative thought, where one focuses on the negative while minimising the positive, can make one feel that things are worse than they actually are, as positive events that could counteract the negativity are overlooked. (e.g. “Yes, it’s upsetting that I lost my expensive mobile phone, but on the brighter side, I got a nice salary raise at work”.)
“All or Nothing” thinking
With this way of thinking, one sees everything as either being extremely positive or extremely negative, rather than in a more realistic way, between the two extremes.
For example, imagine that one has a good, loyal friend of many years, who once forgets to wish one on one’s birthday.
With all-or-nothing thinking, the person will think this friend is 100 per cent bad for forgetting the birthday. Whereas in reality, it was only one “bad” thing among the many more “good” things the friend has done over the years. All-or-nothing thinking can make one judge people unfairly.
Imagining only the worst outcomes (catastrophic thoughts)
Let me now explain a common negative thought, which psychologists call “catastrophic thought.”
In daily life, one’s mind constantly imagines the future. When I refer to “future”, I do not only mean years ahead. It could well be much shorter times in the future, such as hours and days. Imagining what may happen in the future is vital for survival. It helps individuals make informed decisions in the present that will lead to a better future.
Unfortunately, this imagination system can sometimes go wrong and become negative. Some people imagine only the worst possible outcomes, i.e., that everything in the future will be a “disaster” or “catastrophe.” They do not think of any future scenarios that might be less bad. These are what psychologists call “catastrophic thoughts”.
For example, imagine that one’s boss sends a message, with no further explanations, that he wants one to meet him in the office the next day. One may then have catastrophic thoughts that the boss wants the meeting to say that one is fired from the company. Whereas in reality, the boss only wants to discuss a project.
With catastrophic thinking, the person may add further layers of imaginary “worst outcome” scenarios. For example, one may add further scenarios to the original imagined scenario of losing one’s job, such as, “With the loss of my job, I would become extremely depressed, and because of this, my partner may leave me. I will not be able to afford the rent and end up being homeless, sleeping on the street”.
All this causes unnecessary stress, since everything is based on imagination rather than facts.
Over generalisation
Where one negative event is observed or occurs, and the person assumes the same thing will happen repeatedly. For example, if one fails an exam ones assumes that one will fail all future exams.
Mind reading
Here, the person wrongly assumes that another person thinks something negative of the person.
For example, a friend sees one and does not smile. One assumes the friend is angry when in reality, the friend just has a severe headache.
Personalisation
One wrongly assumes one is to blame for something when, in reality, one had nothing to do with it.
For example, a doctor gives the correct diabetic medication to a patient, yet the patient has high blood sugar (because of poor dietary habits). Even though it has nothing to do with the doctor’s competence, she feels it’s her fault.
Negative comparisons
Thinking that others are better than you, when in fact they may not be.
Not accepting the positive
When someone praises oneself, one tries to find reasons why the praise is undeserved. For example, someone says one’s presentation was excellent, yet one dismisses it, thinking that “they are saying it only to make me feel good”.
These are a sample of common negative thoughts. Some of them may overlap a bit. When you go about your day, try to recognise such thoughts in yourself and others around you.