Focus On Outcomes Quotes

To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome, not the obstacles.

Our way of thinking creates good or bad outcomes.

With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become.

In fact, the more each person can remove his or her ego from the discussion and focus on the subject matter, the more fruitful the conversation will be for all involved.

To create reality, focus beyond the outcome, as if it has already happened.

When we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we create a fictitious ceiling. A restriction over the expectations that we have over our own performance in that moment. We get tense. We focus on the outcome instead of the activity and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result or it's too good to be true. But it doesn't and it isn't. And it's not our right to believe it does or is. Don't create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great idea, the love of our life, euphoric bliss... Who are we to think we don't deserve these fortunes when they're in our grasp? Who are we to think we haven't earned them? If we stay and process within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we're not thinking of the finish line. We're not looking at the clock. We’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing. We are performing in real time where the approach is the destination.

Focusing is the great secret of power. If you want to use your full amount of focus, you must close down all other thought and direct your power of generating mental steam toward one outcome.

Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes.

Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray. That, to use a loaded term, is enlightened self-interest.

We tend to place a lot of emphasis on our circumstances, assuming that what happens to us (or fails to happen) determines how we feel. From this perspective, the small-scale details of how you spend your day aren’t that important, because what matters are the large-scale outcomes, such as whether or not you get a promotion or move to that nicer apartment. According to Gallagher, decades of research contradict this understanding. Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to.

It is through strength of character, not luck, do we form the predictable path of our future.

Some humans are so consumed with trying to control the outcomes of their own lives that they don’t have any idea the part they play in the outcome of someone else’s.

Dharma is more about empathy than ethics, about intent rather than outcome. I follow dharma when I am concerned about your material, emotional or intellectual hunger. I follow adharma when I focus on my hunger at the cost of yours.

If you can dream it, you can achieve it. The secret to recapturing dreams is to enjoy the pursuit of the dream, rather than to focus on the outcome.

When we live completely from the mind over a period of time, we lose touch with the infinite self, and then we begin to feel lost. This happens when we'are in doing mode all the time, rather than being . The latter means letting ourselves be who and what we are without judgment. Being doesn't mean that we don't do anything. It's just that our actions stem from following our emotions and feelings while staying present in the moment. Doing, on the other hand, is future focused, with the mind creating a series of tasks that take us from here to there in order to achieve a particular outcome, regardless of our current emotional state.

Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair. Yet they are the outcome of life in a culture where things matter more than people. Materialism creates a world of narcissism in which the focus of life is solely on acquisition and consumption. A culture of narcissism is not a place where love can flourish. The emergence of "me" culture is a direct response to our nation's failure tot truly actualize the vision of democracy. While emotional needs are difficult, and often impossible to satisfy, material desires are easier to fulfill.

When, instead, your goal is to focus on the process and stay in the present, then there are no mistakes and no judging. You are just learning and doing. You are executing the activity, observing the outcome, and adjusting yourself and your practice energy to produce the desired result. There are no bad emotions, because you are not judging anything.

If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile. The thing you sell is simply a road to achieve those emotions, and we let everyone down when we focus on the tactics, not the outcomes. Who’s it for and what’s it for are the two questions that guide all of our decisions.

The Four Keys of Great Managers: 1. "When selecting someone, they select for talent ... not simply experience, intelligence or determination." 2. "When setting expectations, they define the right outcomes ... not the right steps." 3. "When motivating someone, they focus on strengths ... not on weaknesses." 4. "When developing someone, they help him find the right fit ... not simply the next rung on the ladder.

Do not focus your thoughts among the confused wheels of secondary causes, as -'O if this had been, this had not followed!' Look up to the master motion of the first wheel. In building, we see hewn stones and timbers under hammers and axes, yet the house in this beauty we do not see at the present, but it is in the mind of this builder. We also see unbroken clods, furrows, and stones, but we do not see the summer lilies, roses, and the beauty of a garden. Even so we do not presently see the outcome of God's decrees with his blessed purpose. It is hard to believe when his purpose is hidden and under the ground. Providence has a thousand keys to deliver his own even when all hope is gone. Let us be faithful and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for him, and lay Christ's part on himself and leave it there; duties are ours, events are the Lord's.

