Tossing Overboard

From the Roots of Asia Tarot, the Six of Swords; from the Mah Jongg Oracle, Orchid:

          Sometimes it's not what we think about that makes us so miserable, it's how we think about it. Here are six patterns of thinking (our swords) we might consider tossing overboard:

1. Confirmation bias means we filter out anything that we don’t expect to find and focus on any small detail that seems to back up our assumptions.
2. Black and white thinking causes us to rigidly categorize people or situations as all good or all bad with nothing in between.
3. Overgeneralization happens when we take one bad experience and paint similar people and situations with the same brush even though we have no evidence they are actually the same.
4. ‘Awfulizing’ makes us inflate small incidents into something huge, imagining the worst-case scenario.
5. Mind-reading occurs when we presume to have information about someone without asking for clarification.
6. Superstitious thinking means we mistakenly attribute connections between events or things where none exist – a normal incident becomes an omen for something good or bad.

The Orchid represents refinement - the process of removing impurities or unwanted elements. In connection with the Six of Swords, it is a reminder not to believe everything we think without looking for factual evidence, examining all sides of a situation, and asking for clarification