Category
Stuff To Read
These are a collection of blogs to explain various aspects of how our minds work and how we can better deal with the challenges of our daily lives.
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Increasing Focus and Productivity
Our minds are elsewhere roughly half the time, and a wandering mind tends to be an unhappy one. Attention is a trainable skill, and…
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Reducing Stress and Increasing Well-Being with Mindfulness
We are almost always under some stress. What decides whether it sharpens us or drains us is what we believe about our ability to…
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Mindful Communication
Most of what goes wrong in a conversation goes wrong before anyone says anything difficult. Generous listening, the pause, and why other people’s words…
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Mindfulness, Motivation and Goals
Motivation is not a resource you top up. It follows from what people believe about their own skills and the size of the challenge,…
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Mindfulness and Customer Focus
Serving customers well is a skill problem rather than a process problem. Empathy increases with recognized similarity, and compassion is what keeps front-line people…
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Mindfulness and Creativity
Most of what suppresses creative work is not a shortage of ideas. It is the cost of saying one out loud. Here is what…
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Mindful Workplaces
Most organizations treat mindfulness as a class, then wonder why nothing changes. A lecture about exercise does not make anyone fitter. Here is what…
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Physical Exercise and Nutrition
Sleep, water, food, and movement are the platform the rest of this work sits on. Exercise also rebuilds trust in your body’s signals, which…
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How Our Brain Works
Your brain takes in your experience, matches it against everything you have lived through, and builds beliefs that shape how you feel and what…
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It All Starts With Being Mindful
Mindfulness is not meditation, and it is not about achieving a quiet mind. It is the skill of knowing what is actually happening around…
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Benefits of Mindfulness
Mindfulness gets credited with almost everything. Here is what awareness actually delivers on its own, what needs the other three steps, and what the…
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Reframing
Reframing is the skill of shifting a belief toward something more reasonable and better supported by evidence. It is not positive thinking, and the…
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Affirmations
An affirmation only works if you believe it. Here is why repetition changes the brain, and how to build a ladder of statements small…
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Mantras
A mantra is an affirmation used as the object of focus in meditation. It trains attention and works on a belief at the same…
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Meditation Practices
Meditation is the exercise. Mindfulness is the skill. Here are the three methods we use, how to begin, and why a wandering mind is…
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Visualizations
Visualizing lets you rehearse what is coming, draw on what has already worked, and loosen the certainty holding an unhelpful belief in place. Certainty…
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Writing and Journaling
Writing gives us a dedicated space to untangle what we are thinking. Here are the core methods, including thought records, and why reaching one…
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Counseling Yourself
Write out both sides of a conversation and let the friend in you talk to the one who is struggling. It gives you compassion…
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Your Inner Child
Some beliefs we carry formed early and were never examined since. Speaking to your younger self is a compassion practice, and it does not…
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Mirror Work and Exercises
Mirror work brings you face to face with your own internal dialogue, with nowhere to look away to. It is the most direct practice…