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Short lessons on practices for working with your mind, from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and the world's traditions. Each takes a few minutes. Once you've learned a practice, you can use it in Maya.
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Four good first lessons, from four different traditions.
- ExposureIntrusive thoughtsSudden, unwanted thoughts and images, sometimes shocking ones, are something almost everyone has. Here's why they stick, and what helps.Reading · 6 min
- CBTEvidence checkTreat a worried thought as a guess, not a fact, and weigh what actually supports it against what doesn't.Practice · 7 min
- BuddhismThe second arrowSeparate the pain that happens to you from the extra suffering you add on top.Practice · 9 min
- StoicismWhat's up to meSplit a worry into the part that's yours to act on and the part that isn't, and set goals only in the first.Practice · 7 min
Psychology
Approaches used in therapy today, each with a body of research behind it.
CBT
Cognitive behavioral therapy, developed by Aaron Beck from the 1960s, treats anxious and low thoughts as guesses to test, not facts. It's one of the most widely studied talking therapies.
- Thinking patternsThe predictable ways an anxious or low mind bends the facts, and why naming them helps.Reading
5 min - Evidence checkTreat a worried thought as a guess, not a fact, and weigh what actually supports it against what doesn't.Practice
7 min - A friend's voiceYou'd never talk to a friend the way you talk to yourself. Borrow the rules you use for them, and the tone.Practice
6 min - Worry, rumination or problem-solving?Three kinds of thinking that all feel useful, and how to tell which one you're in.Reading
5 min - Zoom outWhen worry plays only the worst case, lay out the worst, best and most likely outcomes, and how you would cope.Practice
6 min - Behavioral experimentTurn a fearful prediction into a small, safe test, then compare what happened with what you expected.Practice
7 min
ACT
Acceptance and commitment therapy, developed by Steven Hayes from the 1980s, doesn't argue with difficult thoughts. It teaches you to notice them, make room for feelings, and act on what you care about anyway.
- Name the storyInstead of arguing with a familiar thought, notice it as a thought, give it a name, and carry on.Practice
6 min - Values compassUnderneath most worries is something you care about. Find it, and use it to choose your next move.Practice
6 min - One small stepTurn what matters into one step small enough to take this week, with a what, a when and a where.Practice
6 min - Make roomStop fighting a feeling. Find where it sits in your body, get curious about it, and let it stay while you get on with things.Practice
6 min
DBT
Marsha Linehan built dialectical behavior therapy for people with very intense emotions. Its skills, for getting through a crisis, calming the body and asking for what you need, are useful well beyond that.
- Wise mindHear out what your feelings say and what your logic says, then find the answer that respects both.Practice
6 min - STOPPut a pause into the few seconds before you react: Stop, Take a step back, Observe, Proceed mindfully.Practice
5 min - TIPPWhen emotion is too intense to think through, change your body's state first: cold, hard exercise, slow breathing, letting go of tension.Practice
6 min - 5-4-3-2-1 groundingWhen panic or a memory pulls you away, use your five senses to get back to the room you're in.Practice
5 min - Opposite actionWhen a feeling doesn't fit the facts, or obeying it would make things worse, do the opposite of what it urges, all the way.Practice
7 min - DEAR MANA script for asking someone for something, or saying no to them, that you can still remember when your heart is pounding.Practice
7 min - Radical acceptanceStop fighting a fact you can't change right now. Accepting it isn't approving of it, and it's often what frees you to act.Practice
7 min
Exposure
Fear shrinks when you face what you avoid, safely and step by step, and grows when you keep avoiding it. Practices built on that finding are a core part of treatment for anxiety, phobias and OCD.
- The avoidance trapWhy steering clear of what scares you brings relief now and keeps the fear going.Reading
4 min - Anxiety rises and fallsAnxiety moves like a wave. Knowing that makes it easier to stay, and staying is how fear shrinks.Reading
4 min - Build a fear ladderFace something you avoid in small, safe steps, from easiest to hardest.Practice
8 min - Drop a safety behaviorNotice the small things you do "just in case", and find out what happens without them.Practice
6 min - The reassurance loopWhy asking "are you sure it's fine?" brings relief, and why the relief doesn't last.Reading
4 min - Delay the ritualWhen the urge to check or seek reassurance comes, wait, and watch it rise and fall on its own.Practice
7 min - Urge surfingRide an urge like a wave: it rises, peaks and falls on its own, whether or not you act on it.Practice
6 min - Intrusive thoughtsSudden, unwanted thoughts and images, sometimes shocking ones, are something almost everyone has. Here's why they stick, and what helps.Reading
6 min - Write a worry scriptWrite out the outcome you fear in vivid detail, and read it until it loses its charge.Practice
7 min
Neuroscience
What research on the brain and body shows about how feelings work, and what that means in practice.
