AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Cognitive Therapy's "Self-explanation" (no. 7) method explained DATE: 2:24 PM ----- BODY: Cognitive Therapy suggests "self-explanation" (no. 7) as a method for disputing irrational, core beliefs.

I understand what this means finally. Case in point...

One core personality bit that I'm trying to change is the way I interpret disagreements or teasing from other people. I had a conversation with someone last night that spurred me to feel very negative, and it was my internalized, habitualized belief that was causing the tension.

So, in my self-programming this morning, I vented in a methodological way. I explicated how, despite how I've been trying to accustom myself to haughty people, disagreements and criticism still viciously irritate me. I wrote in my diary all the emotions I felt, such as weakness, inferiority, and subservience.

By describing and laying out my core feelings, I could then re-framed my self-programming in such a way to accommodates those emotional qualms.

One re-framing was to change the terms from being "other-oriented" to being "me-oriented." I kept feeling subservient because I felt I was changing for other people's sake. Instead, I re-framed my self-improvement into a selfish activity: "I am changing for myself, my own benefit, not others. Ultimately, I bear the costs for being intolerant to other people"

A second re-framing was from "fixing my flaws" to "strengthening myself." Changing myself socially to meet other people's standards while others are not doing the same to me makes me feel like I'm a lame animal, trying to recover from my flaws. Therefore, I re-frame self-change as me bettering myself, not fixing a flaw. To help convince me that this was the right perspective, I reminded myself that I do have an inferiority complex. This complex creates a bias that makes me view myself in the harshest lights.

So by venting oven the belief, and why I still hold onto it, I was able to respond better to myself, and thus self-program more effectively.

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: core beliefs (from Cognitive Therapy, Basics and Beyond) DATE: 2:06 PM ----- BODY: I read some more of J.S. Beck's Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond

In order to change your core beliefs, she suggests any of the following methods

1. Socratic argumentation - dispute the irrational belief as if you were on a debate team
2. Behavior experimentation - test the irrational belief in the real world, and see if it holds up
3. Cognitive Spectrum - ex. it hurts me when others tease me, but if I tell myself, "at least I can trust them" then it makes the teasing less hurtful
4. Role-play rational/emotional selves - play a back n' forth scenario between your mind (which is trying to change your belief) and your heart (which is trying to hold onto the older belief)
5. Using others as a reference point - look at others with your new belief, and derive inspiration from them
6. As if - pretend as if your core belief was changed, what would you then do?
7. Self-explanation - vent yourself, and then try to reframe or redesign your belief-changing approach to suit it
8. Metaphors/Fables - use simple lessons or aphorisms (like Aesop's Fables) to dispute your irrational core belief

Unhelpful core beliefs also generally fall into two categories:

A. unlovability - ex. "I'm never good enough", "people hate me", and "I'm different"
B. helplesness - ex. "You can't be happy" and "nothing has meaning"

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: How Aesop can help you grow DATE: 2:52 PM ----- BODY: A personality is like a kitchen. Without the right utensils and ingredients, every meal is be bland and unsatisfying. Similarly, a kitchen can be unbalanced, such as my kitchen at home. At home, we are fed mostly rice and soup. Three thousand days of rice and soup, and your body and stomach will only think of rice and soup. Likewise, a personality that is shaped continuously in one direction will grow lopsided.

There are many ways that your personality can get stuck, like my diet of rice and soup:
- repeated biases from your parents
- a feedback loop with your friends (you choose friends that fit your personality, which then only amplify your personality)
- lifestyle selection bias (you choose to do things that fit your personality, which then, only amplify your personality)

If every interaction over every day is like an echo chamber, exposing you only to ideas and belief systems within your "comfort zone," after 20 years, you will find yourself as a cemented statue. In my case, I find myself with my wheel in the mud, as I get depressed, neurotic, and anal in situations that most people would not.

That which is flexible will not break.

In order to better stock my personality kitchen, I'm going to dig through Aesop's Fables. While these fables may seem like trivial kid's play, of these 82 stories, I guarantee that the majority are lessons you or I have not internalized. From vanity, to greed, to power, to tolerance, there is something to learn. Even these fables may not be enough, as they are from a Western perspective. Who knows what the Asians and Africans are cooking up.

(I got this idea of using fables to change personalities from Judith S. Beck's Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond. The theory is that a personality is founded on internalized core beliefs, and that metaphors or fables can be tapped to help change those beliefs.)

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Happiness can be measured DATE: 7:55 PM ----- BODY: I think happiness can be measured through self-examination. I've been trying this now, for the past four weeks. I take the following list:

POSITIVE FEELINGS

**future
faith
hope
optimism
trust

**present
awe
calm
confidence
ecstacy
flow
joy
passion
pleasure
zest

**past
contentment
fulfillment
pride
satisfaction
serenity

NEGATIVE FEELINGS

**future
dread
fear

**present
agony
angst
anxiety
boredom
depression
jealousy
dysphoria
discomfort
fear
frustration
hate
sadness
stress
tension

**past
dissatisfaction
embarassment
guilt
regret

Once a week, I score myself from 1 to 10 on every emotion, and assess what needs help on.

So far, I think it's working out well. I was able to assess problem areas and fix them over subsequent weeks. In addition, it's always surprising to myself how extreme some of my scores get.

It's in an excel spreadsheet right now, let's see how long I stick with this.

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Solving problems with the "pursuit of happiness" DATE: 4:05 PM ----- BODY: Having happiness as a goal seems to pose problems for people, as it does for me. There is a vast "learned helplessness" that makes people feel like they shouldn't be happy.

I think the strategy is to frame happiness as the following:
1) a means to an end
2) a measure of good performance in things that matter.

AREA 1

Happiness provides energy, encouragement, and a cooperative bent that are all useful for most productive goals. Pursuing happiness is therefore expedient.

AREA 2

Happiness is a wealth of positive feeling, and your goals are there because they make you feel positive. For example, altruism, success, sex, etc.. are all important to me because I know they make me feel good. Happiness is a measure of that good feeling. So by pursuing happiness, I'm asking myself to do all of the things that make me feel good.

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: positive emotions DATE: 6:23 PM ----- BODY: Positive emotion can be about the past, the present, or the future.

The positive emotions about the future include:
optimism
hope
faith
trust.

Those about the present include:
joy
ecstasy
calm
zest
enthusiasm
pleasure
flow

The positive emotions about the past include:
satisfaction
contentment
fulfillment
pride
serenity

(via Seligman)

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Persuading yourself to change DATE: 12:48 AM ----- BODY: I discovered a resource on social influence, which led me to this nice list of 16 Influence Strategies.

These can be applied to yourself in order to get your will to unify the rest of your unwill to do what it needs to be done.

For self-programming, these tactics, combined with the ones suggested by cognitive therapy, can help you change your personality. ----- --------