
January can a long stint if we're sharing our head with unfriendly thoughts....
It's the second week of January, and we may be wondering 'are we there, yet?!', twinkly lights are coming down, perhaps the novelty of resolutions are dulling and the weather's getting worse. This is often when the thoughts start to creep in....
This week I am giving a whistlestop of some basic ideas around thoughts and how to manage them so we can maintain the year we want and prevent self-sabotage!
5. Standing in the way of control

Henry Ford once said:
“Whether you think you can, or think you can't, you’re right”
Why all this talk of thoughts and challenging them? I bring in the concept of ‘internal
locus of control’, in a nutshell this is our internal set of beliefs around the degree to
which we can change our world as opposed to being at the mercy of external forces.
Embodying Ford's idea that, whilst we cannot control every aspect of our life, that by
training a keen eye and positive attitude to what we CAN change, helps us change up
the equation of our life for the better.
6. Your thoughts WILL try to sabotage you

Self-sabotage often starts by unchallenged inner views having a serious effect on our outer world
Our brain likes to save energy by automating all processes, this is often based of what
was true in the past but is NOT TRUE now. In psychology we call these ‘automatic
negative thoughts’ or ‘cognitive distortions’.
Unfortunately, thoughts inform actions, which reenforce feelings, which whip back
around to feed thoughts in a vicious cycle (see the cognitive triad). The good news is we
can practice recognizing and challenging these automatic thoughts and wrestle back
control of our life! (think going to the mental gym)
Here’s a list of commonly twisted thoughts
7. Bring FEAR to your thoughts

Distorted thoughts can warp the experience of life, but we can challenge them...
Often when we’re blocked in a goal, the root is one or more of the 4 below
F Fusion: Challenging thoughts or beliefs we hold internally that need to be challenged
E Excessive Goals: we picked goals that are too big or didn’t break them into parts
A Avoidance: of discomfort, conflict and/or change, amongst other factors
R Remoteness: goals are not ours and are actually remote from our own desires.
This comes from the school of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), of which
Russ Harris is a very prolific and accessible proponent of. His book ‘The Happiness Trap’
is very accessible and has many intuitive tools such as FEAR to help with blocks.

If we get to know our bad aspects intimately and understand their origin, they can be assets
8. Befriend bad habits
We all have bad habits to varying degrees and they prop up various billion dollar
industries due to their almost innate ability to withstand even the best of intentions and
reflections. I would invite you to think of good and bad habits as branches on the one
tree, both types are simply actions to meet a need. The value of good or bad only gets
labelled after the fact by our cognitive brains. I would invite you to be
#CuriousNotCritical and try engaging in some detective work around bad habits and ask:
· What benefit or secondary gain do they do for me? And
· When were these currently unhelpful habits useful for me?
Often these habits are simply a less helpful way of meeting a very natural need for
example:
Misuse of substances or food to deal with boredom or dissatisfaction in one’s life.
Abstinence may quell the symptoms of obvious suffering in the interim but the root
cause may be better met by engaging with more meaningful tasks such that the bad
habit is made redundant as opposed to being kept at bay.
Or consistently fobbing off your hobbies or gym to ‘catch up’ on work or get ahead of a
workload or tasks of others. On deeper enquiry perhaps we don’t want to relinquish to
rush of meeting deadlines so we keep low-self-esteem at bay, or continue to derive our
identity (learned at a younger age) to be useful. It could be indeed that we simply
unconsciously prefer to work in ‘safe areas’ such as workplaces for fear that we avoid
looking like clumsy beginners.
Everyone is so unique, and these are merely broad examples to prompt enquiry, therapy
and mindfulness are helpful tools for our own respective lines of enquiry. Ellen Langer
speaks quite well around this and how mindfulness can help us reframe and
recategorize phenomena more objectively.
If you have any thoughts or questions I would be interested in hearing from you and for more on this, please subscribe or follow me at https://www.instagram.com/lyrictherapy_dublin/.
Kevin O’Byrne
Psychotherapist (MIACP)
BA, H.Dip, MA.
Kevin O’Byrne is a counsellor/psychotherapist in private practice in Dublin City, as well as working for the City of Dublin Education Training Board providing counselling and psychological support to learners in post-primary settings. Additionally, he is an active musician and therapist to professionals in the creative industries in Ireland.
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