Module seven the mental self. Strictly speaking, it is not possible to control your emotions. However, your thought process is often determined how you assess a situation. And it's that assessment where emotions can come into play. If your assessment is off, you may be angry in a situation that when viewed and another way would not warrant anger at all, for example, consequently, in developing greater self awareness, you must become aware of your mental self. Thinking style.

One aspect of awareness of your mental self is being aware of your thinking style. Psychologists differentiate between two types of thinking styles global and linear. Neither thinking style is inherently better than the other. However, these terms merely describe ways in which people process information. Global thinkers tend to be big picture thinkers, they're more interested in theory or concept behind something than they are in the minute details. Conversely, linear thinkers are more interested in the details than in the big picture.

A linear thinker will tend to prefer Step by step processes for doing things rather than an overarching theory about them. One way to think about the differences between global thinking and linear thinking is to imagine you are given a toy that is in pieces and needs to be assembled. If you are a global thinker, you will be more likely to look at the picture of what the assembled toy looks like and attempt to put it together based on this picture. If you are a linear thinker, you will more likely proceed through the instructions step by step. While neither approach is wrong in group projects, global thinkers tend to work well with and prefer working with other global thinkers, whereas linear thinkers prefer to work with other linear thinkers. learning style.

Another aspect of the mental self is the learning style. The learning style is how you take in and process new information. There are three learning styles and understanding which one you are can help you improve your ability to learn new information by maximizing aspects of your preferred approach. Here are the three learning styles auditory, people who learn best by listening prefer lectures to visual displays or physical activities. If you're an auditory learner one way to improve your learning is to record lectures so that you can play them back for review. Visual for visual learners a picture's worth 1000 words, they prefer PowerPoint presentations to lectures.

They also prefer to read information than to have it told to them. tactile if you're a tactile learner, this means that you learn by doing rather than have someone explained to you how to effectively work that chainsaw you need to do it yourself. When considering both thinking and learning styles, it is important to remember that these are not discrete categories. A person can be primarily a tactile learner, but also exhibit qualities of visual or auditory learning. Likewise, a global thinker can also have linear thinking traits and vice versa. Personality before discussing personality, it is important to understand something none of This stuff actually exists.

There is no such thing as the self thinking styles, learning styles, or for that matter of their personality. Or at least there is no biological basis for any of these things. If you examine a person's brain with an MRI or a PET scan, you would be hard pressed to locate where in the brain the notion of AI comes from. Similarly, a person with a holistic thinking style or a visual learning style won't have any special features in their brains that differentiate them from a linear thinker, or a different learning style. psychology has a term for all of these things, constructs. So if constructs are not real, why do we study them?

A good analogy comes from mathematics. Although triangles in circles do not exist in the actual world. Understanding the properties of these can allow you to do things in the real world that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do. For example, triangulation allows you to use knowledge about the angles of triangles and the relations of these to each other to determine the location of an otherwise unknown point. Similarly, using cycling logical constructs allows us to think of activities such as learning or working together in groups in a certain way that we wouldn't get to without these constructs. For example, it's not as important whether you are officially a tactile learner, then it is that you find learning with your hands and easier or more effective process than other approaches.

Stinking thinking. At this point, we've explored various styles of thinking, learning and personality expression. However, what happens when thinking goes bad. There are numerous examples of distorted thinking that give us an inaccurate assessment of our situation. distorted thinking comes into play typically when we have narrowed our focus on things, whether the emotion is of the high or low arousal variety. If its valence is on the unpleasant side, it typically has distorted patterns of thinking that go with it.

Here are some examples of distorted thinking patterns, magnifying and minimizing. When a person magnifies a situation they are said to be making a mountain out of a molehill. magnification involves exaggerating the extent of a problem or choosing the worst set of outcomes as the most likely outcome. Minimizing is the opposite. When you minimize you blow off something as being less important than it truly is. Thinking in the imperative, when you think and imperatives, you fixate on how you think a person or situation ought to be rather than how it is.

This often takes you into areas of a situation for which you have no control, dichotomous reasoning, this distorted thinking style involves thinking in black and white, either or, or hyperbolic terms. Frequently there is an in between that the thinker is discounting, destructive labeling. If you have ever thought to yourself, this is stupid or my child has a Brad, you are engaged in destructive labeling. While your thought may have some merit, it is a generalized statement that labels a person or situation in an unhelpful way. personalizing, when you personalize something, you assume that whatever is happening is about you if a co worker As frowning it's obviously because of something you did according to this distorted thinking pattern. When you engage in distorted thinking you can frequently frame a situation inaccurately or in ways that perpetuate a conflict rather than de escalating it.

Typically, when our emotions are unpleasant our thoughts race and become shortened into key words or phrases. This allows illogical notions to thrive. Here are some approaches to countering distorted thoughts. rephrase a thought into a complete sentence. For example, instead of thinking loser, you may rephrase that into if I don't pass this test, I'm going to turn out to be a loser. Once you have rephrase the thought into a complete sentence, the nature of the distortion becomes more evident.

In this example magnification. Counter your distorted thought with a question or a statement that clarifies your reasoning. For example, if you notice you are magnifying ask yourself if it is really that bad, or how likely will that worst case scenario come to pass? If you are engaged in destructive labeling, ask yourself for specifics. If you think your boss is stupid, try do it. Identify what specific behavior or situation makes you think this.

Try this rule of thumb for expanding your focus and reframing the problem. The real problem is not blank, a real problem is blank. This allows you the possibility of finding alternative solutions to a problem that might under other circumstances seem unsolvable. Write down your thoughts in a journal. When you have all sorts of negative thoughts tying your brain in knots. keeping a journal is a surefire way to untangle all those nuts.