Just Over the Horizon Thinking: A Cognitive Distortion

How many times have you said to yourself, something like: “Right after I solve this last 10% of recovery, then I’ll start my business…” or “Later this year I’ll be in a better place at work and then I can focus on stuff like friends and family…” If you’re doing this a lot, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s a common cognitive distortion called Just Over the Horizon Thinking. This is when we keep putting off our goals in life because we believe there will be this special place in the future just over the horizon where everything will be perfect and we’ll finally live our lives and do the things that we want to do. But that place never comes. We always judge the environment as never quite good enough. And we believe there’s this simple solution that’s coming really soon. We’ll just put things off a little longer.

So what’s the solution? The TOOLKIT team has created a video to walk you through this cognitive distortion and a more helpful way of interacting with those types of thoughts when they pop up. Check it out: