CHAPTER 3
OUR AUTOMATIC THINKING
Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking—had he the gold? or the gold him?
—John Ruskin, Victorian-era writer
In the previous chapter, we addressed the idea that our thoughts, feelings, opinions, and beliefs are completely beyond our control. Our past experiences have programmed us how to think about people, places, and things, and now, as adults, if something happens to us, we have an immediate thought about that something. So, for example, if a salesperson makes a prospecting call and the person hangs up on him, his thought might be: this isn’t going ...
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