Richard Rohr, an American Franciscan friar and writer on spiritual issues, believes that each of us is addicted to our habitual ways of doing and thinking about things. He calls this tendency “stinking thinking,” and says it’s the “universal addiction.” It results in a binary approach to problem solving, even though the things we do rarely involve a simple “this” or “that.” We face complex questions for our businesses and our clients. The answers to those questions could be compromised by our stinking thinking, as well as that of our clients.

Let’s take a model for our clients’ safe spending levels. I shudder when I think of how our own personal perceptions affect the results of these models. The term “safe spending” is a value judgment that implies other people’s spending levels are unsafe.

Unsafe for what? Are we saying they’re going to outlive their assets? Or that they’re going to be caught unprepared for an uncertain future?

What if we change the term to something like “spending competencies”? That could mean we have a relationship to money that allows us to enjoy it more. Or maybe we could make better spending decisions, ones that reflect what’s actually important to us internally instead of what we want the outside world to see in us (unless we decide that’s what’s really important to us). Maybe we want to improve our ability to adjust and change spending when our situations suddenly change.

Stinking thinking can cloud our interactions with colleagues and clients. I was talking to one of my cohorts, who asked me why I was able to talk with people who had money long before I had any myself. My thought was that I generally view people as people. I don’t consider them below me, so I also don’t consider them above me. Because I wasn’t comparing myself on humanness, I wasn’t intimidated by those conversations.

On the other hand, I want to be liked. That has cost me when I avoid crucial conversations, become oversensitive to perceived slights, and at times lose who I am to preserve unhealthy relationships. It sometimes means I’ve held on to clients who aren’t good for our firm.

I still want to be invited to everything and go to nothing. Even though I appear outgoing, I tend to dislike being in big groups and am generally far happier curling up at home with a book or watching a sporting event or a show with my wife. Wanting to be invited comes from wanting to feel liked.

This is my own version of stinking thinking.

So how can I develop competencies? How can I accept that some people will like me, some won’t, and become more comfortable with that? This is a muscle that I have been working on my whole life, and while it has become stronger, it is far from overdeveloped! That’s Rohr’s point. Our habits always influence our day-to-day lives.

What are some other ways this kind of thinking hinders us? Where does our own stinking thinking show up and how can we be aware of it?

Perhaps it’s in the way we solve problems. Maybe when a client is expressing distress, we’re moving too quickly to solutions and not listening. Maybe we’re not comfortable with others in their discomfort and feel the need to talk, to solve. Maybe we need to develop competencies there, too—and help people find their own answers rather than giving them ours.

What else does stinking thinking do? Does it lead you to blaming rather than acceptance? If something goes wrong with a client, for example, even if I was not directly involved, I have to own it. A client doesn’t care why something happened; they usually just want it fixed and to understand how it can be avoided in the future.

The wrong response can lead us to try to explain why something went the way it did rather than make a real apology. I remember when my property casualty insurance was up for renewal. I noticed some things were missed, and I expected an annual review. When I let my agent know that I was moving the account for a lack of service, he told me that his assistant should have contacted me. While that may be the case, I hired him, so I expected him to take responsibility for what didn’t happen (and my frustration) rather than toss his assistant to the wolves. But it was more important for him to defend his work product than to take ownership for what didn’t happen. Could he develop greater competence in accepting this?

Now consider the ways we react to social media. Sometimes we feel bad because something we posted didn’t get enough likes. Or we might become envious of something someone posted about themselves. Or, on the other hand, we might feel superior about our own posted accomplishments. But social media is one-dimensional. We’re interpreting the way innocuous posts affect our own status. Isn’t that crazy? What competencies could we create to change what we can and accept what we can’t?

The fact that something can make you feel particularly bad (or good) means you’re allowing others to affect your spirits.

I write a column about money and values for a newspaper. I’m careful not to read online comments after publishing a piece because I know my moods will be influenced by what people I don’t know have to say about my article. I want to avoid areas where I unnecessarily cause the wrong kind of thinking to surface. I can’t fully be competent if I’m not being affected, but I can be more competent in choosing how to engage.

So what are some competencies we can develop to manage our own thinking?

First, when we are feeling bad about something we did or didn’t do, we should evaluate the action, but not judge ourselves for it. If we do judge, we’re falling into the binary thinking of something being either good or bad. Every day we end up doing something we wish we hadn’t done, or not doing things we feel we should have. Maybe it was a small thing like not returning a call or being distracted when someone was talking to us. We shouldn’t run from these ideas. Instead we should explore them, forgive ourselves, and move on.

Second, if we are struggling with something, we should sit with it. Play with it. Move it outside of ourselves and observe it. Stinking thinking creates negative feedback loops. But we can break them by cracking them open. The idea is to change how we are viewing things as well as how we view ourselves.

Third, we should embrace our flaws. We all have things that we are working on. We shouldn’t pretend we have it all together; we won’t fool ourselves and it will stunt our effectiveness.

If stinking thinking is really the universal addiction, we should remember that addictions are managed, not eliminated. People are multifaceted, and some of those facets serve us better than others. Building competencies to manage our thinking will help us in our practices as well as our lives.

Ross Levin is co-founder of Accredited Investors Wealth Management in Edina, Minn.