Change Your Life with CBT

Chapter 4

Tracking and taming your ‘thinking errors’

‘Our life is what our thoughts make of it.’

Marcus Aurelius

Remember Eeyore? The gloomy old donkey friend of Winnie the Pooh who lives in the Hundred Acre Wood, with a sign outside his house announcing: Eeyore’s Gloomy Place: Rather Boggy and Sad? Eeyore’s always moaning ‘It doesn’t matter anyway’ or ‘Everything happens to Eeyore’, in his black-comedic tones. Of course, Eeyore is clearly an exaggerated character – and caricature – but haven’t we all met someone like him? Maybe we even recognise a little of ourselves in his deliberate pessimism, where he always sees the glass half-empty, rather than half-full? Naturally, Eeyore’s a great foil to the happy old Pooh, living his carefree life ...