How it works
When you tell yourself you are done, you are at about 40 percent.
That gap between the thought and the actual limit is where the work happens. Here is how we get into it.
The 40 percent rule
The mind quits well before the body or the marriage or the career does. When everything in you says stop, you are nowhere near empty. You are at roughly forty percent, and a thought is telling you it is a hundred.
This is not a motivational line. It is the on-ramp. Because if the thought is wrong about the limit, the thought is worth examining, and that is exactly what cognitive behavioral therapy does.
Thoughts drive the response. CBT surfaces the thought and reframes it.
What CBT looks like in a session
CBT is the modality I work in. It is structured, it is practical, and it gives you something to use between sessions.
- 01
Catch the thought
Something happens. Before the reaction, a thought runs, usually fast and usually unexamined. We slow it down until you can hear it in your own voice.
- 02
Test it
Is it true? Is it the whole story? Would you accept that reasoning from anyone else? Most of the thoughts that run us do not survive being asked out loud.
- 03
Reframe it
Not positive thinking. Accurate thinking. We build the version of the thought that holds up, and you practice using it when it counts.
- 04
Act on it
The reframe means nothing until you do something differently. You leave with something to try, and we look at what happened next time.
Resilience is built, not issued
Resilience is not a personality trait you either got or missed. It is the result of going through hard things on purpose and surviving them with your eyes open. Every time you walk into the storm instead of away from it, the next storm costs you less.
That is why avoidance is so expensive. Running from the weather keeps you in it longer and teaches you nothing. Walking through it is shorter and it compounds.
Finite and infinite games
A finite game has fixed rules and it ends. Someone wins, someone loses. A ball game. A bid. An argument you are trying to win.
An infinite game is not built to end. It is built to keep going and to maximize the number of winners. Marriage is an infinite game. So is family. So is raising children.
Most of the damage I see comes from playing a finite game inside an infinite one. You win the argument and lose ground in the marriage. Once you can tell which game you are in, the right move usually becomes obvious.
What changes
The reaction gets slower and the choice gets bigger. You notice the thought before it becomes a raised voice or a closed door. You have the hard conversation instead of scheduling it for never, and you have it well.
People around you notice before you do. That is normal. Competence usually shows up in other people’s experience of you first.
I cannot promise you an outcome, and I would not trust anyone who did. I can tell you what the work is and that it asks something of you.
Next step
Start at 40 percent.
Call, or send the form. First conversation is about fit, not paperwork.
If calling is more than you want to do today, text.