XTC: Cognitive Distortions

Topic: Cognitive Distortions

We will be talking about the The 10 Cognitive Distortions, and reflecting on the thoughts that drive us and if they are potentially making you unhappy. Read more about the 10 Cognitive Distortions at https://feelinggood.com/2014/01/06/secrets-of-self-esteem-2-negative-and-positive-distortions/.

The focus should be on thoughts that reflect your opinion of yourself. Factual statements like "I don't know Scala" should be discarded. Thoughts like "I should be better at Scala" are the ones you want to go after, especially if they make you stressed or frustrated.

The rough agenda will be:

• Get into groups to collect together "Negative Thoughts"
• See what Cognitive Distortions match up
• Think about the positive and negative effects of the thoughts
• Now shake off the distortions and rewrite the thoughts, whilst preserving the positive effects!

Between now and the session, if you jot down any negative thoughts you have then it will give you better examples to work with.

Thanks to Edward Yue Shung Wong for proposing this topic and running the session!

About XTC

The eXtreme Tuesday Club (XTC) is London's oldest agile meetup, and has been meeting since 1999. Initially the meetup was focused on discussing Extreme Programming (XP), but it has expanded to include anything XP, agile, lean, or the larger context in which we do software development activities.

We welcome all software development newbies, practitioners, and experts to discuss topics of interest over drinks.

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