Well-Being

Cognitive Reappraisal or How to Cope with Unpleasant Feelings through Reframing

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In psychologist Guy Winch’s book The Squeaky Wheel: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results, Improve Your Relationships, and Enhance Self-Esteem, I came across one of the most descriptive explanations of how to handle the emotional load of uncomfortable situations.  What we call feelings are complex experiences composed of several elements. Anger, frustration, sadness, rage, exasperation, etc., are our subjective experiences (“feelings”) of particular events in our life. First, these emotional experiences are always accompanied by physiological reactions: potential elevated heart rate and blood pressure, stress hormones …

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Self-fulfilling Prophecies: Can Our Beliefs And Expectations Affect Reality?

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Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right. Henry Ford  Self-fulfilling prophecies describe predictions of a situation that can change our thoughts and behaviours, thus becoming real. Essentially, self-fulfilling prophecies are the concept that beliefs and expectations can create their reality. Our beliefs about ourselves affect our actions towards others.Our actions towards others influence other people’ beliefs about us. Their beliefs cause their actions towards us.  Their actions reinforce our beliefs about ourselves.  This feedback loop can become self-fulfilling. …

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The Exponential Art of Kaizen

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When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before.  Jacob A. Riis How are post-war industries rebuilt? Can worldwide poverty be reduced? Can couples divorce rates be predicted?   The answer to such dramatic questions …

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The Subtle Psychology of Making the First Step

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The scariest moment is always just before you start.  Stephen King  A fascinating book about writing is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. The title comes from a family story about her brother. He was assigned a school project about birds. As children do, he procrastinated and delayed starting the project until the very end. Now, with the project due the next day, the boy sat at the table and cried. Where should he start? Will he ever finish the project? Lamott describes their dad telling …

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RAIN: How to Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture Emotions

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Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor  RAIN is a common practice in secular meditation and it is an acronym for:  Recognize the emotions  Allow the emotions  Investigate the emotions  either Non-Identification with emotions   or Nurture the emotions, depending on the version.  I heard of RAIN from Tara Brach, and there are a few RAIN meditations with her available for free. This practice …

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Learning New Words Can Help Recognize Our Emotions

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“Your brain’s most important job is not thinking or feeling or even seeing, but keeping your body alive and well so that you survive and thrive … How is your brain able to do this? Like a sophisticated fortune-teller, your brain constantly predicts. Its predictions ultimately become the emotions you experience and the expressions you perceive in other people.”  Lisa Feldman Barrett  Our brain is nothing short of a prediction machine. It is perpetually analyzing and adjusting the information coming across our senses.  Outside …

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When Buddhism’s Nonattachment Overlaps Stoicism’s Dichotomy of Control

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As Ryan Holiday remarks in his Daily Stoic book, we have a mental image of the Zen philosopher as the calm, serene monk. In contrast, the Stoic is the man in the marketplace, the senator in the Forum, etc. Nevertheless, both people are equally at peace.   Although for every philosophy, there are different goals, eudaimonia or a life worth living for Stoics and enlightenment for Buddhists, there are strikingly similar concepts from Buddhism and Stoicism. An example is the Buddhist nonattachment concept and the Stoic dichotomy of …

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Practical Steps to Create a Daily Meditation Habit

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Why do you want to meditate?  Numerous studies show links between meditation and neuroplasticity.   Researchers from the University of Montreal found that the grey matter thickness of Zen meditators was significantly thicker than non-meditators. Another study found that meditation helps increase focus. A UCLA study shows that meditators might process information more quickly. Long-term meditators have more significant amounts of gyrification than people who do not meditate. The gyrification (“folding” of the cortex) might allow us to process information more quickly.   Then, in his book 10% happier, Dan Harris says that …

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