The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "The Thoughts in Your Head".

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Thoughts in Your Head
THINKING SKILLS

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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Copyright Manage Train Learn 2020
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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
Because thinking comes naturally to all of us, few of us
bother to train our minds to think. We tend therefore to
think that the thoughts we have are normal, natural and the
same as other people. But this is not true. For much of the
time our thoughts let us down. They are confused,
disjointed and reactive. They don't have to be. Through
training our thoughts to be positive, focused and assertive,
we can at a stroke improve the quality of our thinking.

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
UNTRAINED THINKING
When we treat the brain as an unknown quantity that we
cannot manage, then our untrained thinking is likely to
consist of all or some of the following:
1. Doubts, fears and catastrophising: the phenomenon of
letting one bad thought colour the rest of our thinking
2. Fantasising: imagining the worst is likely to happen and
directing all our thoughts to planning for it
3. Self-deprecating: letting mistakes and failures lead us to
believe we're not good enough
4. Remembering the worst: worrying about something we
did in the past that we can't change
5. Confusion: having no clear goals or plans
6. Reactive thinking: thinking in habitual or limiting ways
7. Distraction: the inability to concentrate and direct our
thoughts at will.

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
CATASTROPHISING
In an untrained person, doubts and fears can form a large
part of what passes for thinking. Doubts and fears start
small but can feed on themselves until they take over. It's
what happens when having left home, the thought occurs
that we left the gas or electric on: very soon all our thinking
is swamped by this one fear of catastrophe.
1. What if....?
2. Maybe I did....
3. It's certainly possible...
4. I'm no longer sure....
5. It must be true...
The antidote to doubt is to keep a level head. We can do this
by isolating the fearful thought and disowning it until we
have more information. We can also remind ourselves that
things are never as bad as they seem at the time.

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
FANTASISING
When we fantasise, we let our thoughts run away with us. In
the worst situation, we imagine something awful that might
happen and then direct all our thoughts to how we might
deal with it.
A woman is driving along the motorway at night. Her
thoughts start to race:
"What if I get a puncture on the motorway? I'll have to stop
and walk through the dark to the nearest garage. Then I'll
have to ask someone to come out and fix the tyre. They're
bound to charge the earth at this time of night. They're
bound to look down their nose at me as well. What a
nerve!"
Just then she arrives at the garage, still thinking these
thoughts, fills up her tank, and as she goes to pay her bill,
blurts out to the astonished cashier:
"...and you can keep your bloody jack as well."

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
SELF-DEPRECATING
It is estimated that up to 80% of us suffer from low self-
esteem. The self-talk of our thoughts constantly tells us that
we are not up to the mark.
1. I'm not clever enough
2. I'm not rich enough
3. I'm not fit enough
4. I'm not qualified enough
5. I'm not lucky enough.
Self-deprecating in this way creates a self-fulfilling cycle: we
believe we're not as good as others, we therefore do
nothing about it and, sure enough, others beat us to it thus
proving what we believed all along.

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
REMEMBERING THE WORST
We have all experienced the awful sinking feeling of
recalling things we did that were embarrassing and clumsy
and wishing we'd said something else instead. The French
call this "l'esprit de l'escalier", the wit of the staircase: as we
climb the stairs at the end of the night, we are able to
replace all those embarrassing things we said and did at the
dinner table with witty and perceptive ones instead. We
programme a critical "if-only" kind of thinking into our
minds.
The antidote to "l'esprit de l'escalier" is to put things into a
different perspective:
1. tell yourself that other people are unlikely to have been
as embarrassed as you were. In fact, most people won't
even remember your faux pas.
2. if it upsets you that much, rather than worrying about
it, go and tell the person about it in an amusing way.

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
CONFUSION
A good exercise to find out what you habitually think about
is to take time out to sit and relax and jot down the kind of
thoughts you automatically get.
A series of such "soil sampling" usually produces a mixture
of thoughts: we have thoughts about things on our mind,
thoughts about pressing needs such as "I'm hungry" and
thoughts coming in because of external interference.
For many people the content of what normally goes on in
their heads is jumbled and confused.
"Life does not consist mainly - or even largely - of facts and
happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that
is forever blowing through one's head." (Mark Twain)

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
DISTORTED THINKING
There are seven common types of distorted thinking:
1. Habits: ingrained prejudices that are triggered off by set
stimuli
2. Blaming: making others answerable for what we think
3. Procrastination: putting off what we think until we have
more information.
4. Compulsive and obsessive reactions: fixed ways of
thinking.
5. Mustabations: thoughts of what we must, should or
ought to do . They induce feelings of guilt and shame when
things aren't the way they should be.
6. Black-and-white thinking: the belief that things must
either be wholly good or wholly bad
7. Unrealistic expectations: expecting others to live up to
your expectations.

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Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
DISTRACTION
The human brain connects to 24,000 ear fibres, 500,000
touch detectors, 200,000 temperature sensors and 4 million
pain sensors. It is no wonder that with this capacity to
absorb information, we find it hard to concentrate on just
one thing at a time.
Distracted thinking occurs when...
1. instead of focusing, we let our minds wander
2. instead of planning what we're going to say, we say the
first thing that comes into our heads
3. instead of getting to the point, we let our minds go
walkabout
4. we start off with one thought but lose the thread
5. we do not know the purpose of our thinking
6. we try too hard to explain ourselves and say too much.

