Read: What Are Thinking Errors?

To accelerate your learning, listen to the passage and then summarize what you heard in your own words.

Satan tries to distract us and to tempt us. He wants us to be miserable. He often tells us lies. These lies make us believe things that are not true. These lies are often thinking errors.

Think about a time when you felt a lot of stress in your life. How did you deal with it? Did you respond with maturity and patience? Did you become angry or close yourself off from the world? If you made the situation worse, it was likely due to a thinking error. Thinking errors are failures in judgment that are caused by stress. They are incorrect ways of looking at the world. Because of your distorted view, you tend to act in ways that don’t resolve the stress, but instead make it worse or add new stress.

As children of God living in an imperfect world, all of us are at risk from a variety of thinking errors. Below is a list of ten prevalent thinking errors and their definitions. Consider how these thinking errors interfere in your own life or in the lives of people you know.

Victimization. You feel like you are being harmed by people who have no intention of harming you.
Pride. Your perceived status in the world is based on how you compare yourself to others.
Entitlement. You deserve this or that because of your perceived status in the world.
Powerlessness. You can’t do this. You can’t do that. You can’t even try.
Giving Up. Because you messed up, you give up and stop trying.
Justification. You can commit this sin because it is not a big deal or you deserve a little fun.
Scarcity Mentality. There is never enough (fun, food, money, opportunities, etc.).
People Pleasing. You must please or impress others to maintain your value as a person to keep from being devalued as a person.
Minimize/Catastrophize. You distort issues, events, or choices to make them smaller or bigger than they really are.
Deceit. You tell yourself something is different than the way it really is.

What Causes Thinking Errors?

Thinking errors may be caused by stress, uncertainty, or difficult life circumstances. As a child of God, you have been given agency. With that agency, you choose how to respond to the world around you. Choosing to respond in a healthy way, however, can be challenging. It is often easier to think incorrectly than to use wise judgment. Nevertheless, in the end, you are the one that chooses the way that you respond to stress. It is always possible to respond in a healthy way and overcome a thinking error.