Stinking Thinking On Relationships
By Nina Atwood
Explanatory thought: how do you explain the world and people around you to yourself? As the events of our lives unfold, they don’t happen in a vacuum. We are wired as thinking beings to interpret those events in some way in order to make sense of our lives. One of the things we tend to reflect on the most is relationships. Here’s the rub – the kind of explanatory thought we have about past relationships tends to strongly effect how successful we are in our future relationships.
Negative explanatory thought on relationships - or “stinking thinking” – sounds something like this. “Well, it’s no big surprise that that didn’t work out. I’ve never had good luck in relationships, and besides, I’m not even sure I want one. I don’t see many happy couples around me, and everyone knows the divorce rate is incredibly high, so why bother? What is the point, when all you get is a broken heart? I’ll just focus on my career and my friends and that will be just fine.”
Walking around with that kind of thought process, how open do you appear to others? How open are you? How willing are you to take that “leap of faith” and give a new relationship a chance to work?
One of the signs of recovery from past losses is the ability to re-create your thoughts about relationships. With positive explanatory thought you say something like this to yourself, “It’s true I’ve had my heart broken in the past, that things haven’t worked out the way I wanted. But I do see happy couples, because I look for them, and so I know it’s possible. My goal is to have an open heart while being very discerning so that I don’t sabotage myself by making stupid choices. My past experiences have taught me a lot, and I will use what I’ve learned to have better, more loving and balanced relationships in the future.”
The opposite of Stinking Thinking is positive psychology, a powerful new focus on how we function as human beings. Turns out that when we consciously look for ways to experience and reflect joy, our lives and our relationships work. Positive psychology doesn’t mean being Pollyanna, insisting on good cheer when it’s not authentic. Instead, it means that we make better sense of the events of our lives when we self-talk about what we’ve learned and what can be better ahead.
Entry Filed under: Personal Growth,Relationships
