Want to Get Through Adversity? Challenge Your Thinking!

Rachael and Shawn Doyle

Elon Musk once said, “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and question yourself.”

Although the number widely varies, the research indicates that the average person has around 6,000-plus thoughts per day. That is a lot of thinking going on! The question is, are you consciously aware of your thoughts, are you consciously monitoring your thoughts, and do you challenge your thinking? In our company, we do a lot of executive coaching, and we often find people we are coaching are thinking in ways that are detrimental to their success. For example, one executive we were coaching was asked, “Do you want to be the CEO in the future?” She said, “I don’t think of myself as CEO material.” When we asked her why it really opened her mind to challenge why she was thinking that way. She’s clearly intelligent, articulate, and has a great deal of experience and competency and we believe she would make a great CEO. But her thought process was the opposite, and she had never challenged it.

As we always say “You are what you eat,” as well as you are what you expose yourself to. This is a universal truth. However, we also believe you are what you think. As Germany Kent once said, “You become what you digest into your spirit. Whatever you think about, focus on, read about, or talk about, you will attract more into your life. Make sure they’re all positive.”

We wrote a book about staying positive during adversity, and in it, we say a critical part of staying positive during adversity is?controlling your thinking. You are in the driver’s seat—you?are in control, not your brain! In our opinion, there are two areas that you need to look at very carefully in terms of your thinking. They are 1) the reality of thoughts and 2) response history.

Let’s first talk about the reality of thoughts. The reality is that your thoughts are not real. Your thoughts are simply the meaning that you assign to a particular event or circumstance. Let’s look at an example. We were doing training, and on the break, several of the participants were talking and somehow the discussion about taking pictures came up. One woman in the group said she really did not like having her picture taken. The other people in the group were a little taken aback by her comment as this woman was by most definitions classically beautiful. When people asked why she did not like having her picture taken, she said it was because she had a big nose. Everyone in the room commented that she did not have a big nose. Why would she say that? She then described being made fun of by her brother at a young age calling her “big nose.” So even as an adult, this smart, intelligent woman had a belief that her nose was big based on teasing as a young child. This is the meaning that she assigned—not based on any kind of objective reality.

Jennice Vilhauer, Ph.D. said in Psychology Today: “Now, here is where the creating part gets really serious. Your thoughts, if you think them over and over, and assign truth to them, become beliefs. Beliefs create a cognitive lens through which you interpret the events of your world, and this lens serves as a selective filter through which you sift the environment for evidence that matches up with what you believe to be true.”

What we hear Dr. Vilhauer saying is very powerful- that if we think thoughts long enough they become beliefs. We believe you have to ask yourself what thought processes you have that are not true. We hear people say all the time that they are not tall enough, talented enough, smart enough, good enough, or brave enough to do something in their life that they really want to do. In order to overcome adversity and thrive during adversity we have to consciously be aware of our thoughts and change our thinking.

As Dieter F. Uchtdorf once said, “It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life story will develop.”

The big question then becomes, “How do I challenge the reality of my thinking?”

One tool that you can use, which is surprisingly extremely helpful, is journaling. Many years ago Mike Vance at Disney coined a term called “displayed thinking.” We have always loved that terminology because it is a great way to describe the value of journaling. When you write down your thoughts in a journal you are displaying your thinking and then, most importantly, you can challenge the thoughts by seeing them. One exercise we like is to write in your journal a positive and negative list. This is extremely helpful. Let’s say, for example, you have the unfortunate experience of losing your job. Many people have had this happen at some point in their life. On the page in your journal, you would draw a line down the middle, and write the negative thoughts on the left side and the corrective positive thoughts on the right side. Using losing your job as an example, you would write:

“I am very panicked because I lost my job,” and then on the right side change it to, “I will get another job soon.” On the left-hand side you would write, “I am not sure I can get one in this area,” and on the right-hand side you would rewrite, “I can get one in this area; if not, then I will move.” On the left-hand side you would write, “I’m not sure I have the right skill sets,” and on the right of you would write, “I’m talented and have great experience and expertise.”

This simple exercise allows you to challenge your own thoughts and, more critically, correct and modify them. One of the reasons this works so well is that generally speaking, we never question our thinking. When we do this exercise in training programs, the cynics will often say, “I can’t write down, ‘I’m talented and have great experience and expertise’—it’s not true.” We understand, but our response is that the point of the exercise is to change our thinking! You have to start, or it will never change. If you tell yourself long enough that you will get that job, your brain will start to convert the belief from negative to positive. You are programming your thoughts differently. This is not some new-age mumbo-jumbo; this is human psychology. See the worksheet in the back of this chapter to try this technique.

Be willing to challenge your own thinking, and as you go through the day be consciously aware of what you are thinking about.

The second item to think about in terms of your thinking is your response history. What we mean by this is that it is very easy to jump into autopilot mode. This sounds something like, “When this happens I get ___________.” You may say to yourself, “When someone criticizes me, I get angry and I immediately get defensive.” This is what we refer to as an action response model. There is an action that you have a respond to immediately. The reality is that the response is based on a history that you developed based on habits. The reality is you are in the habit of responding this way, so you don’t question it. You have created a rule for yourself that says “If this, then that.” The key point here is (and here is the big question), “Is that kind of response serving you well?” If not, you can change the rule. Let’s say, for example, someone criticizes you and you don’t get angry, and you don’t get defensive. Will that change the way you react to other people? Will that change the way people react to you?

Another exercise you can do in your journal is to write down your actions and responses and see if you would like to change them. We feel that we are very fortunate because we are one of the few mammals on the planet that can change our behavior through conscious thought. Here’s an example- let’s say a lion is lying in the Serengeti, and he is hungry. The lion sees a herd of gazelles run by and decides to attack the gazelles. It’s almost as if he can’t help it- he is a lion and that’s what he does by instinct. He doesn’t sit back and say, “Hmmm, maybe attacking this gazelle is cruel and causes this poor gazelle pain.” He just does what a lion does. He can’t deny his lion-ness! What separates you from many of the mammals on our planet is you have the ability to change your behavior through conscious thought. You can deny your prior thinking or thought processes. More importantly, you can change your thinking and behaviors when you experience adversity. You must be calm enough and alert enough to do it.

It’s up to you because you are the architect of your own life.

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Shawn Doyle is an expert in training and development in the workplace and CEO and founder of Shawn Doyle Training.

shawndoyletraining.com