Life is unfair, unpredictable, and sometimes just does not go to plan. Get over it.
As a child, I once sat through a prize giving speech that was for me at the time novel and exciting - but in the years since I have heard a thousand times in various guises. It is the old "if you can dream it you can do it" theme, which, while exciting (and backed up by countless examples of people who have dreamed of being champions in some discipline or another and then triumphed) fails to take into account the fact that life is unpredictable, unfair, unjust, and sometimes just does not go to plan. Sometimes, despite doing everything right (or trying to) bad things simply happen to good people.
And when they do, it can shake our psychology, our belief systems (If [insert deity of choice] is so powerful, why does this happen?), and impact negatively on our wellbeing. We're sort of hard-wired to be negative, and so a whole range of cognitive distortions (these are natural biases or irrational thoughts that come into play in our thinking) can reinforce a spiral of negativity when things go bad. And, in the average lifespan, it is really a case of 'when' not 'if' things go wrong, and so we owe it to our students to be teaching them about cognitive distortions. Here are some examples:
The fallacy of fairness: sometimes (often) life is simply not fair, and expecting fairness to always prevail creates a victim mentality. We should teach our children to think about what they are able to change in life and not wait around as victims waiting for 'fairness' to come to their rescue.
Blaming: when things go wrong (as they will) it is tempting to focus on apportioning blame, either internally or externally. Sometimes we blame others for making us feel a certain way. That robs us of control and ignores the fact that only we are responsible for the way that we feel. We should teach our students to be able to identify their locus of control and focus on that which they are able to change.
Catastrophising: sometimes when we think about something we make ourselves anxious by imagining the absolute worst possible outcome, ignoring the fact that there exists a whole spectrum of less serious possibilities. The other side of this fallacy is the tendency to minimise positive things, such as accomplishments at work or school. The solution is not simple positive thinking (which is equally fallacious) - we should teach our students to think about and embrace reasonable risk.
Emotional reasoning: this distortion is the sense that if we 'feel' a certain way, it must be true. Of course we want to develop children to be empathetic, but our emotions often distort objective truth and can often lead to irrational or incorrect assumptions.
Heaven's reward fallacy: This fallacy is based on a sense of Karma - that if we do good things then good things will happen to us. When they don't, be become dejected and cynical. Of course, we know the benefits of good deeds, and random acts of kindness certainly do enhance wellbeing and community. But to expect some form of macroscopic 'goodness exchange' to reward us for goodness leads to bitterness when it inevitably does not.
Polarised thinking: If there is one thing that life has taught me the hardest, it is that there is no black-and-white. Everywhere there is nuance, and in everything if we reduce it to polar opposite extremes we miss half of the story. Teaching the notion of 'nuance' is one of the most powerful gifts we can give our students, but we must take care - the thinking trap of relativism lies waiting if we are not on the lookout for it.
Filtering: Humans do have a negativity bias - it has protected our species and allowed it to strategise its way to the top of the food chain. But it does mean that we tend to filter out the negative and focus on it, ignoring the multitude of positive things that exist in any negative situation. Sometimes we have to simply stop and focus on the good, for it is there, everywhere, if we just take the time to look for it - and once we see it, it becomes part of us.
Control fallacies: Sometimes it is hard to accept that something negative has happened due to factors in our control, and sometimes it is hard to accept that something negative that happened was outside of our control. The cognitive distortion lies in making the assumption either way (it is all my fault / it is all your fault) , and ignoring the spectrum of complexity that led to the outcome.
Personalisation: It is no secret that we all take ourselves more seriously than others do, and so when things go wrong it can be an easy mistake to make to personalise the issue and make it all about ourselves.
Always being right: One of the best gifts we can impart in our students is the gift of rational disagreement. That a position adopted may be incorrect, and even more powerfully, you and I may hold different views that we disagree on that may at once both be true (or untrue). We should teach our students to be resilient thinkers, that being 'wrong' is not unacceptable.
These are simple concepts (and there are more) that have powerful impact on our wellbeing. Some people walk around in ignorance enjoying the gentle life of things proceeding largely to plan, but when things change (as they will) fall victim to these distortions. By explicitly teaching our students about these things we empower them to be resilient, and flourish through thick and thin.