5 Destructive patterns that can send you down the wrong path in life

The human mind is wonderful and powerful, but it’s far from perfect.  There are several common judgment errors that it’s prone to making. See a few of that can cause destructive patterns in your own thinking and send you spiraling down the wrong path.

1. Only taking credit for positive outcomes. This destructive thinking pattern occurs when we take full credit for our successes, but deny responsibility for our failures. in order for a person to grow emotionally, they must be willing to take full responsibility for all of their actions and outcomes – successes and failures alike.

2. Believing we are immune to temptation. We have far less control over our impulsive desires than we often believe. Sex, food, and drug addictions are extreme examples of this.  Many addicts believe they can quit anytime they want, but in reality they are simply lying to themselves.  But you don’t have to be an addict to be vulnerable to temptation. Lots of smart people end up impulsively giving in to temptation simply because it’s the easiest way to get rid of it. Restraining from impulsive behavior in the face of temptation is not easy; it takes a great deal of self-control.  So be careful, because when we have an inflated sense of control over our impulses, we tend to overexpose ourselves to temptation, which in turn promotes the impulsive behavior we want to avoid.

3. Rebelling simply to prove personal freedom. Although more common in teenagers, this thinking fallacy can affect people of any age. It’s basically a person’s urge to do something they have been told not to do, for fear that their freedom of choice is being taken away from them.  This person may not even want to do whatever they are doing to rebel; however, the simple fact that they are not supposed to do it motivates them to do so anyway. The tactic of reverse psychology is a commonly used method of exploiting this thinking fallacy in others.

4. Judging a person’s capabilities based solely on the way they look. This happens thousands of times a day worldwide when one person assumes something about another person based on their immediate appearance. For example, someone might see a tall, well groomed man in his early fifties, wearing a business suit, and instantly assume he is successful and reliable, even though there is zero concrete evidence to support this assumption. You can’t judge a book by its cover.

5. Trying to diminish losses by continuing to pursue a previous failure. This is a thinking fault that motivates us to continue to support a previously unsuccessful endeavor. We justify our decision to continue investing in this failed endeavor based on our cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the cost, starting today, of continuing to pursue it outweighs the expected benefit.  The logical thing to do would be for us to cut our losses and change our course of action.  However, due to the sunk costs we have already invested, we feel committed to the endeavor, so we invest even more time, money and energy into it, hoping that our additional investment will reverse the outcome.  But it never will.