1. Rethinking the Little Picture
Chapter 8
Rethinking the Little Picture
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. Rethinking the Way You View Stressors
Illogical thinking about potential stressors and our ability to cope with them is the single greatest cause of stress today
Blowing things out of proportion
Misunderstanding the potential consequences

3. Becoming More Logical and Optimistic in Our Thinking
Most of our stress is caused by what we think about things
Stressors are just “potential stressors” until we tell ourselves that we can’t cope with them
The first step in controlling stress is controlling illogical thinking

4. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
Underlying premise: People or things do not cause us stress—our illogical beliefs and irrational self-talk do
REBT techniques revolve around
understanding our illogical beliefs
replacing them with more rational thoughts

5. Using Seligman’s Learned Optimism to Think More Logically
Seligman’s ABCDE model for coping with stress and emotional problems is based on a person’s “explanatory style”
Certain explanatory styles are more stressful than others
Pessimism is central to a stressful explanatory style
Key to managing stress is learning to be more optimistic

6. 5-Step Process for Rethinking Anger
Acknowledge that you are angry and identify the response
Accept your anger (Morita)
Target the source of your anger
Dispute the illogical beliefs
Shirt your attention off your angry thoughts
ROAD RAGE
Continues after the event.

7. Working With Your Attention
One of the best ways to slow our pace and change our perspective on life is to slow our thinking down
Kabat-Zinn (2005) invented the Mindfulness-based approach to stress management: Be fully in the present

8. Developing Mindfulness
Two kinds of open meditation:
Formal mindfulness meditation: a type of mindfulness meditation training implemented over 8 weeks and designed to have people practice 45 minutes per day
Informal mindfulness meditation: the application of mindful behavior into daily experiences

9. Potential Problems With Multitasking
It can cause unnecessary trouble for yourself and others
It can become your unintentional standard operating procedure and you don’t realize it