Lies Your Mind Tells You (that may even be true)

By Staff Therapist, Proactive Therapy

Our minds are funny things: they’re full of ideas, plans, and thoughts that all keep us moving forward in the world and that help us stay alive and productive. But our minds also give us thoughts that seem so reasonable—so TRUE—that we give them a lot of attention. We get stuck on them.

“It’s a true thought,” we tell ourselves, “so I guess I’ve got to do what it says.”

In order to get unstuck, it can be important to start asking a different question: Instead of “is it true?”, let’s see what happens when we ask “is this helpful?” We’ll explore this in a two-part series.

Lie #1: “I want to do the thing, but I need to work on my confidence first.”

Think back to a time in your life when you moved forward boldly, with total confidence, and showed up to a situation in exactly the way you would want for yourself. What were you thinking? Really try to think about it. Maybe you had thoughts like “I can do this.”

Or maybe you weren’t thinking much at all—perhaps your mind was just quiet! It felt certain that you were not in danger, that nothing would go wrong, so it took a backseat for a moment.

Then think about a moment where you lacked in confidence. Suppose you want to ask for a raise, or talk to that cute guy in your cooking class. What were you thinking then? In those moments, we tend to experience very active minds. What might your mind say?

If it were me, my mind would be saying “Watch out! Danger ahead! This might not go well!” For me, those thoughts would be loud—and they might hold me back from taking action or being bold.

We can sometimes run into a problem when we frame this as a problem of confidence. When we do, we’re telling ourselves that we can only act if our minds are completely quiet. We’re bargaining with ourselves, and making a deal that we can only do tough things when we’re sure that nothing could go wrong.

But the trouble is, things could go wrong! They could go terribly, horrifically, cataclysmically wrong: your boss could say no. That guy in the cooking class could say he’s not interested. Eek!

Your mind, in other words, is absolutely right: things could go wrong. And the mind’s job is to protect you from situations where you might experience discomfort, rejection, or unpleasantness. Which are all great things to avoid…until it holds you back from doing something you really care about.

Perhaps it really matters to you to advance in your career. Or to find a meaningful romantic partner. In those cases, we might need a different way of responding to our loud thoughts.

The good news is we can use the strategy above. Instead of asking “is this thought literally TRUE?” (the answer is often yes), we can ask “Is this thought going to help me move toward my goal?”

This can help us begin to discriminate between safety thoughts that are helpful (“Don’t stick your finger in that light socket!”) from thoughts that are less helpful (“He might reject you.”)

When we notice it’s the latter, we can compassionately respond to our minds by saying something like “Thanks for the thought! I hear it, I acknowledge it, and I’m going to be moving forward anyway. I’ve got a life to live!”