Recognizing my irrational beliefs
Last Friday I received many of God’s grace in form of advice from my counsellor and my best friend in office.
With my counselor, I continue to recognize my irrational beliefs of either I cannot change or I can change immediately. Things are often not black and white and there are spectrum between them. From the objective standard, maybe my improvement is still not good enough as I have many overdue items. At the same time, from a middle perspective, we can see a good enough progress as I have improved. So we discussed in more detailed on what has helped me progress and how to use them more often.
The question to consider is how to implement both the newly learned skills and the existing skills for the upcoming tasks. We talked about identifying the helpful and unhelpful parts of each of my seemingly negative self-talk. Apparently in each of negative self-talk, we can still extract the helpful part of the intention. For example, changing immediately has the component of maintaining the desire to fully recover. The irrational belief is then to force it now and using certain method while it may take much longer time and various methods addressing the irrational belief from different angle. In addition, implementing existing skill of asking what is good enough will be essential. The irrational belief is that to have everything perfect or that the resource is unlimited. In actual, we are limited by many things and addressing good enough maybe the best we can do.
In office, my best friend helped me find out my irrational belief. I often think that if I still owe a lot of things, then I cannot expect other people to deliver their job. My best friend pointed out that it is an arrogant behavior. Because it means that if someday I can do my job well, it justifies me to expect other to deliver their job. In actual, they are not related. Even when I do many wrong things, wrong is still wrong and so we need to remind people to do what is right. So think less of myself, think what someone need to deliver and ask honestly. Yes, we do not force, but we need to ask what is required from them. Similarly, even if I do my job well, it is not related on whether we can be angry if someone is not doing our job. The response needs to be the same regardless of our behavior. And remember, our job is to say what is right, not to change them for I can only change myself.
Another of my irrational belief is to relate between my faith and my state of depression. I always correlate them while it is actually possible that they are not related. Because it is possible to be depressed and yet to have faith in God who always cares for us. Similarly, it does not mean that when I feel less depressed, my faith becomes stronger. It may also be the case where I start to be dependent on my own strengths, experiences, and skills that my faith diminishes.
This morning reminds me not to draw conclusion prematurely. I was so happy when I could catch the bus immediately after coming out of home as the next one, 8 mins later, would mean I will miss the last shuttle bus to office. Apparently that brings a kind of disaster. I missed two last shuttle buses because they are full due to higher traffic this morning, then missed two public buses and waited another 12 mins from the last bus that I missed. So it is like if I miss the bus from home, I may reach office at 9.15 am while I reached office at 9.50 am today. But similarly, I may conclude that today would be a bad day as I reached office late. Apparently by God’s grace, I could concentrate better and today in general it is a good day. Well, it does not mean that this week will be a good week. The more important thing is to be thankful of each of God’s grace that I encounter and continue to be dependent on God’s future grace.
Last Friday I received many of God’s grace in form of advice from my counsellor and my best friend in office.
With my counselor, I continue to recognize my irrational beliefs of either I cannot change or I can change immediately. Things are often not black and white and there are spectrum between them. From the objective standard, maybe my improvement is still not good enough as I have many overdue items. At the same time, from a middle perspective, we can see a good enough progress as I have improved. So we discussed in more detailed on what has helped me progress and how to use them more often.
The question to consider is how to implement both the newly learned skills and the existing skills for the upcoming tasks. We talked about identifying the helpful and unhelpful parts of each of my seemingly negative self-talk. Apparently in each of negative self-talk, we can still extract the helpful part of the intention. For example, changing immediately has the component of maintaining the desire to fully recover. The irrational belief is then to force it now and using certain method while it may take much longer time and various methods addressing the irrational belief from different angle. In addition, implementing existing skill of asking what is good enough will be essential. The irrational belief is that to have everything perfect or that the resource is unlimited. In actual, we are limited by many things and addressing good enough maybe the best we can do.
In office, my best friend helped me find out my irrational belief. I often think that if I still owe a lot of things, then I cannot expect other people to deliver their job. My best friend pointed out that it is an arrogant behavior. Because it means that if someday I can do my job well, it justifies me to expect other to deliver their job. In actual, they are not related. Even when I do many wrong things, wrong is still wrong and so we need to remind people to do what is right. So think less of myself, think what someone need to deliver and ask honestly. Yes, we do not force, but we need to ask what is required from them. Similarly, even if I do my job well, it is not related on whether we can be angry if someone is not doing our job. The response needs to be the same regardless of our behavior. And remember, our job is to say what is right, not to change them for I can only change myself.
Another of my irrational belief is to relate between my faith and my state of depression. I always correlate them while it is actually possible that they are not related. Because it is possible to be depressed and yet to have faith in God who always cares for us. Similarly, it does not mean that when I feel less depressed, my faith becomes stronger. It may also be the case where I start to be dependent on my own strengths, experiences, and skills that my faith diminishes.
This morning reminds me not to draw conclusion prematurely. I was so happy when I could catch the bus immediately after coming out of home as the next one, 8 mins later, would mean I will miss the last shuttle bus to office. Apparently that brings a kind of disaster. I missed two last shuttle buses because they are full due to higher traffic this morning, then missed two public buses and waited another 12 mins from the last bus that I missed. So it is like if I miss the bus from home, I may reach office at 9.15 am while I reached office at 9.50 am today. But similarly, I may conclude that today would be a bad day as I reached office late. Apparently by God’s grace, I could concentrate better and today in general it is a good day. Well, it does not mean that this week will be a good week. The more important thing is to be thankful of each of God’s grace that I encounter and continue to be dependent on God’s future grace.
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