“If you’ve been working on your thinking errors for only a few months so far, then you’re probably still at the stage where you mostly notice the errors after the fact. Going forward, you’ll find some situations in which you’re able to spot a thinking error at or close to the time it occurs. For example, you might notice yourself feeling upset about something that has happened during the day and later that evening realize you’ve been mind reading: guessing what someone else thinks without knowing if it’s actually the case.
Expect to have a mixture of these situations and those when you notice your thinking error only after you’ve been walking around buying into that sucker for months or even years. You might get some new information or evidence and only then realize you’ve been holding on to a distorted thought.”