Lesson 3 – Tools: CBT

 

Transcript:

In the last few lessons, you have been building this new awareness of self, and I want to stress the importance of you not losing that awareness of self. Mindfulness is a great way to allow that self-awareness to continue. Continue to practice mindfulness even if you do it 1 time a week, but just ensure to regularly check in with yourself. 

There are going to be things that continue to happen, people will continue to act in ways that you don’t understand but if you can understand what you need to do, it will make your reaction to those things much better, and you will be able to use the tools not from a reactive place where you are trying to prove to someone, but rather from a place where you’re simply choosing the best tool to use for that situation. 

This ongoing process will make sure you don’t forget what you’ve already learned and that you’re going to keep learning. You’re gonna have new understandings and new beliefs that weren’t there before.

By now you already know your beliefs. Now we have to get to the bottom of the thoughts and actions your beliefs have been creating. 

What you believe influences how you think and how you think influences how you feel and how you feel influences how you behave.

How you react to things that happen to you depends on your thoughts and beliefs about what happened to you and how you look at the world. 

For example, if you’re in a crowd and someone stepped on your toes, you’re gonna react based on the beliefs and thoughts that you have. If you believe that people are selfish and rude and are purposely doing things to harm you, then you may look at it as, the person knew your foot was there and stepped on you out of spite. 

On the other hand, if you believe that accidents and mistakes happen sometimes, you might look at it as the place was crowded, the person stepped on your foot by accident and they didn’t even notice that they did that.

In the Cognitive Behavior Therapy worksheet in this section, you will be breaking down the thoughts you have that are creating situations that you interpret as stress, depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, and so forth. I need you to really dig deep and take the time to work on this worksheet.