Padraig O'Morain's guide to managing life
Do you own a magic wand? Even if you don't, you probably know a few little conjuring tricks. The most common of these are mind-reading and fortune-telling. Both are useful for survival and for getting along in life generally.
If you're an eskimo and I want to sell you a fridge I'm going to have to do a little mind-reading. I'm going to have to assume you're thinking you don't really need a fridge because you are, after all, an eskimo.
So I might extol the virtues of being able to store all your food in one place and about that useful light that comes on when you open the door. After all, it can get dark in an igloo - heck, you could even use it to light up your living room.
So mind-reading is really useful - but it has its limitations. If you are about to walk down a dark alley and you see a chap lingering in the shadows, you'd better not trust your life to your mind-reading skills, unless you happen to be his mother.
Ultimately, mind-reading is guessing. So long as you remember that you're okay. Forget it and you're in trouble.
You've brought your nearest and hopefully dearest out for dinner. As she sits down at the table she frowns. You assume she thinks you've chosen a really rotten place so you sigh with disappointment. She notices the sigh and she assumes you don't want to be there with her in the first place. Meal consumed in silence.
Maybe she frowned because she was thinking about a guilt trip her mother had laid on her earlier that day about not coming over for Sunday dinner. Nothing to do with you at all, and an evening ruined because your guess was wrong.
The only way to handle mind-reading is to realise that it involves guessing and that there's only one way to find out what the other person is thinking: ask them.
Fortune-telling is thinking you know what's going to happen next. Just like mind-reading it can be useful.
If, every time you have invited her to dinner, Aunt Eunice has got drunk and started a row, then it is reasonable to forecast that if you invite her to dinner next week she will get drunk and start a row. So, unless you like that sort of thing, don't invite her.
Trouble starts if you fail to realise this sort of fortune-telling is just guesswork and if you ignore evidence or the possibility that you might be wrong.
If you go to Shelbourne Park and assume at the start of the evening that with all those races on the card you are bound to win money, then you are engaging in a type of fortune-telling which ignores the evidence.
Sometimes fortune-telling involves an "if-then" type of thinking: if I ask for help then people will know I'm weak and they'll kick me when I'm down. If I ask I will be refused. If I seek I will not find.
So beware of the kind of fortune-telling which imprisons you and which could imprison your family too, if you refuse to listen to what they want because you "know" it will turn out wrong.
Fortune-telling and mind-reading are among the mental habits which cause us a lot of trouble and which were identified by Dr Aaron Beck, one of the fathers of cognitive-behavioural therapy.
Remember that fortune-telling and mind-reading are part of how we think but that, in the end, they're just guesswork. Remembering that alone could save you a lot of hassle in your daily life.
Guesses not gospel
The assumptions we make about what other people think or what is going to happen next influence our emotions and our behaviour. Two of the most common sources of influential assumptions are:
• Mind-reading: assuming we understand what the other person is thinking.
• Fortune-telling: assuming that we know what will happen next.
It's important to realise these are guesses and not gospel. To know what someone else is thinking you need to ask. To find out what happens next you need to wait or at least to look at the evidence.
Weblink:http://www.mind.org uk/Information/Booklets/Making+sense/MakingsenseCBT.htm