Ultimately, incentive structures and systems drive ESG investing, which can be disingenuous. Structurally, public market investors continue to focus on the incentives which maximize their financial returns, even while taking certain ESG inputs into account in their portfolio allocations. Only by regulating and incentivizing the actual outcomes might investors alter their investment strategies towards new rewards based on ESG outputs.

Traditional competition forces us to take on an attitude of winning. A worthy rival inspires us to take an attitude of improvement. The former focuses our attention on the outcome, the latter focuses our attention on process.

ARCHITECTS SHOULD FOCUS ON ENGINEERS AND OUTCOMES, NOT TOOLS OR TECHNOLOGIES

What is the one thing that gets you up every morning? The one thing that keeps you going every day, every month, every year? Let me get you started. My one thing is this, ‘I'm one day closer...’ One day closer to a goal, an outcome, or the results I'm after in my life. This is my way of remembering the importance of focusing on the life I desire and living a life of gratitude! So, what’s your one thing…?

You can’t take the other person out of you. You can’t take yourself out of others. The suffering still continues. So the question is not whether you will stay together or not; the question is whether you can focus on trying to understand each other using compassionate speech and deep listening, no matter what the outcome.

In our current culture, we place a lot of emphasis on job description. Our obsession with the advice to “follow your passion” (the subject of my last book), for example, is motivated by the (flawed) idea that what matters most for your career satisfaction is the specifics of the job you choose. In this way of thinking, there are some rarified jobs that can be a source of satisfaction—perhaps working in a nonprofit or starting a software company—while all others are soulless and bland. The philosophy of Dreyfus and Kelly frees us from such traps. The craftsmen they cite don’t have rarified jobs. Throughout most of human history, to be a blacksmith or a wheelwright wasn’t glamorous. But this doesn’t matter, as the specifics of the work are irrelevant. The meaning uncovered by such efforts is due to the skill and appreciation inherent in craftsmanship—not the outcomes of their work.

Prepare for every negotiation... 1) Focus on Outcomes. What is it that you want to walk away with? Being as specific as possible also increases the likelihood of negotiation success. 2) Support your desired outcome with data that points to its reasonableness. 3) Writing down your key points in advance - and practicing them - enables you to stay focused on what's most important and avoid going off on tangents. 4) Err on the side of asking for more, rather than less [of what you really want]. 5) Be willing to walk away.

It makes perfect sense when you think about it. If you’re moving toward a specific, desired goal, your attention and efforts are focused on that single outcome. But if you’re moving away from a threat, it hardly matters where you end up, as long as it’s somewhere safe from the threat.

Traditional competition forces us to take on an attitude of winning. A Worthy Rival inspires us to take on an attitude of improvement. The former focuses our attention on the outcome, the latter focuses our attention on process. That simple shift in perspective immediately changes how we see our own businesses. It is the focus on process and constant improvement that helps reveal new skills and boosts resilience. An excessive focus on beating our competition not only gets exhausting over time, it can actually stifle innovation.

When our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism. The role happiness plays should be obvious—the more you pick up on the positive around you, the better you’ll feel—and we’ve already seen the advantages to performance that brings. The second mechanism at work here is gratitude, because the more opportunities for positivity we see, the more grateful we become. Psychologist Robert Emmons, who has spent nearly his entire career studying gratitude, has found that few things in life are as integral to our well-being.11 Countless other studies have shown that consistently grateful people are more energetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving, and less likely to be depressed, anxious, or lonely. And it’s not that people are only grateful because they are happier, either; gratitude has proven to be a significant cause of positive outcomes. When researchers pick random volunteers and train them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks, they become happier and more optimistic, feel more socially connected, enjoy better quality sleep, and even experience fewer headaches than control groups.

