Coping Tip of the Day

[Daniel E.]

How to Change Your Life in 5 Seconds

Counting backward from five (5-4-3-2-1) forces your brain to stop, focus, and occupy itself with something else. Your brain's no longer being hijacked by fear, doubt, anger, or any other powerful emotion that can lead to bad, knee-jerk decisions.

It also stimulates the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that's active when you're changing behavior, when you're learning something new, or when you're directing your thoughts.

"So instead of letting your brain sabotage you, you're using a meta-cognition technique to switch the gears in our mind and make changing easy," Robbins said.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

How to Change Your Life in 5 Seconds

Counting backward from five (5-4-3-2-1) forces your brain to stop, focus, and occupy itself with something else. Your brain's no longer being hijacked by fear, doubt, anger, or any other powerful emotion that can lead to bad, knee-jerk decisions.

It also stimulates the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that's active when you're changing behavior, when you're learning something new, or when you're directing your thoughts.

"So instead of letting your brain sabotage you, you're using a meta-cognition technique to switch the gears in our mind and make changing easy," Robbins said.

Have you tried this, @Daniel? Wondering how well it works for OCD thoughts...

 

[Daniel E.]

Just read of it, but it seems cooler than most refocusing techniques

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Yes it does. And for intrusive thoughts, if 5-4-3-2-1 isn't enough you could always try 10, 15, 20, or any other number.

 

[Daniel E.]

Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent) Hour Long Version - YouTube

How to Defeat Burnout and Stay Motivated

Take it slow(er). The world tells us to rush things: “Get there faster. Make money quicker. Retire sooner.” And while these things aren’t necessarily bad, they can easily get us in over our heads. If you’re feeling burned out and overwhelmed, it’s time to slow down.

A few ways to take yourself out of 24/7 high gear:

• Spend at least 10 minutes a day in a quiet place, away from distractions. Breathe.
• Put together a playlist of slow, relaxing music. Listen to it whenever you start feeling frazzled.
• Take a butcher knife to your to-do list. Set a limit to the number of tasks you take on each day and stick to it.
• Extend your deadlines. Do you absolutely, positively have to get this done now? Just remember – this isn’t an excuse to procrastinate.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Take it slow(er).

At first scan, I misread this as "Take a shower".

 

[Daniel E.]

Hence the need to slow down

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Touché.

 

[Daniel E.]

Getting Through the Day With Depression - YouTube

 

[Daniel E.]

Ways to Relieve Anxiety - YouTube

 

[Daniel E.]

Source: The Self Care Prescription: Powerful Solutions to Manage Stress, Reduce Anxiety Increase Wellbeing

 

[Daniel E.]

How to Stop Catastrophizing: An Expert's Guide

This three-pronged approach – using your “worry energy” to carry out new and enjoyable challenges, approaching your tendency to catastrophize logically and systematically, and learning to wait through discomfort – takes time. But if you invest the necessary time, you will start looking forward to each day knowing you can deal with uncertainty in a more positive, balanced way.

 

[Daniel E.]

https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/want-to-build-unbeatable-mental-toughness-here-are-5-surprisingly-effective-ways.html

Never confuse who you are with what you do.

The most common mistake people make is to confuse their self-worth with their accomplishments.

 

[Daniel E.]

This Is Your Brain on Exercise

Exercise is as good for your brain as it is for your body, and researchers are just beginning to discover why...

Your brain becomes much more active during exercise, “perhaps more active than at any other time."

 

[Daniel E.]

The emotionally intelligent way to resolve disagreements faster

When you find yourself locked in disagreement, the emotionally intelligent thing to do is to agree—not necessarily with the other party’s conclusions or proposed solution, but with some truth in what they believe. It could be their goals, intentions, concerns, emotions, or something bigger-picture that you share. It has the surprising and counterintuitive effect of disarming people, so you can move past disagreement and on to collaboration.

There’s one more, often unexpected result of this approach. Agreeing tends to bring out the best in other people, but it can also bring out the best in you. By pushing yourself to find common ground, you can shift your own thinking in a more collaborative direction, too. A little more flexibility and understanding-–on all sides–-is surely a good thing.

 

[Daniel E.]

Better Control Emotions Will Help You Create Better Habits | Time

For too long people have believed the old myth that repetition creates habits, focusing on the number of days a new habit requires. Some of today’s popular habit bloggers still talk about repetition or frequency as the key. Just know this: They are recycling old ideas.

In my own research, I found that habits can form very quickly, often in just a few days, as long as people have a strong positive emotion connected to the new behavior. In fact, some habits seem to get wired in immediately: You do the behavior once, and then you don’t consider other options again. You’ve created an instant habit. Consider if you give your teenager a mobile phone; their emotional response to using the device will wire in a habit very quickly and the next thing you know, the phone is attached to their hand. No need for repetition.

When I teach people about human behavior, I boil it down to three words to make the point crystal clear: Emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Not fairy dust. Emotions.

When you are designing for habit formation — for yourself or for someone else — you are really designing for emotions.

 

[Daniel E.]

Source: Hooks: An Intro on How to Manufacture Desire

 

[Daniel E.]

“I always say that...to make your own goals whether its a vision board or not because otherwise, someone will make your goals for you. If you don’t have any goals, you walk down the street and it’s like ‘buy this burger, get this car, watch this movie, spend your time doing this,’ and they try to draw you into spending your minutes that you only have a precious few, just like everyone else.”

~ Drew Carey

 

[Daniel E.]

The Dark Side of Self-Control

Self-control is an important tactic for reaching one’s goals. However, instead of treating self-control as the sole determinant of happiness and success, we need to view it in the broader context of the self in a more holistic way. Besides exerting self-control, accepting our weaknesses and limitations is also important. Psychologists call this “self-compassion.” Self-compassion does not lead to laziness and abandonment. In contrast, it helps people improve themselves by knowing themselves better and setting more realistic goals. Therefore, instead of always being harsh on ourselves and pushing our limits, sometimes being kind with ourselves might be a better way to reach our goals in a self-congruent way.

 

[Daniel E.]

Self-Kindness: A Healthier Alternative to Self-Esteem?

Self-kindness, also referred to as self-compassion, comes from Buddhist cultures and is less intentionally cultivated in the West. However, Christian writers such as Henri Nouwen also emphasize the value of treating oneself kindly. Social psychologists have recently sought to quantify and evaluate the role of self-kindness.

In comparison to self-esteem, self-kindness does not require that we feel superior to others. Self-kindness is not an evaluation of ourselves at all, but is an attitude we adopt toward our own failure and suffering. Researchers have identified three components to self-kindness:

Self-compassion instead of self-judgment: People who are kind to themselves are tolerant and loving toward themselves when faced with pain or failure. Self-judging people are tough and intolerant toward themselves.

Common humanity instead of isolation: Common humanity is a perspective that views our own failings and feelings of inadequacy as part of the human condition shared by nearly everyone. By contrast, people who isolate tend to feel alone in their failure.

Emotional regulation instead of over-identification: People who can regulate their emotions take a balanced view and keep their emotions in perspective. They neither ignore nor ruminate on elements of their lives that they dislike. By contrast, over-identified people tend to obsess and fixate on failure and view it as evidence of personal inadequacy.

Self-kindness is a positive, proactive attitude toward oneself. It is not simply the absence of negative attitudes. For instance, the absence of self-judgment does not necessarily mean that one is compassionate toward oneself. One may not isolate during times of failure, yet also not place one’s failings in context of a common human experience.