Have you ever gone out with friends and you are having a great time then you knock over your cup of water? Or maybe say something that causes your friend to feel bad? I have.
The important question is how do you deal with it after the fact? Do you make a big deal about the little mistake? Do you convince yourself that your friend will never speak to you again? Or that you have to apologize for half an hour before they will forgive you? I do.
This thinking pattern is called Mental Filtering. It is where you hyper-focus on one aspect of an event; the spilled water or the misstatement. You convince yourself that the evening was a disaster because of the mistake you made. You know that your friends will never want to go out with you again.
To combat this thinking error you have to train yourself to look at the big picture. Instead of looking at this one moment think about the entire evening. Did the water get on anyone? Did it ruin any food? How did your friend react when you misspoke?
You might have hurt their feelings but how did the evening go after you apologized? Someone might have gotten wet from the spilled water but their clothes will dry. How did the rest of the evening go?
I know that it can be hard to zoom out and take a big picture look at the events. I want to fix everything and make sure that everyone is happy with me so I am very good at hyper-focusing. However, hyper-focusing on something distorts what we see.
When you are learning how to zoom out you may need to ask for help from others. Check in with a friend to see what they thought of the evening. Ask if they even remember what you said or did. Most of the time when I have done this the other person doesn’t even remember what I am talking about. It is amazing how something so huge to me doesn’t even register to someone else.
I would often ask my husband if I needed to apologize about something. Because I always felt like I needed to apologize I wasn’t sure if I really needed to or if it was just my filter. Asking his opinion helped me to learn when I really needed to apologize. It also helped me to see the big picture and not be so focused.
When you find yourself focusing on the bad remember to look at the big picture. Remember what you are focusing on isn’t the whole picture. Remember to zoom out and ask for help to see the whole picture.
