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You have to make judgments all day long. You couldn’t function without exercising your judgment. But this same skill can be harmful if it isn’t done carefully. You already know judging others can harm them, but we’re concerned here with the kind of judgment that harms YOU. It weakens you in some way or demoralizes you.

For example, let’s say you have just started a business. You need to make four appointments per day to succeed. But you just don’t get around to getting on the phone, and you’re starting to feel frustrated and disappointed in yourself. These are negative emotions. What will you always do from now on when you feel any negative emotions? The antivirus for your mind of course!

What do you do when your computer starts malfunctioning? It starts moving slowly or doing something strange, so you do a virus scan. First find out if you have something in your hard drive that is interfering with your computer.

Same with your own mind. When you feel a negative emotion, it might be caused by a mind-virus (a thought-mistake). So go through the simple process of writing down what you’re thinking and then looking at those thoughts and finding the mistakes. When you find a thought-mistake, the moment you recognize it as a mistake, you will feel better. Your determination will come back. Your motivation will resurface.

So you’re not making four calls a day. You feel demoralized. So you write down your thoughts:

1. I don’t have enough time.

2. I have no self-discipline.

3. I’m a loser.

These are your reasons for the setback. These are your explanations of your failure to make those calls. Number 3 is harmful judging. On other lists it is called “labeling” or “mislabeling.” You are judging yourself harshly and it makes you feel bad. The thought, “I’m a loser,” makes you FEEL like a loser. Does that help? Will that help you make your four calls a day? No. In fact, it will make it HARDER for you to make those calls! You are harming yourself with your judging.

Once you realize this, you will naturally be more wary of thinking this thought in the future, and maybe you’ll catch yourself thinking it and have a little argument in your head about it. And every time you do, this thought has less power. It will have less authority over you. When it occurs to you, it will be easier for you to dismiss it.

And I should say here that once you have dismissed a thought, you will not necessarily be cured of ever thinking that thought again. The mind has habits. But by noticing the thought and recognizing it as a mistake, that thought will not so easily bring you down in the future. It has been discredited. It will be easier to dismiss in the future.

If you do not examine your thoughts like this, however, you could try for years to FORCE yourself to make those calls, while still habitually thinking you are a loser when you fail. Your path would be harder, and it would be more likely to make your thought a reality.

Don’t take the long road full of suffering. Root out your thought-mistakes and get back to work feeling good.

Tags: virus definitions by Adam Khan
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On other lists of thought-mistakes, this is called “filtering” or “negative filter.” It means focusing on a negative detail and ignoring other parts of the situation that might not be so bad.

For example, let’s say my wife says something kind of hostile to me, and I get upset by that, focusing on the fact that she is hostile and ignoring the fact that we’ve spent the last two hours in a great conversation, and also ignoring the fact that immediately prior to her being hostile, I said something insulting!

When you’re looking at your negative statement (using the basic technique), look for this kind of tunnel vision, because it is a mistake. You’re leaving out other facts that would make your explanation of the situation a lot less upsetting. It’s a mistake by omission. What you see may not be a mistake, but you’re leaving out other facts that would ease your suffering or eliminate your feeling of discouragement.

Tags: virus definitions by Adam Khan
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This mistake can go either way. You can take too much responsibility for something or too little. Either one will cause you more distress and discouragement than the circumstances call for. If you blame yourself for something that really wasn’t your fault, you feel bad unnecessarily. If you blame someone else for something you were responsible for, you miss out on the opportunity to improve the situation. If you don’t take credit for something you could legitimately be proud of, you miss out on personal pride (and it will tend to sap your motivation).

If you are making this mistake in any of these ways, you’re probably proud of yourself for it. That will make it harder to admit the thought is a mistake. But go through the process of writing down your thoughts when you are demoralized or upset, and misplacing responsibility is bound to show up as a mistake.

In the antivirus for your mind, we’re not trying to be positive. We’re trying to be accurate. So if you find you have a thought like, “It’s all my fault,” you have to really look at that. If it really IS all your fault, you have not made a mistake. But if you look at it honestly and realize it isn’t entirely your fault, your distress will fade right on the spot.

Tags: virus definitions by Adam Khan
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“I should be a nicer person.” “People shouldn’t treat me that way.” “The world should be fairer.” These kinds of statements are called imperatives. They are also called “should statements” by David Burns. Albert Ellis, who concentrated more on this thought-mistake than on any other, called it “musterbation”. Ellis really hammered on this one, and for good reason. It is the source of a great deal of unnecessary negative emotion.

In an interview, Ellis explained how he gets himself out of an upset.

1. First he says to himself, “I’m creating this.”
2. Then he asks, “What am I telling myself?”
3. Finally he looks for commands and demands: “Things should not be this way, the other person should not act that way, I should not feel this way, etc.”

Ellis focused on shoulds and musts because he found by long experience that these really get people in trouble. It’s a good virus definition to go after first. Ellis was not only an innovator and teacher, but he was using this stuff on his own therapy clients since the 1950s. His long wisdom and experience showed him he could go right to the heart of the matter by searching for shoulds and musts.

Once you recognize the shoulds and oughts and musts you use on yourself, and once you realize they are merely preferences, it takes away the intensity of your negative feelings and you are left with mild disappointment, simple frustration, or concern — rather than sadness, anger, or fear.

Ellis began by assuming right off the bat that if you’ve got a problem, the source of it is “musterbation.” For example, you might present a problem in a therapy session that you are ashamed or embarrassed about something. His very first assumption is that the source of your distress is you are thinking either, “I must be loved by everyone,” or “I must achieve greatness,” or both. And he would probably be right. From either of those two underlying musts, you can easily become embarrassed or ashamed when someone doesn’t seem to think you’re wonderful, or when you did something that wasn’t great.

Ellis would then teach you that there is no reason to continue believing you must be loved or achieve greatness. Sure, it would be nice, but it isn’t necessary to existence, and thinking it necessary makes you miserable.

This is one of the virus definitions that people have the most problem with. If you have a question about it, please leave your question in the comments and I will answer them. It would help others if you would do this. Thank you.

Tags: virus definitions by Adam Khan
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