10 Practical Examples of Opposite Action – Part One
“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.” – Jim Rohn When you find yourself experiencing an emotion that is somehow getting in the way of harmonious relationships with others, pursuit of your goals, or living in accordance with your true values, opposite action can be an incredibly…
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Gratitude Helps You Get a Good Night’s Sleep
“For each new morning with its light, for rest and shelter of the night, for health and food, for love and friends, for everything Thy goodness sends.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Insomnia is often the result of incessant thoughts and persistent emotions that keep us physically or mentally tossing back and forth. It is common to experience a…
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Apply Opposite Action to Painful Emotions
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” – Kahlil Gibran Emotions can often be experienced so suddenly or deeply that little time or energy is given to question the facts or happenings that prompted the emotional experience. When emotions feel visceral and real in this way, we may…
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Increase Mindfulness of Pleasant Experiences
“For many years, at great cost, I traveled through many countries, saw the high mountains, the oceans. The only things I did not see were the sparkling dewdrops in the grass just outside my door.” – Rabindranath Tagore Mindfulness allows us to open to the constantly unfolding present moment. When we are aware of the…
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6 Core Beliefs of High Achievers
“Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Core beliefs are fundamental views that we have internalized about ourselves, other people, and the world. These beliefs are generally so central to our identity and worldview that they often go unquestioned. We often develop core beliefs…
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How to Mindfully Sit with Anxiety
“Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire to seem so.” – François Duc de La Rochefoucauld If you want to deal with anxious feelings more effectively, it is quite helpful to begin to mindfully change your relationship with anxiety. When you learn to think about anxiety differently and respond to it in the…
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4-Step Mindfulness Exercise for Anxiety
“No longer forward nor behind I look in hope and fear; But grateful take the good I find, the best of now and here.” – John Whittier Anxiety sweeps us away from the present moment into a flurry of thoughts and emotions about the past and the future. We may become overwhelmed by worry over…
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6 Fearful Barriers to Growth & How to Overcome Them
“Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?” – Maurice Freehill How does fear hold you back from doing the things in life that you truly wish to do? In what ways does your fear keep you locked into perpetual patterns of behavior that restrict your…
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Resolve 10 Dialectical Tensions for a Balanced Lifestyle
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” – Viktor Frankl Things in life are rarely “always” one way or the another. When you live according to absolutes or extremes, there is a tendency to become easily overwhelmed, overly stressed,…
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How to Practice “Radical Acceptance”
“The curious paradox is when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), the word “dialectic” refers to balancing and comparing two things that seem to be quite different – even contradictory. In DBT, this balance is between change and acceptance. For many people,…
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