One of the common thinking errors we encounter revolves around ‘should’ and ‘must’ statements that we say to ourselves, creating high demands on how the world needs to be, when the world has not agreed to our demands. Often, we don’t need to operate anywhere near that level to be successful.

If you carry around the invisible rule book of your own standards, ticking off each day where you fail to live up to impossible expectations, and the world conspires to frustrate you. This podcast in our series on thinking errors will be of interest. Richard and Graham explore how, by changing should to could, and I must to I would prefer it if, we can give ourselves more scope to move forward in an uncertain world.

As we continue our series of podcasts on common thinking errors, in this podcast, Ricky and Richard make up stuff. Well, to be honest, I just made that up because this is a great podcast and I was not part of it! This is emotional reasoning, and if you listen to this podcast, they will introduce you to this common thinking error that we can all make from time to time.

Emotional Reasoning is where our mind mixes up who we feel about something (or someone) and the supporting facts about that situation or person. If you have ever had a bad meeting and started to think that represents the capability of your team, or decided that a new project that is all new and sexy, but has very little detail, is bound to be better than the current project, where you understand all of the complexity and issues, you have fallen prey to emotional reasoning. Listen in while Ricky and Rich help you take back control and see things as they are, not how they feel…

As we continue our series on common Thinking Errors, this episode considers the way that sometimes we jump to conclusions with minimal evidence and no facts.

Ricky and Paul explore the different ways we see this playing out, taking examples from sport where commentators take stats from 20 years ago to tell us who is going to win, without anyone pointing out that there are very few sportspeople who were playing 20 years ago playing today, so it is not the same team!

If you are prone to making leaps in your logic, jumping to conclusions that don’t help you or move you forward, ask yourself when you do have a conclusion;

• Where is the Evidence? 
• What Alternative explanations might there be?
• What are the Implications of this?
• How Useful is this line of thinking?

These four vowels (E A I U) prevent you from getting to Ohh, I got that wrong.

If you have ever had one bad thing happen, and suddenly cannot remember everything good that happened before, then this podcast is for you.  In this episode, Graham asks Paul about he common thinking error, Mental Filtering.   

Our brains are designed to sort through all of the information presented to us quickly and then focus on the areas that present danger or risk.  It is doing its primary job of keeping us alive long enough to pass on our genes!  Yet, in a modern world, we are not really at risk, so occasionally this amazing trick backfires and makes us hyper-focused on the challenge as if it is life and death, without adding the context of everything else that is going on.

Paul and Graham discuss why this happens, and most importantly, how you can bring balance and perspective back into your thoughts, to allow you to see problems and challenges for what they are, and remember all of the experience you are bringing to them.

In our series on thinking errors, this podcast explores catastrophising, with Richard and Graham sharing their own personal experience of this cognitive trick our mind can play, as well as examining why it happens and how to deal with it.

If you have ever turned a paper cut into a medical emergency, or a problem at work starts to feel like the first step toward unemployability, then this podcast will help you understand how this simple mental defensive mechanism can easily shift from our best friend to an unhelpful foe.