So as individuals as human beings as moms dads brothers sisters workers co-workers managers bosses leaders
there's a question that we want to get pretty good at asking ourselves on a day to day basis.
If we do in fact want to live relatively balanced and effective lives and this is is my thinking.
Accurate or inaccurate.
No.
And there's a term used in the modern psychologies called cognitive distortions.
Now I don't want to unpack this in too much detail right.
No buts.
And this is our core.
Call this the car a lifelong habit that many people get into and call them patterns of thinking that
people subscribe to that don't serve them in the slightest way.
All right don't help people in any move whatsoever to give a few examples of this.
And have you ever ever generalized a massive group of people or a global group or community of people
because of the interactions that you've had with perhaps one or two.
No.
This is something that I do every now and again.
It's something I really have to hold myself back and we've got to check myself before I write myself
in this area.
Politicians is a good one for me all right.
No I mean it's sometimes to say things like oh I can't stand politicians my goodness politicians just
can't be trusted.
All politicians are bad.
All politicians operate from this place off in or lack of integrity and so on so forth and em.
I remember having a conversation of this nature Believe it or not.
A few years ago with a family member and this family member was told I was talking all about and politicians
and me being me right.
Understanding the difference between accurate and inaccurate thinking understanding cognitive distortions
as family members Ted was talking all about all of these bad politicians and no politicians in the world
could be trusted and I just said Well that's an interesting thing to see.
Which one specifically is it that you're referring to.
Which one is it specifically that you've hard conversation or interaction with that you know cannot
be trusted.
May I ask a little question like that.
I'm met with Guppy face look and people come to realize that they've just made a massive generalization
based upon an assumption that they've made.
Remember when I was in the military going back my goodness around about 25 years ago when I was based
in a place called Coldwater beach outside Cambridge.
They were New England and this was quite a quite a small quick quick quick quick.
Quite a small village local community and not too far outside of I would say to Cambridge and 18 we
went into Cambridge right.
We always felt like the bee's knees because we were soldiers and went back then being a soldier kind
of meant to us that we were part of a superior human race.
I'm just being honest right.
How we perceived and saw ourselves back then.
So we would on a weekend perhaps go into Cambridge and go around one or two of the bars maybe a night
time end up at a nightclub or something like this and it was soldiers being soldiers have a bit of a
thing for speaking to the ladies.
And here we were speaking to the ladies and in Cambridge especially for speaking to a bunch of students
student young ladies they would be really impressed.
We would tell them all about our heroic adventures and all of their war zones and all the things that
we'd done as soldiers and they would see things like oh soldiers I absolutely love soldiers soldiers
were amazing you're all heroes as fantastic and in conversations like that we would love it.
We would all put up because we'd been generalized in a massively positive way.
But then there was other cities that we would go to.
One in particular I could remember cold shot him down in Kent and this was very much a military town.
He'd have thousands of military people operating down there.
And sometimes when you get a lot of soldiers working and living in a close knit community behaviours
and habits and attitudes and so on can sometimes have a bit of an unfair effect on a community.
So having come from Cambridge I went down to this place Chatham in Kent and same thing with the same
expectations because we expect more off in the future than what we've had in the past.
Would walk into a bar or nightclub.
Here we are you know bunch of soldiers salt of the earth and all this kind of stuff and speak to some
of the ladies say hey ladies we are soldiers.
Check us what you know and you know heroes and all that kind of stuff and we'll be met with a response
at soldiers you're only after one thing you're a bunch of scumbags and stuff like that.
And they were being generalised in a massively negative way.
No.
This gives us a bit of an example on how it is that we generalize people and things.
Does it matter whether we are generalizing people for a certain role that they fulfil or whether we
are generalizing people of a certain sexual orientation or of a certain religious mindset or if a certain
set of beliefs.
We see this all around the world.
What I see quite generally here is that generalizations can sometimes be the root of many of the wars
or world conflicts that we have when one political leader not a all political leaders but one political
leader will decide that an entire race or a nation of people was fundamentally barred because of that
which they believe without knowing anyone in this massive generalized group of people.
What I'm saying is that we all we all do this.
And the question we must be asking is my thinking accurate or inaccurate if we want to break the vicious
circle in terms of any destructive patterns of behaviour or attitudes that we have in our life.
We've got to get clearer what we're thinking.
All right.
Cognitive Restructuring is a process of questioning and changing irrational thoughts because generalisations
by the way are is completely a rational way of thinking and looking at life.
Another example off an inaccurate thinking could be think about the last time you entered into a debate
or an argument or you had a falling out with someone maybe a friend or a loved one.
No.
Once the debate was over there's a pretty good chance you ended up walking away and you're really hard.
