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Tip 81 Letting External Cues Affect your Thinking
Internal cues are related to perception is the way that we allow internal cues to affect our perception of events, of ourselves, and of other people. We will often confuse internal cues with fact. If we meet someone new and have poor internal cues - if we are stressed by our day, for example, and resent being introduced to yet another person - then we tend to perceive that person more harshly. This can lead to our own low self esteem and cause us to turn even more to our addiction.
If we are in a good mood and in a positive emotional state, isnt it also true that we tend to give more people the benefit of the doubt and we generally get along better with everyone? Similarly, isnt it also true that when we are in a good emotional state, external factors are perceived very differently? Consider the temperamental fax machine at the office. Isnt it true that when we are in a bad emotional state we tend to think oh, great here is something else going wrong today while when we are in a good emotional state, a mess with the fax machine barely seems to faze us? Without consciously realizing it, we let our internal cues affect our perceptions. Advertisers use this logic all the time. They use visual cues and sound in commercials to put us into a positive emotional state and then flash pictures of a product. With enough repetition, we come to associate the positive state with the product. This is what the recovery process is all about when it comes to addiction. |
