[Devotional] IN HIS PRESENCE: Is your mind lying to you?

By Oke Chinye

Read: PROVERBS 4:23

Meditation verse:
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).

The human mind is powerful: It is the seat of affect (emotions), mood, thoughts, belief, perception, and memory. Your mind can be your greatest weapon for success or your biggest limitation for failure because it can lie to you. Cognitive distortions are how our mind makes us believe things that are not true. Here are a few of such lies:

Overgeneralisation: When you come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens just once, you expect it to happen repeatedly. Or you see a single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat. For instance, if get a poor grade on one paper in one semester, you conclude that you are a failure.

Personalisation: When you believe that everything others do or say is a direct and personal reaction to you. For instance, if a good friend of yours walks past you on the road without saying hello, you immediately attribute it to something you did or said, without considering that she may just be having a bad day.

Magnification or Catastrophising: When you expect disaster to strike, no matter what, or you imagine the absolute worst occurring. You may also exaggerate the impact of an insignificant occurrence such as a little mistake on your part.

Minimisation: When you downplay the importance of a positive comment or event or inappropriately shrink the magnitude of significant events until they appear tiny. For instance, if someone pays you a compliment, you downplay it.

Global Labelling: In global labelling, you generalise one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. Instead of describing an error in the context of a specific situation, you attach an unhealthy universal label. For example, when you say “I’m a loser” in a situation where you failed once at a specific task.
Cognitive distortions lead to mental health conditions like depression or anxiety. You need to renew your mind with the word of God. Meditate on and memorise scriptures that remind you of who you are and what you are capable of.

IN HIS PRESENCE is written by Dcns Oke Chinye (Founder, TRTM)
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IN HIS PRESENCE: A daily devotional of The Rock Teaching Ministry (TRTM)