MIND READING

In my opinion mind-reading is the most common thinking errors in which we engage almost every day. You probably recognise statements like 'She thinks I'm an idiot", "They thought I am useless", "He thinks he is the center of attention" etc. We are simply making assumptions about other people, their thoughts and intentions all the time. The problem is that most of the time we make assumptions that people are forming negative conclusions about us.

We leap to conclusions about other people's motives and attitudes on the basis of very little hard evidence. We are especially inclined to do this when those motives and attitudes affect us directly. People who's self-esteem is not that high especially engage in this kind of thinking pattern.

Lets look at the examples like these:

A thought: "She completely ignored me in the shop today" - we are quick to jump to these kind of conclusions when a person we know didn't acknowledge us in a public place for example.
True reason: She never saw you in the shop. Why can't we just seek for reasons instead of assuming the worst and causing ourselves all sorts of problems?

A thought: "He thinks I'm unattractive, because my teeth are crooked."
True reason: "Nice woman - if only I wasn't married.."

We take our own negative opinions about ourselves (which we define as facts) and we believe that others are in agreement with us. The trouble here is that when we make these kind of assumptions we leave ourselves exposed to all kinds of misunderstandings and paranoid projections.

The fact of the matter is that we have no way of thinking for certain what another person is thinking unless they choose to tell us!