In Step Ten, on page 84, we’re asked to watch out for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.
The last two are clearly internal and refer both to belief and thought. The first two could obtain at the level of belief, thought, or behavior.
At the level of thought, there are a number of patterns that fall into the above four categories.
Sometimes it’s not self-evident that a thinking pattern is undesirable. Unless I know what bad mental habits to watch out for, I won’t ask God to remove them and resolutely turn my thoughts elsewhere.
Here are some forms wrong thinking take:
- Pre-playing future (usually fearful) scenarios, including permutations. The dry run: mentally pre-performing certain actions or activities. Cross-examination (as if by a police officer or lawyer). Verdict giving (as if by a judge).
- Criminal justice: imagining how someone will be punished.
- Self-flagellation.
- Conviction: imagining how one would explain something to someone to convince them you’re right.
- Persuasion: imagining how one would explain something to someone to persuade them to act a certain way.
- Fantasizing about a particular action or activity.
- Fantasizing about a different life.
- Nostalgia for a particular action, activity, or past life.
- ‘What if’: imagining what life would be like if a different course had been taken.
- Sniper: mentally attacking any person, institution, or situation that crosses the mind.
- Eeyore: adopting a gloomy, despairing, or defeatist attitude to any person, institution, or situation that crosses the mind.
- Pseudo inventory: unstructured, circular, morbid, and purposeless self-examination.
Some of these imaginative activities are legitimate if undertaken for the purposes of genuine strategic planning, under the guidance of God, in order to determine how to handle a situation that cannot be left to chance. If these are happening purposelessly, recreationally, involuntarily, repetitively, intrusively, compulsively, etc., they’re a problem.