How to eliminate unnecessary stress.
“Everything in my life is hot garbage.”
Ever feel that way?
Though it’s totally normal, it’s not particularly healthy.
That’s because it could be stressing you out. Statements like, “My entire life is awful” or “I’m never going to be happy” have a name: Cognitive distortions (a.k.a. “thinking errors”).
These are thoughts that feel true but aren’t (not really).
What’s more, when applied to food and fitness, these thoughts create a mindset that can hold you back from taking action and making progress.
A couple of examples:
▶ “Everyone in this gym is looking at me and noticing how out of shape I am.”
▶ “I was so bad! I ate all the dessert! I can’t stick to a healthy eating plan at all!”
See what we mean?
If you have thoughts like this, it doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with you.
Cognitive distortions just reflect how the quirky human brain works.
Our highly-evolved brains naturally tend to:
Over-focus on perceived threats and negativity
Make judgments with only partial information
Over-generalize, taking facts about a single, specific situation and applying them to everything
The problem: Cognitive distortions create a TON of—often unnecessary—stress.
If you frequently feel annoyed, anxious, or stubbornly pessimistic, you’re probably mired in these kinds of thoughts.
But here’s the good news.
By adjusting your thoughts, you can actually relieve some of this unnecessary stress, and remove mental barriers that are getting in your way.
Typically, cognitive distortions are:
▶ Rigid and rule-based: They’re fixed and stuck.
▶ Stale and stagnant: Reflect old beliefs, usually picked up in childhood.
▶ Pervasive: Taking one bad thing and applying it to every aspect of your life.
▶ Simplistic: all/none, always/never, everything/nothing, and good/bad types of binary thinking.
▶ Biased: most often toward the negative.
▶ Imagined: “I’m sure that person is thinking…” [even though nobody’s thinking that]
The goal isn’t to replace your “bad” thoughts with “good” ones.
Rather, the goal is to have a more realistic, nuanced, complex, and evidence-based view of events. Otherwise known as “realistic thoughts.”
Where to Start
First, identify and acknowledge your cognitive distortions.
Then practice modifying your cognitive distortions into realistic thoughts.
Realistic thoughts sound like this:
✅ “This part of my life is really hard right now, but things will probably change. Plus, there are other things in my life that are going okay.”
✅ “I do worry that things might go badly, but there’s also a good chance they might turn out alright, especially if I think proactively and do some planning ahead.”
✅ “Although I might not like the outcome of X, I can probably deal with it.”
Notice how you feel when you think more realistic thoughts.
(Usually, it’s less anxious and more open, curious, and positive about the future.)
This shift requires practice, but it can be a highly effective way to take more control over the stress and anxiety in your life.