You're really angry and this person said this and this person said that and this person they were really
bad because their intentions were this and their intentions were that and and you're focused on an everything
that you think of.
So the person has said and everything that you have assumed to that person assumed and what you've completely
overlooked is the fact that you have assumed some completely unfair things and you've pretty much focussed
on everything that was said to you but you haven't acknowledged anything that you said in response or
that you initiated with what I'm saying is deletions we are sometimes all very good at conveniently
forgetting the part that we play in the demise of our own relationships whilst focusing neatly on the
part that everyone else plays it's kind of like sometimes else's but everyone else is get it wrong and
not us.
We're the good ones right.
Isn't that just a nice idea to subscribe to.
But if we want to live a fact of life we've got to get clearer whether our thinking is accurate or inaccurate.
So coming back to the demonstrations and the conversations I've had with current up until now.
And yes we haven't really focused so much on Karen's thinking US policy.
Instead we've focused on and Karen's emotional experience.
Each feels a little bit of discomfort when she is focusing more on what she doesn't want than what she
does but remember no.
After that last video you can hopefully appreciate the thinking comes into play we just need to understand
how.
All right so how we begin to identify the caliber of our clients thinking of what they're actually thinking
about.
We've just simply got to acknowledge the emotion.
All right.
Once we have picked up on an emotion and in the last demonstration I just picked up on uncomfortable
a feeling of uncomfortable.
All right.
Once we've got that we just simply focus in on that.
Then we backtrack.
What was the thought that triggered the emotional response so cognitive restructuring is the process
of questioning and changing irrational thoughts.
And it's not that we change the thoughts but we are asking questions in a certain way that's encouraging
our clients are those people that we're coaching to review and evaluate the quality of their thoughts
for themselves.
With me one means through which we do this through a questioning process called socratic questioning.
It's one technique that we can use to encourage this thinking process.
Coaches can use socratic questioning by asking probing questions about their client's unhelpful patterns
of thinking.
All right.
So hopefully the board is going to work and here he is.
All right.
I know what you're thinking.
No this is not Jesus.
This is not Santa Claus.
This is in fact Socrates the late great Socrates.
All right.
And the Socratic school of questioning I'm not sure if that still exists and today Socrates developed
the reputation for himself.
All those thousands of years ago for being an inquisitive kind of guy he would ask people tough questions
when people would give voice more often than not it's how they're feeling and what they're reflecting
upon and what they are thinking about.
Socrates would ask questions to evaluate the accuracy of people's thinking.
All right.
So as life coaches it goes without saying that this can become a very very helpful to for us especially
in the early stages and especially to help us through the process of getting better art and asking and
the kinds of questions that are going to encourage our clients to reflect upon their quality and the
accuracy of their thought life.
So the type of questions that Socrates would ask questions for clarification.
Excuse me can just get clear on exactly what you mean by that.
No you most likely watched or heard me a mask car a few questions of this nature it questions that probe
for purpose and sought.
So for what purpose what is your goal.
What are you trying to achieve here.
Questions like that when we ask questions and can bring absolute clarity bring perspective into a person's
life when they are on sure about why they're doing what they're doing and we just look at the positive
intention.
People were either going to be motivated by a negative intention or negative goal or a positive goal
or a positive intention so when we get clear that it helps our clients to make better and wiser decisions.
Questions of probe assumptions assumptions and a few examples are just giving you generalizations deletions
people were good people were bad all people were out to get me and no one loves me or no one not even
your mom.
All people wrote together me were all people all of the time.
Are you certain.
How do you know this is true.
All right questions like that can just help us to get to the root of that which is true.
Most people rely more heavily on their assumptions than upon truth confrontational questions.
It's about asking people questions are really going to provoke them to search for deeper answers.
Right.
Most people live on this we live live by sight.
Just think that what they see is what actually is but we know that this is very very rarely the case
questions to establish what's true.
Questions to challenge perspectives.
The only time we ever get stuck in life is when we're stuck in a perspective that isn't serving us when
we get stuck in a perspective that isn't given us a clear direction out of the perspective that we're
currently in.
And it's questions specialist critics styles of questions that could become our most valuable asset
our greatest ally as far as life could just so I want around this video up no.
And then the next I'm going to invite but Curran where we're going to simply just seat if we can identify
one thought pattern that Curran commonly subscribes to that isn't serving her.
And then we're just going to pull out a list of Socratic questions and we're going to interrogate it
and just see where the conversation goes.
No I'm not saying this is something that you really want to pull out in your life coaching process but
it's something that you do want to practice with friends family members either inside of your college
community or you know whatever people that you work with or even your kids.
We want to get really grounded in using questions like this.
So they become a lot more natural for us and a life coaching context with me.
Fantastic.
So I'll see you in the next clip.
We're going to invite back Curran for another demonstration.