Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. We continue discussing the concept of cognitive distortions as discussed by Dr. Greenwald in the sefer Etzot V’Hadrachot
Mistake number one is thinking, “It’s imperative that I must be beloved by all, and that everything that I do should be accepted and agreed upon by all in my surroundings.”
And if I go in with that cognitive distortion, my life is obviously going to be miserable, because who can be loved by all, who can do something that's agreed upon by all?
Therefore, this is a fundamental mistake, because as we’ve said, it's unachievable. It's impossible to be beloved by all and to be accepted by all, because every person has a different outlook.
All those people that you want to like you all have different opinions, as our rabbis tell us in Masechet Berachot- just like people's faces are different, so too, their opinions and attitudes are different. I experience this quite often. At SIMHA, we have different training courses, and from time to time, we send out surveys. It’s so interesting to see how so many people have different opinions about the same speaker.
Some people say it's too fast, some people say it's too slow, some say it's just right. It's impossible to have a 100% approval rating.
If a person is stubborn and wants, with all his heart and strength, to be beloved by all, all day his thoughts are going to be focused on himself. Because of that, he's going to become a selfish person.
So his want to be beloved by all is actually going to backfire. We see this a lot of times with children in school. A child wants someone to be their friend and they try so hard, they bring them little gifts and trinkets and who knows what, in order to make them their friend. But the child looks at them like, “Layoff.” It also happens sometimes in the courting system, where people try too hard, and it backfires.
Of course, it's a wonderful thing to be beloved by people. But your job is not to search for that approval and appreciation.
This is the key point here. Your goal in life is not, “Let me do things so that I'm appreciated and approved of. Let me make a speech that everybody will like, Let me do say something that everyone will like.”
No, my job is to do what's right. Of course, as a religious Jew, what's right means what's right based on the Torah. We do acts of kindness, we love people with our heart and soul, we focus on being a Noten/a giver and not a Makabel/a taker.
Rabbi Dessler has a very long discussion on this.
This is one of the most fundamental, Middot qualifiers- Are you a giver or are you a taker? Of course, it's not a definitive yes or no answer.Everything is on a spectrum.
But if a person focuses on being a giver and not a taker, that will cause Hashem to love him, that will cause God’s to name to be beloved through him and, as it says, “the the honor will come in the end.”
Additionally, quite often our emotional wellness is tied to our Emunah. The Gemara in Masechet Yoma 38B says, “They will call you by your name, and they'll put you in your place, and from yours, they will give you.” This means that every person has his spot, every person has his mission, and you'll get there. And once you get there, you'll be beloved.
But it's not something that you can strive for, or specifically focus on- being beloved to all.
That’s cognitive distortion number one.
To be continued…