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
YO-YO THINKING
Some people have a tendency to swing from a positive
mood to a negative one in what we might call "yo-yo
thinking": one minute up, the next minute down.
The story is told of the farmer whose ox died and, in panic,
went to the wise man of the village and wailed: "I will be
ruined. Isn't this the worst thing that has ever happened to
me?" The wise man replied: "Maybe so, maybe not". A few
days later, the farmer caught a stray horse on his land and
used it to plough the fields in half the time he would have
taken with the ox. He returned to the wise man and said:
"Isn't this the best thing that has ever happened to me?"
Again, the wise man replied: "Maybe so, maybe not". Three
days later, while still overjoyed with his good fortune, the
horse threw the farmer's son into a ditch and broke his leg.
Moral: Things are rarely as good - or as bad - as we think.

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
THE SELF-IMAGE
The self-image is the key player in our thoughts. To
understand its importance we need to turn Descartes'
maxim "I think, therefore I am" back-to-front into: I AM
WHAT I THINK.
Whatever we think we are, we are. Our self-talk creates our
self-image. This is because our thoughts are always directed
to proving what we want to believe. So, if we think we are
stupid at maths, our thoughts will automatically seek
evidence that proves it and ignore evidence to the contrary.
Similarly, if we think we are quite clever at maths, we will
seek evidence to prove it. So, the key to releasing the
potential of our thinking is to build a confident self-image in
which our thinking is a partner in describing who we see
ourselves to be.
"Life consists of what a man is thinking about all day." (Ralph
Waldo Emerson)

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
AWARENESS
The best way to counter fears and doubts is to anchor our
thinking in the present. Nagging thoughts about the past are
wasted: we cannot change what's happened. Nagging
thoughts about the future are equally wasted: we cannot be
certain what the future will bring.
Three questions we can usefully ask to focus our awareness
in the present are:
1. What am I thinking right now?
2. What do I want for myself right now?
3. What thoughts will help me achieve what I want right
now?
Paradoxically, one of the best ways to think creatively in the
present is to let go of our conscious thinking and go into
free-flow thinking.
"Thinking is the hardest work of all. Perhaps that's why so
few of us choose to do it." (Henry Ford)

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
POSITIVE RE-FRAMING
Negative thinking has been shown to make the cells in our
brains shrink and die, whereas positive thinking can actually
make them grow.
Studies into the effects of stress on the human body have
demonstrated that the neurons in the hippocampus (a part
of the brain responsible for day-to-day memory and new
learning) can shrink.
Dendrites, the connecting wires between brain cells, have
been known to permanently shrivel in response to negative
thinking. On the other hand, love, affection and happy
moods can increase our ability to solve intellectual and
practical problems.
The positive thinker's answer to: "Can you play the piano as
well as Barenboim?" is not: "No, I can't," but: "Not yet."

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Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
EXPECTING THE BEST
Most of us find it easy to worry, but we invariably worry
about the worst that might happen to us. By changing our
thought direction, we can replace worrying about the worst
into worrying about the best.
Worrying positively has the same characteristics as negative
worrying: nagging thought patterns; visualising ourselves in
the situation; playing and replaying every possible angle;
hearing what we will say, feeling what we will feel, saying to
ourselves what we will say.
Olympic javelin thrower Steve Backley practised positive
worry when he sprained his ankle four weeks before a
major competition. Instead of giving up, he mentally
practised his throws from his armchair until he had made
over a thousand throws. When the competition came,
Backley made the throws he had mentally made and won.

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Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
CLEAR GOALS
Clear goals are an antidote to confused thinking. Instead of
having an assortment of jumbled thoughts that we can't
make sense of, we can align our thoughts to our goals.
Goals exist across any time scale we care to think about. We
can have goals for the next half hour, for the rest of the day,
the week, the month, the year, a lifetime. Thinking in this
way is like creating a set of Russian dolls in our thoughts.
Immediate goals fit in to the day's goals, which fit in to the
week's goals, which fit in to the month's goals and so on.
An example of muddled thinking: a company purchased a
set of laptop computers for their staff to use while out
travelling. Fearing they might be stolen, the managers came
up with a well-thought out plan to permanently attach them
to their employees' desks!

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Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
ASSERTIVE THINKING
Assertive thinking is thinking that...
1. is open and honest
2. is owned
3. is aware of our rights and responsibilities
4. expresses what we think, even when we have no
definitive view
5. tells it how it is
6. is not bound by the way we always thinks
7. is aware of our prejudices and biased perceptions
8. admits to our fearful and negative thoughts but, when
given a choice, makes positive decisions about
thoughts.
Assertive thinking is honest and direct because it expresses
what is going on in all three regions of our brain: the
emotional brain, how we feel about something; the thinking
brain, what our views are; and the instinctive brain, what we
would like to do.

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Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
YOUR BRAIN WANTS SUCCESS
For much of the 20th century, it was thought that the brain
was a trial and error mechanism: we tried something and if
it worked, fine. If it didn't work, as at some point it
wouldn't, we could learn from the error and instruct, or re-
programme, our brains to do what was right in future.
We now know differently.
The brain is not a trial and error mechanism but a trial and
success mechanism. It actually seeks out not error but
success. Error is not incorrect or faulty programming but
simply deviation from the correct course.
We set our goals. We try, succeed, succeed, succeed,
succeed, succeed, make an error, check, adjust, succeed,
succeed...

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Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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The Thoughts In Your Head
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn