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Test Your Thinking
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"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise."--Proverbs 12:15
DISPUTING MADE EASY: First Question Then Answer
It is important in cognitive psychotherapies such as Empowerment Counseling (EC), Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Cognitive Therapy (CT), and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) to learn to examine your thinking.
- This process can be called many things.
- It is often called one of these four:
- questioning
- challenging
- disputing
- testing
- It is often called one of these four:
This page is designed to teach a simplified form of this testing.
3 KINDS OF QUESTIONS, CHALLENGES, DISPUTES, TESTS
There are basically three kinds of disputes:
1) Practical
2) Factual
3) Logical
3 SIMPLE QUESTIONS
You can easily use the three kinds with these easy questions:
1) Does it help?
2) Is it true?
3) Does it make sense?
3 SIMPLE ANSWERS
You complete the testing process by answering the three questions:
1) No it hurts.
2) No it is a lie.
3) No it is foolish.
EXAMPLES FOR 3 QUESTIONS
1) Does it help me to think they are rotten?
2) Is it true that they are rotten?
3) Does it make sense that they are rotten?
EXAMPLE FOR 3 ANSWERS
1) No, it hurts by allowing me to behave uncaringly and poorly thus increasing conflict.
2) No, only some of their behavior is rotten NOT their being.
3) No, just because they did bad that cannot make them bad.
SIMPLY
Now, when you want to test your thinking simply ask and answer the three questions. Persistently practice this and you will find it helps your thinking, feeling, and behaving. Happy working!
DISPUTING MADE EASY: First Question Then Answer
DISPUTE 3 AREAS
1) What it is now.
2) What it will be.
3) What it will cause.
IRRATIONAL
The irrational has 3 primary causes:
1) biological causes
2) conditioning causes
3) habit causes
Thus, you seek the irrational rather than the rational because you are naturally prone to do so, because you are trained to do so, and because you have the habit of doing so.
DISPUTE & IRRATIONAL
At first blush it appears that you are disputing the irrational.
However, the irrational will never become the rational.
Rather, you are awakening, empowering, and encouraging the rational to take charge instead of the irrational when you dispute.
You are giving your self reasons to switch, to shift from the irrational way to a rational when when you dispute.
There is no conversion of the irrational to the rational.
If you wait for the irrational to agree, you will wait forever.
"Do not believe in something solely because someone has told you so, or tradition has it, or because many others do. Test for yourself, experience for yourself."--Kalama Sutta
Test and Verify
QUOTATIONS VARIOUS SOURCES
"A fool is only a fool because he won't see he is a fool."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."--James Joyce
"Failure doesn't have anything to do with your intrinsic value as a person."--Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 206
"When receiving correction, the wise seeks to learn and the fool seeks to justify with excuses."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction:"--Proverbs 3:11
"Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die."--Proverbs 15:5
"For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."--Hebrews 12:6
"If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?"--Hebrews 12:7
"But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons."--Hebrews 12:8
"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism."--Norman Vincent Peale
"By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit."--Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 194. Order A Guide to Rational Living
"If we eliminated all errors, we would also eliminate much discovery, art, insight, learning, and creativity that results from facing errors."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"Ask a question and you're a fool for three minutes; do not ask a question and you're a fool for the rest of your life."--Chinese proverb
SCRIPTURE ON COUNSELING
"A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:"--Proverbs 1:5
"Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety."--Proverbs 11:14
"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise."--Proverbs 12:15
"Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil: but to the counsellors of peace is joy."--Proverbs 12:20
"Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established."--Proverbs 15:22
"Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end."--Proverbs 19:20
"Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war."--Proverbs 20:18
"Take counsel, execute judgment; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that wandereth."--Isaiah 16:3
"Extol not thyself in the counsel of thine own heart; that thy soul be not torn in pieces as a bull [straying alone.]"--Ecclesiasticus 6:2
"As timber girt and bound together in a building cannot be loosed with shaking: so the heart that is stablished by advised counsel shall fear at no time."--Ecclesiasticus 22:16
"Give not over thy mind to heaviness, and afflict not thyself in thine own counsel."--Ecclesiasticus 30:21
"A man of counsel will be considerate; but a strange and proud man is not daunted with fear, even when of himself he hath done without counsel."--Ecclesiasticus 32:18
"And let the counsel of thine own heart stand: for there is no man more faithful unto thee than it."--Ecclesiasticus 37:13
"Let reason go before every enterprize, and counsel before every action."--Ecclesiasticus 38:33
"Gold and silver make the foot stand sure: but counsel is esteemed above them both."--Ecclesiasticus 40:25
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