Turning something over to the Holy Spirit is a leap of faith that lets go of attempting to control outcomes. The core of alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, smoking and a host of things the world calls addictions is control. The little willingness the Holy Spirit asks is the key to letting go of the attempt to manage the body and the world, which is the insane attempt to maintain a self-concept image that God did not create. An idea to contemplate from the Course is this: "Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." The requirement is to change your thinking, not to focus on behavior and form. Behavior flows from thought, and transformation of the mind is synonymous with changing thought patterns from ego-based to Spirit-based.

Economic theory is devoted to the study of equilibrium positions. The concept of equilibrium is very useful. It allows us to focus on the final outcome rather than the process that leads up to it. But the concept is also very deceptive. It has the aura of something empirical: since the adjustment process is supposed to lead to an equilibrium, an equilibrium position seems somehow implicit in our observations. That is not true. Equilibrium itself has rarely been observed in real life — market prices have a notorious habit of fluctuating.

If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray.

There’s no way to get from the point in Hemn space where we are now, to one that includes pink nerve-gas-farting dragons, following any plausible action principle. Which is really just a technical term for there being a coherent story joining one moment to the next. If you simply throw action principles out the window, you’re granting the world the freedom to wander anywhere in Hemn space, to any outcome, without constraint. It becomes pretty meaningless. The mind—even the sline mind—knows that there is an action principle that governs how the world evolves from one moment to the next—that restricts our world’s path to points that tell an internally consistent story. So it focuses its worrying on outcomes that are more plausible, such as you leaving.

HUMILITY The universe is eternal, and earth is lasting. The reason they are eternal and lasting is that they do not exist for themselves. That is why they endure. The wise humble themselves— and because of their humility, they are worthy of praise. They put others first, and so become great. They are not focused on outcomes or achievements; therefore they always succeed.

HABITS MANIFESTO What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while. Make it easy to do right and hard to go wrong. Focus on actions, not outcomes. By giving something up, we may gain. Things often get harder before they get easier. When we give more to ourselves, we can ask more from ourselves. We’re not very different from other people, but those differences are very important. It’s easier to change our surroundings than ourselves. We can’t make people change, but when we change, others may change. We should make sure the things we do to feel better don’t make us feel worse. We manage what we monitor. Once we’re ready to begin, begin now.

Activities such as chanting, bowing, and sitting in zazen are not at all wasted, even when done merely formally, for even this superficial encounter with the Dharma will have some wholesome outcome at a later time. However, it must be said in the most unambiguous terms that this is not real Zen. To follow the Dharma involves a complete reorientation of one's life in such a way that one's activities are manifestations of, and are filled with, a deeper meaning. If it were not otherwise, and merely sitting in zazen were enough, every frog in the pond would be enlightened, as one Zen master said. Dōgen Zenji himself said that one must practice Zen with the attitude of a person trying to extinguish a fire in his hair. That is, Zen must be practiced with an attitude of single-minded urgency.

Forcing your employees to follow required steps only prevents customer dissatisfaction. If your goal is truly to satisfy, to create advocates, then the step-by-step approach alone cannot get you there. Instead, you must select employees who have the talent to listen and to teach, and then you must focus them toward simple emotional outcomes like partnership and advice. ... Identify a person's strenths. Define outcomes that play to those strengths. Find a way to count, rate or rank those outcomes. And then let the person run.

optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is so vital. Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion. Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. This isn’t about saying things are good when they’re not, and it’s not about conveying some innate faith that “things will work out.” It’s about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome, and not communicating the feeling that all is lost if things don’t break your way. The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist.

