Different Types of Thoughts
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So we’ve talked about how:
Circumstances happen
You have thoughts about them
Your thoughts (and not the circumstances!!) create feelings
Your feelings create actions
And your actions create results
Let’s talk a little more about different types of thoughts.
In my experience, there are a few different kinds of thoughts:
Reactions — these usually pop up immediately when you encounter a situation or circumstance
“I’m behind and everyone is mad at me.”
“I can’t believe I’m getting paid less than him — that’s so unfair.”
“I hate when my colleague talks over me — it’s so annoying.”
“Should’s” — these are beliefs about how things “just are” or “just have to be”
“Good moms worry about their kids.”
“Watching TV is wasting time.”
“A good partner should anticipate my needs.”
“If-then’s” — these are beliefs about what causes what in the world
“If I stop being hard on myself, I’ll stop working hard and I’ll lose all my success.”
“If I’m honest about how I feel, I’ll drive them away.”
“If I don’t make my kids clean their plates, they’ll become picky eaters.”
“Why’s” — these are beliefs that give you meaning and purpose, whether for day-to-day activities or difficult situations
“Family is the most important thing — I’ll drop everything if they need me.”
“I want these nachos — but I want to feel good in that summer dress even more.”
“I must write this story — I can’t rest until it’s out of my brain and in the world.”
“I am’s” — these are beliefs about what kind of person you are
“I‘ve always struggled with time management.”
“I’m a type-A kind of person.”
“I do my best work when I’m part of a team.”
Let’s go back to my favorite anxiety-inducing thought — “I’m behind and everyone is mad at me.” That’s a reaction thought (it popped up every time I looked at my to do list), and I could not figure out why I couldn’t change it.
I knew that it was false. My rational brain knew that no one was mad at me. And it knew that I literally was not behind, according to my own timeline that I had set. But every time I tried to explain that to myself in the moment, the feeling would persist. It was like I knew it, but I didn’t believe it. Why?
The reason became clear to me when I realized that there are “thought mama’s” and “thought babies.”
Most reaction thoughts are “thought babies.” They flare up instantaneously in response to a circumstance, and you have thousands of them every day.
Underneath all of your thousands of thought babies, there are a much smaller number of “thought mama’s” — core underlying “should’s”, “if-then’s”, “why’s” and “I am’s” that drive your in-the-moment reactions.
You can firefight thought-babies all day long (and there’s nothing wrong with doing so). But if you can find and change a thought-mama, the bang for the buck for your effort can be exponentially higher.
So I dug into “I’m behind and everyone is mad at me” and tried to understand where that thought was coming from. I uncovered a few thought-mama’s behind it:
Should — “If you get a task, it needs to be done today or tomorrow. Latest, by end of week.”
Should — “You need an agenda, a hypothesis, and probably a deck for most meetings.”
Why — “My goal is to make everyone happy with me.”
All laddering up to an identity — “I do it all, I do it perfectly, and I make everyone happy.”
Once I uncovered these beliefs, my thought-baby made a ton of sense.
The two “should’s” explained why I felt behind all the time even though I wasn’t. I wasn’t crazy. I just had unexamined expectations about how quickly I should be working and how much work needed to be done. And once I realized it, I immediately saw that those expectations were both unrealistic and unnecessary.
The “why” explained why I was so sensitive to others’ expectations. I thought my job was to keep everyone happy (when really, it was to deliver results and advance the agenda I thought made the most sense, usually in the face of competing agendas).
Uncovering the thought-mama’s didn’t make the thought-babies magically go away. But when I understood what my real problem was, I could start to create a new constellation of beliefs that made sense for my job. Things like:
Should — Prioritizing and focusing is the most important thing I do. Anything that’s not on the priority list gets booted to next week or next month (or never).
Should — I need to be as efficient as possible. Downgrade everything by 1–2 levels of effort. Slacks instead of emails. Emails instead of decks. Open discussions instead of read-outs.
Why — I’m here to look around, decide what I think needs to happen, and make it happen.
And these started naturally laddering up into an identity of someone who gets a lot of inputs and demands but is a commander rather than an order-taker and decides what to do, how to do it, and why for herself.
Writing up a new set of beliefs one time is just the pre-work. Reinforcing those beliefs, in the moment, every time the old thought-baby comes in is the real work.
Because of course the old thought will keep coming in — habits aren’t broken that easily. But talking back to it by addressing the underlying thought-mama’s, and offering up an entirely new way of operating was a thousand times more effective than just saying “no you’re NOT behind” again and again and again.