3 Common Mind Traps that Will Absolutely Sink Your Happiness

Our mind isn’t always a good friend, in fact sometimes it can be our worst enemy! Learning to recognize these 3 mind traps can give you a big boost in stepping outside of them and being more resilient in your life.

Three Common Mind Traps that Sink Happiness:

• Catastrophizing

  If you’re prone to stress, fear, and anxiety, you may recognize this habitual mind trap. This is where the mind interprets an event as the worst case scenario. If your heart is beating fast, you may think you’re having a heart attack. If your boss didn’t look at you while walking down the hall, you start thinking you’re going to get fired. You get the picture. This style of thinking will increase stress, anxiety, and even panic.

• Discounting the positive and exaggerating the negative

  The news is especially good at supporting us with this one. This is where we habitually reject or minimize any positive feedback and magnify the negative feedback. The glass is always half empty. If you catch yourself saying something positive and then saying “but” followed by a negative, you are practicing this. “I got a 95% on this test, but I didn’t get a 100%”. Without awareness, this style of thinking will likely land you in a depressed mood.

• Blaming

  Be careful of this one. We all do it, pointing the finger at someone else for our woes or point the finger at ourselves for others woes. “If my boss wasn’t so hard on me at work, I wouldn’t be so anxious” or “It’s my fault my parents got divorced”. Check in with yourself after noticing this style of thinking. It doesn’t cultivate any solutions and just makes you feel stuck, anxious, or depressed.

   

  Cultivating the ability to be more present to these mind traps will help you break free from them and shift your attention on more effective ways of interacting with life.

  If you know of anyone that could use a bit more resilience in this time, this is probably something you should share.

  Let us know if any of these impact you. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.