Grow a Key Inner Strength
What’s your “Vitamin C?” “Vitamin C” is. Daily life is full of opportunities to notice or create experiences of inner strength, a psychological resource. Take it into yourself, making it a part of you.
Hug the Monkey
Hug the monkey inside yourself helps satisfy an innate human need for connection can remedy old pain and provides that fundamental human sustenance: love.
Be Home
When the body is not disturbed by hunger, thirst, pain, or illness, and when the mind is not disturbed by threat, frustration, or rejection, then most people settle into their resting state, which is our “home base” – our fundamental nature as human beings.
Your body and mind want to come home: that’s where energy is conserved for the marathon of life. Try this practice to help yourself come home more naturally.
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.
Drop the Stone
Are you lugging around a needless burden? Carrying an unnecessary load can be stressful and harmful. Instead, it’s OK to drop the load and let go of repetitive preoccupations.
Grow Inner Strengths
Inner strengths are the supplies you’ve got in your pack as you make your way down the twisting and often hard road of life.
Rest in Center
There is a deeper place that is undisturbed, your center. As you deepen your sense of connection with this core of your being, you’ll be more resilient, happier, and at ease.
Pet the Lizard
The brain is highly integrated, so these three key functions – avoiding, approaching, and attaching – are accomplished by all parts of the brain working together.
Lean Into Good On First Waking
Try to influence your mind with positive and loving thoughts, when you wake.
Make Good Bargains
Life is full of tradeoffs between benefits and costs. Sometimes the rewards of going for a run, getting fresh air, and improving health may be worth the cost of losing half an hour of work time while gaining a pair of achy legs.
Relax, You’ve Arrived
Part of this comes from our biological nature. To survive, animals – including us – have to be goal-directed, leaning into the future. This focus – can get confused and stressful.