Motivation and Learning Strategies for College Success : A Self-management Approach

 GI      $

MANAGEMENT OF EMOTION AND EFFORT 121

day or week. Label different slices of your “emotional pie,” such as

N  normal mood/ok, T  tense, H  happy, A  angry or mad,

S  sad, W  worried. Add any additional emotions that are relevant

to your life.

Second, you need to learn how to detect the automatic thoughts

and identifying beliefs that underlie your thought processes and influ-

ence your emotions. Thinking about the list of the eight irrational

thought patterns that were provided earlier is a good start. You also

might want to keep a log whereby you identify negative automatic

thought processes that may be typical reactions to situations you

encounter during the day or week. When you identify each thought

process, think about the beliefs that underlie them. For example, do

you see yourself using musts or shoulds, or do you tend to see the

worst consequence for most of your experiences?

Third, evaluate and dispute your automatic thoughts and beliefs.

Ellis (1998) provided some questions for you to consider:

• Where is holding this belief getting me? Is it helpful or self-
  defeating?


• Where is the evidence to support the existence of my irrational
  belief? Is it consistent with reality?


• Is my belief logical? Does it follow from my preferences?


• Is it really awful (as bad as it could be)?


• Can I really not stand it?

Fourth, change the negative automatic thoughts and maladaptive

beliefs. Note that this process involves both eliminating the maladap-

tive beliefs but replacing them with more positive beliefs and state-

ments. Try to reframe and relabel negative thoughts, like the exam-

ple provided earlier: Change “I’ll never do well in this class, everyone

is smarter than me!” to “There are many bright students in this class

but if I use the learning strategies I have been taught, I can compete

with them.” Basically, you are changing negative self-talk to positive

self-talk.

HOW DOES SELF-TALK INFLUENCE MY EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIOR?

I would like to discuss the role of self-talk in more depth in the

process of changing emotions and behavior. You have learned that

what we say to ourselves is an important factor in determining our

attitudes, feelings, emotions, and behavior. This speech, or self-talk,

as it is often called, is the running dialogue inside our heads. Some

of our inner speech serves as a motivator to try new tasks and per-

sist in learning (e.g., “I can do as well as anyone in this class” or “If