A Look in the Mirror
Take a look in the mirror because the most common reasons relationships go wrong are centered in these self defeating habits.
- Jumping to conclusions: making assumptions about a person or situation, with little or no evidence to back it up.
- Personalizing: assuming blame for problems or situations for which you are not primarily responsible.
- Externalizing: erroneously blaming others for situations for which they are not primarily responsible.
- Mind-reading: assuming you know what others are thinking without checking with them and/or, expecting others to know what you are thinking without telling them.
- Emotional reasoning: making false conclusions about an experience based on how you feel rather than on the facts.
- Overgeneralizing: making sweeping judgments about someone or something based on only one or two experiences.
- Magnifying/minimizing: overemphasizing certain aspects of a situation and minimizing the importance of other aspects.
- Catastrophizing: assuming something bad is going to happen, or exaggerating how bad a situation will be.
Ten Rules for Relationships — author unknown
- Keep your tongue under control and watch your body language.
- Make few promises but keep them all.
- Learn to praise and criticize constructively.
- Be cheerful. Do not let worries, pains and disappointments wipe off your smile.
- Be present with an open mind. Discuss, do not argue.
- Let your merits speak for themselves and, do not talk about others’ demerits unless necessary.
- Pay no attention to ill-natured remarks made about you.
- Treat everybody with respect and never laugh at the expense of others.
- Do not be anxious about getting what is due to you. Keep a good disposition, make an effort and reward will come to you.
- Treat others, the way you want others to treat you.
Jan 6th, 2008 at 12:05 am
When something or someone brings themselves to our attention, it is indeed mirror time! It’s not always easy to look at the reasons you posted, but they are helpful and true. I thank you for posting this.
Jan 6th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Just recently I have witnessed myself caught up in some of these self defeating habits that create unnecessary drama and unhappiness in my life. I saw my own bad habits clearly mirrored back to me in the behavior of another person.
Although It’s truly hard to rise above the habitual patterns of externalizing or alternatively, placing all responsibility for everything that goes badly on my “self” - it can be done. Breaking these habits is a daily struggle that’s worth the effort because it sets me free to be authentically the best “me” that I can be. So every morning before I start communicating I read these 10 rules aloud and then I re-commit.