>> Passage. Jason Kottke summed it up nicely: “… a tiny game that takes 5 minutes or an entire lifetime to play. It’s much better if you play it once and then read the creator’s statement. I didn’t know a game (and such a tiny one at that) could be so poignant.” Oh, and how poignant it is.
>> NKOTB Reunion! If you know what NKOTB stands for, then you and I are in the same age demographic. I honestly was never a fan, though “The Right Stuff” was kinda catchy. (Is that incriminating information?)
>> Natalie Dee. Her artwork is cute. I particularly like the pancakes shirt, though a co-worker of mine who received the shirt as a gift told me that the pancakes highlight the chest area a bit too much. “‘Look at my pancakes’ takes on a whole new meaning,” she commented.
>> Graph Paper. Many, many variants. Customizable. Free. It’s a little overwhelming.
>> Cognitive distortions. A reader and I were recently corresponding about these thinking patterns that can adversely affect mood. Being mindful and aware of what you are thinking helps evade these distortions. Thinking about thinking (metacognition?) has its utility, though one must also be mindful of not spending all of one’s time in one’s head. You can miss a lot of life that way.
31 Jan 2008 |
Thinking about cognitive distortions and wondering if it offers a useful way to think about relationships. For example, I tend to “spend time in my head” analyzing my thoughts and patterns of behaviour to a much larger extent than my husband. One of the reasons I fell in love with him is his ability to enjoy life without getting too stuck analyzing everything. Admittedly, I think about what he’s thinking about thinking in order to try to understand it better. ;->
Comment by Gwen | 31 Jan 2008 @ 8:26pm
Emotional reasoning - Making decisions and arguments based on how you feel rather than objective reality.
I think that this seemingly linchpin of “cognitive therapy” is misleading and a cognitive distortion, itself. Feeling is not “not reality.” On the other hand, objective reality is rather elusive, for example, given all the cognitive distortions available (many more than those in the list, given here). There is left brain thinking and right brain thinking. Either or both can be distorted, or clear and in touch with reality. I know of numerous “all or nothing” sorts of generalizations that are patently false and rather dangerous, sometimes. This one about the value-less-ness of decisions based in feeling is right up there (determined, of course, in my most objective thinking mode).
Comment by Don | 3 Feb 2008 @ 9:47am