chapter five, part one

Chapter Five is pretty big. So I'm breaking it up into smaller chunks. Here is part one.

Chapter Five: Do-Nothingism: How to Beat It

We covered changing how you think in the previous chapter. You can also change how you act. You don't want to do anything when you're depressed, which is what we call the do-nothing feeling. You want to do nothing. And that causes problems.

Do-nothingism is caused by faulty logic (just like depression). The types of faulty logic are:

1) Hopelessness - life will never get better.

2) Helplessness - your mood appears to be beyond your control because it's influenced by outside factors

3) Overwhelming yourself - everything is too much! too hard! or you think you need to be doing other things instead of what you're doing so you don't finish anything.

4) Jumping to conclusions - "This is going to suck."

5) Self-labeling - "I'm a lazy person."

6) Undervaluing the rewards - the reward is not equal the effort, or disqualifying
the positive (see previous chapter's notes)

7) Perfectionism - setting inappropriate goals and standards

8) Fear of failure - overgeneralization - "If I fail at this, I'll fail at everything." OR product versus process orientation - parenting is a process. your child is the product. you are only responsible for the process, NOT the product.

9) Fear of success - lack of confidence leads you to hide under the table.

10) Fear of disapproval or criticism - leads you to hide under the table.

11) Coercion and resentment - "I should" and "I must" statements makes everything unpleasant

12) Low frustration tolerance - you assume success should be easy and then quit when it's not. Also known as Entitlement Syndrome - feeling entitled to an easy life and getting upset when reality does not conform to your fantasy.

13) Guilt and self-blame - frozen in conviction that you are bad or let others down.

There are several possible treatments for do-nothingism. But we'll cover those in the days to come, since it was 40 pages worth of material.