But in dozens and dozens of studies, Latham and Locke found that setting goals increased performance and productivity 11 to 25 percent.5 That’s quite a boost. If an eight-hour day is our baseline, that’s like getting two extra hours of work simply by building a mental frame (aka a goal) around the activity. But not every goal is the same. “We found that if you want the largest increase in motivation and productivity,” says Latham, “then big goals lead to the best outcomes. Big goals significantly outperform small goals, medium-sized goals, and vague goals. It comes down to attention and persistence—which are two of the most important factors in determining performance. Big goals help focus attention, and they make us more persistent. The result is we’re much more effective when we work, and much more willing to get up and try again when we fail.

The prescience, he realized, was an illumination that incorporated the limits of what it revealed- at once a source of accuracy and meaningful error. A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened: the expenditure of energy that revealed what he saw, changed what he saw. And what he saw was a time nexus within this cave, a boiling of possibilities focused here, wherein the most minute action - the wink of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of sand - moved a gigantic lever across the known universe. He saw violence with the outcome subject to so many variables that his slightest movement created vast shiftings in the patterns. The vision made him want to freeze into immobility, but this, too was action with its consequences.

The nine in our list are based on a longer list in Robert Leahy, Stephen Holland, and Lata McGinn’s book, Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders. For more on CBT—how it works, and how to practice it—please see Appendix 1.) EMOTIONAL REASONING: Letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.” CATASTROPHIZING: Focusing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely. “It would be terrible if I failed.” OVERGENERALIZING: Perceiving a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.” DICHOTOMOUS THINKING (also known variously as “black-and-white thinking,” “all-or-nothing thinking,” and “binary thinking”): Viewing events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” MIND READING: Assuming that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” LABELING: Assigning global negative traits to yourself or others (often in the service of dichotomous thinking). “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” NEGATIVE FILTERING: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.” DISCOUNTING POSITIVES: Claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial, so that you can maintain a negative judgment. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.” BLAMING: Focusing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings; you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”11

We often focus on the outcomes of the school-to-prison pipeline as the ultimate tragedy—the high drop-out rates, future poverty and joblessness, the likelihood of repeated incarceration—but when I look at our school-to-prison pipeline, the biggest tragedy to me is the loss of childhood joy. When our kids spend eight hours a day in a system that is looking for reasons to punish them, remove them, criminalize them—our kids do not get to be kids. Our kids do not get to be rambunctious, they do not get to be exuberant, they do not get to be rebellious, they do not get to be defiant. Our kids do not get to fuck up the way other kids get to; our kids will not get to look back fondly on their teenage hijinks—because these get them expelled or locked away. Do not wait until black and brown kids are grown into hurt and hardened adults to ask “What happened? What can we do?” We cannot give back childhoods lost. Help us save our children now.

It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.” I refer to this as the difference between being in motion and taking action. The two ideas sound similar, but they’re not the same. When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result. Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome. If I outline twenty ideas for articles I want to write, that’s motion. If I actually sit down and write an article, that’s action.

No one could have handled the stress that Michael was under perfectly, but optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is so vital. Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion. Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. This isn’t about saying things are good when they’re not, and it’s not about conveying some innate faith that “things will work out.” It’s about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome, and not communicating the feeling that all is lost if things don’t break your way. The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist. —

We teach our players, in response to any situation they face, to press pause and ask: What does this situation require of me? Pressing pause gives you time to think. It gets you off autopilot and helps you gain clarity about the outcome you are pursuing, the situation you are experiencing, and the Above the Line action you need to take to achieve the outcome. There are two important benefits of pressing pause: A) It helps you avoid doing something foolish or harmful B) It focuses you on acting with purpose to accomplish your goals A productive pause could last only a split second, which helps you regain your focus and take control of your action. It could last an hour, a day, or longer. The purpose is to take the time necessary to be intentional about the way you think and act. Pressing pause does not come naturally; it is a skill that must be developed. The more you practice, the more skilled you become at being able to identify how and when to use it effectively.

