Gift Yourself
When you give more to yourself, you have more to offer others.
Speak Truly
Perhaps the most powerful tool for your mental health – and certainly for the health of your relationships – is to speak truly.
What to Do When the Bottom Falls Out?
It’s normal to feel shocked, frozen, frightened, or outraged. But here are four fundamental strengths to help us feel and function better in difficult times.
Feel Already Full
Craving is pointless; the truth is there’s always an underlying fullness already. While the truth of futility is that it is hopeless to crave, the truth of fullness is that craving is unnecessary.
Don’t Quarrel
It’s one thing to stick up for yourself & others. It’s a different matter to get caught up in wrangles, contentiousness – in a word: quarrels.
Feed the Mouse
When you feel fed – physically, emotionally, conceptually – you naturally let go of longing, disappointment, frustration, and craving. The hungry heart gets a full meal; goals are attained and the striving for them relaxes; one feels lifted by life as it is. What a relief!
Feeling fed also helps you enjoy positive emotions such as pleasure, contentment, accomplishment, ease, and worth. As researchers have shown, these good feelings reduce stress, help people bounce back from illness and loss, strengthen resilience, draw attention to the big picture, and build inner resources. And when your own cup runneth over, studies have found that you’re more inclined to give to others; feeling good helps you do good.
Refill Your Cupboard
Most parents are busy one way or another most of the time and hitting the red line on stress. They look around and wonder, where’s the support?
See What’s Likable
Liking feels good, and it encourages us to approach and engage the world. We’re wired to like some things, but our liking or disliking depends greatly on what we pay attention to and our own perspective.
Enjoy Now
Since it’s always now, now is eternal. The present moment is continually passing away, so relax and be open to this moment. Not planning, not worrying, not lost in thought.
See the Big Picture
The tree or the forest? See the big picture. The vast majority of human acts each day are constructive: making meals, tending to children, saying hello, restraining anger, completing tasks, planting seeds, teaching, healing, nurturing, cooperating
Don’t Beat Yourself Up
Try to understand what causes you to feel fault, resolve it and move on. Inner criticism tears you down. Commit to skillful corrections. Take a big breath and very deliberately name to yourself three strengths or virtues you have and let them sink in.
Be Benevolent
Liking feels good, it encourages us to approach and engage the world. Know what benevolence feels like in your body, heart, and mind, and realize that it is natural and normal. Appreciate some of the benevolence that buoys you along. Most people are fair-minded, empathic, cooperative, compassionate, and kind: in a word, benevolent.
See the Good in Others
See the good in others—it’s a simple but very powerful way to feel happier and more confident and become more loving.
Tune Into Others
Imagine being aware of the surface behavior of the people around you but oblivious to their inner life while they remain unmoved by your own.
Water Your Fruit Tree
Nourish the things that nourish you. Try to do one thing each day to. “Pass forward” a gift to the person you will be tomorrow . . . and a year from now.