“Dragons” are self-defeating thoughts that come up over and over again as repeating themes, sometimes with variations but usually easily identifiable on close inspection. These tools can help us think logically and rationally whenever we have created painful statements and the dragons are causing mischief.

Dispute your beliefs that you are not lovable and thus worthless
While it is very nice to be loved, Paul Hauck points out that as adults we can survive without love. It can be our preference to have people in our lives that love us. To avoid feeding the dragons, we need to take care not to turn this into a demand (”I must have love!”). Furthermore, nobody has the right to judge our worth, including ourselves. We are worthy simply by the fact that we have been born.

Learn never to blame, rate, or judge

Blame leads to anger either against ourselves or others. To avoid this destructive feeling – anger – we need to learn not to blame ourselves and not to blame others.  To overcome this blaming-game, we can learn to not judge ourselves or others but rather judge only our actions. We might have done something bad (or self-defeating), yet this does not make us a bad person.

Start your life now and stop waiting for a soul mate
Modern society has created the myth of the soul mate. There is no perfect match out there, so move on and start enjoying your life – with or without a partner (and there’s no soul either: when you die, you’re dead, so enjoy life while you can!). This myth perpetuates the idea that we are incomplete without a partner, not a full adult. It also suggests that we cannot truly be happy unless we find “our other half.”  Happiness requires work on our part, not a cure-all partner. To expect a magical change in our lives simply from one person is absurd and puts too much of a burden on that person. Kay Trimberger identified six building blocks of a happy life as a single (or for anybody, really).  Leading a satisfying life can be a helpful anti-dote to the dragons.

The most important suggestion Hauck has, slightly adapted: We have the right – even the obligation – to accept ourselves despite all our dragons that have set up camp feeding us self-defeating thoughts. It will take some time and lots of thought disputing to tame those dragons and turn them into pets. They will still try to hijack our thinking, so we need to remain vigilant. The payoff is immense, though: self-acceptance is the foundation of a happy life.

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