Entrepreneurs are everywhere. You don’t have to work in a garage to be in a startup. The concept of entrepreneurship includes anyone who works within my definition of a startup: a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. That means entrepreneurs are everywhere and the Lean Startup approach can work in any size company, even a very large enterprise, in any sector or industry. 2. Entrepreneurship is management. A startup is an institution, not just a product, and so it requires a new kind of management specifically geared to its context of extreme uncertainty. In fact, as I will argue later, I believe “entrepreneur” should be considered a job title in all modern companies that depend on innovation for their future growth. 3. Validated learning. Startups exist not just to make stuff, make money, or even serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This learning can be validated scientifically by running frequent experiments that allow entrepreneurs to test each element of their vision. 4. Build-Measure-Learn. The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere. All successful startup processes should be geared to accelerate that feedback loop. 5. Innovation accounting. To improve entrepreneurial outcomes and hold innovators accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, and how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting designed for startups—and the people who hold them accountable.

She stared at him, at his face. Simply stared as the scales fell from her eyes. "Oh, my God," she whispered, the exclamation so quiet not even he would hear. She suddenly saw-saw it all-all that she'd simply taken for granted. Men like him protected those they loved, selflessly, unswervingly, even unto death. The realization rocked her. Pieces of the jigsaw of her understanding of him fell into place. He was hanging to consciousness by a thread. She had to be sure-and his shields, his defenses were at their weakest now. Looking down at her hands, pressed over the nearly saturated pad, she hunted for the words, the right tone. Softly said, "My death, even my serious injury, would have freed you from any obligation to marry me. Society would have accepted that outcome, too." He shifted, clearly in pain. She sucked in a breath-feeling his pain as her own-then he clamped the long fingers of his right hand about her wrist, held tight. So tight she felt he was using her as an anchor to consciousness, to the world. His tone, when he spoke, was harsh. "Oh, yes-after I'd expended so much effort keeping you safe all these years, safe even from me, I was suddenly going to stand by and let you be gored by some mangy bull." He snorted, soft, low. Weakly. He drew in a slow, shallow breath, lips thin with pain, but determined, went on, "You think I'd let you get injured when finally after all these long years I at last understand that the reason you've always made me itch is because you are the only woman I actually want to marry? And you think I would stand back and let you be harmed?" A peevish frown crossed his face. "I ask you, is that likely? Is it even vaguely rational?" He went on, his words increasingly slurred, his tongue tripping over some, his voice fading. She listened, strained to catch every word as he slid into semi delirium, into rambling, disjointed sentences that she drank in, held to her heart. He gave her dreams back to her, reshaped and refined. "Not French Imperial-good, sound, English oak. You can use whatever colors you like, but no gilt-I forbid it." Eventually he ventured further than she had. "And I want at least three children-not just an heir and a spare. At least three-if you're agreeable. We'll have to have two boys, of course-my evil ugly sisters will found us to make good on that. But thereafter...as many girls as you like...as long as they look like you. Or perhaps Cordelia-she's the handsomer of the two uglies." He loved his sisters, his evil ugly sisters. Heather listened with tears in her eyes as his mind drifted and his voice gradually faded, weakened. She'd finally got her declaration, not in anything like the words she'd expected, but in a stronger, impossible-to-doubt exposition. He'd been her protector, unswerving, unflinching, always there; from a man like him, focused on a lady like her, such actions were tantamount to a declaration from the rooftops. The love she'd wanted him to admit to had been there all along, demonstrated daily right before her eyes, but she hadn't seen. Hadn't seen because she'd been focusing elsewhere, and because, conditioned as she was to resisting the same style of possessive protectiveness from her brothers, from her cousins, she hadn't appreciated his, hadn't realized that that quality had to be an expression of his feelings for her. Until now. Until now that he'd all but given his life for hers. He loved her-he'd always loved her. She saw that now, looking back down the years. He'd loved her from the time she'd fallen in love with him-the instant they'd laid eyes on each other at Michael and Caro's wedding in Hampshire four years ago. He'd held aloof, held away-held her at bay, too-believing, wrongly, that he wasn't an appropriate husband for her. In that, he'd been wrong, too. She saw it all. And as the tears overflowed and tracked down her cheeks, she knew to her soul how right he was for her. Knew, embraced, and rejoiced.

While some of our deepest wounds come from feeling abandoned by others, it is surprising to see how often we abandon ourselves through the way we view life. It’s natural to perceive through a lens of blame at the moment of emotional impact, but each stage of surrender offers us time and space to regroup and open our viewpoints for our highest evolutionary benefit. It’s okay to feel wronged by people or traumatized by circumstances. This reveals anger as a faithful guardian reminding us how overwhelmed we are by the outcomes at hand. While we will inevitably use each trauma as a catalyst for our deepest growth, such anger informs us when the highest importance is being attentive to our own experiences like a faithful companion. As waves of emotion begin to settle, we may ask ourselves, “Although I feel wronged, what am I going to do about it?” Will we allow experiences of disappointment or even cruelty to inspire our most courageous decisions and willingness to evolve? When viewing others as characters who have wronged us, a moment of personal abandonment occurs. Instead of remaining present to the sheer devastation we feel, a need to align with ego can occur through the blaming of others. While it seems nearly instinctive to see life as the comings and goings of how people treat us, when focused on cultivating our most Divine qualities, pain often confirms how quickly we are shifting from ego to soul. From the soul’s perspective, pain represents the initial steps out of the identity and reference points of an old reality as we make our way into a brand new paradigm of being. The more this process is attempted to be rushed, the more insufferable it becomes. To end the agony of personal abandonment, we enter the first stage of surrender by asking the following question: Am I seeing this moment in a way that helps or hurts me? From the standpoint of ego, life is a play of me versus you or us versus them. But from the soul’s perspective, characters are like instruments that help develop and uncover the melody of our highest vibration. Even when the friction of conflict seems to divide people, as souls we are working together to play out the exact roles to clear, activate, and awaken our true radiance. The more aligned in Source energy we become, the easier each moment of transformation tends to feel. This doesn’t mean we are immune to disappointment, heartbreak, or devastation. Instead, we are keenly aware of how often life is giving us the chance to grow and expand. A willingness to be stretched and re-created into a more refined form is a testament to the fiercely liberated nature of our soul. To the ego, the soul’s willingness to grow under the threat of any circumstance seems foolish, shortsighted, and insane. This is because the ego can only interpret that reality as worry, anticipation, and regret.

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking The tendency to think in extremes like “always” and “never” without considering nuanced degrees between. “My boyfriend broke up with me; I always ruin my relationships.” 2. Overgeneralization The tendency to make broad assumptions based on limited specifics. “If one person thinks I’m stupid, everyone will.” 3. Mental Filter The tendency to focus on small negative details to the exclusion of the big picture. “My A+ average doesn’t matter; I got a C on an assignment.” 4. Disqualifying the Positive The tendency to dismiss positive aspects of an experience for irrational reasons. “If my friend compliments me, she is probably just saying it out of pity.” 5. Jumping to Conclusions The tendency to make unfounded, negative assumptions, often in the form of attempted mind reading or fortune telling. “If my romantic interest doesn’t text me today, he must not be interested.” 6. Catastrophizing The tendency to magnify or minimize certain details of an experience, painting it as worse or more severe than it is. “If my wife leaves me, then I will never be able to recover from my misery.” 7. Emotional Reasoning The tendency to take one’s emotions as evidence of objective truth. “If I feel offended by someone else’s remark, then he must have wronged me.” 8. Should Statements The tendency to apply rigid rules to how one “should” or “must” behave. “My friend criticized my attitude, and that is something that friends should never do.” 9. Labeling The tendency to describe oneself in the form of absolute labels. “If I make a calculation error, it makes me a total idiot.” 10. Personalization The tendency to attribute negative outcomes to oneself without evidence. “If my wife is in a bad mood, then I must have done something to upset her.