Fear and learning
How the brain learns that something is dangerous, and how it learns that something is safe again. This research began with Pavlov and is one of the most studied areas of neuroscience.
- Your brain's alarm systemWhy your body can panic when nothing is wrong, and what the amygdala really does.Reading
5 min - Why fear comes backFacing a fear doesn't delete it. It teaches something new, which is why old fears can return, and why that isn't failure.Reading
5 min - Name itPut what you feel into words. It sounds too simple to work, and it calms the body anyway.Practice
5 min
Stress and the body
What happens in your body when you're stressed or anxious, and how to work with it, starting with the nervous system and the breath.
Habits and reward
How repeated actions become automatic, and why changing the situation works better than willpower.
- How habits run on cuesMuch of what you do each day runs on autopilot, set off by where you are and what just happened. That's why willpower alone rarely changes it.Reading
5 min - Change the cueMake the habit you want easier to start, and the one you don't want harder, by changing what sets them off.Practice
5 min
Sleep
How sleep shapes your mood and your worries, and the simplest well-tested ways to sleep better.
- Why everything feels worse at 2amA tired brain reacts more strongly and reasons less well, so night-time worries look bigger than they are.Reading
4 min - Get up, don't lie thereIf you can't sleep, get out of bed and come back when you're sleepy. It feels backwards, and it's one of the best-tested ways to sleep better.Practice
5 min
Emotion
How your brain turns signals from inside your body, like heartbeat, breath and hunger, into feelings, and why an empty stomach can feel like a bad day.
- How your body shapes your feelingsYour brain is always reading signals from inside your body and guessing what they mean. Sometimes it guesses wrong.Reading
5 min - Check the body firstBefore you believe the story a bad feeling tells, check whether your body is behind it: sleep, food, caffeine, illness.Practice
4 min
Exercise
Exercise is one of the best-studied ways to ease anxiety and low mood. Part of how it helps is by teaching your body that a racing heart and fast breath are safe.
- What exercise does for anxietyExercise reliably eases anxiety and low mood. It also produces the same sensations as panic, which turns out to be part of why it helps.Reading
5 min - Let your heart raceUse exercise on purpose to get your heart pounding, and let your body learn that the feeling is safe.Practice
5 min
Classic psychology
The early schools of psychotherapy, from Freud, Jung and Adler to Carl Rogers.
Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis in Vienna in the 1890s. Much of his theory has not survived testing, but two ideas lasted: that much of the mind works outside awareness, and that we defend ourselves against feelings we find too painful.
- Spot the defenseWhen a reaction doesn't fit what happened, ask what feeling it might be keeping out.Practice
9 min - Free associationFreud's one rule: say whatever comes to mind, especially what seems irrelevant or embarrassing. You can try a version of it on paper.Reading
6 min - Who does this remind me of?When someone gets under your skin out of all proportion, ask who from your past they remind you of. Then deal with the person in front of you.Practice
9 min - Same story, new castFind the plot that keeps repeating in your life, the part you play in it, and one move to change.Practice
9 min
Jungian
Carl Jung worked with Freud before going his own way. He saw the mind as full of images, stories and disowned parts, which he called the shadow. These practices are reflective, with little research behind them.
- Shadow workFind the parts of yourself you've disowned, the dark ones and the bright ones, and take a little of them back.Practice
7 min - Active imaginationGive a feeling a shape or a voice, and have a real conversation with it.Practice
6 min - Dream reflectionRecall a recent dream, stay with the image that sticks, and ask what it brings to mind for you.Practice
6 min - The personaNotice the mask you wear for the world, what it's for, and where it has started to wear you.Practice
6 min
Adlerian
Alfred Adler, another early psychoanalyst who broke with Freud, put courage, belonging and contribution at the center of mental health. His ideas shaped much of modern therapy.
- Whose task is this?Sort out which part of a situation is yours to do, and which belongs to someone else, like what they think of you.Practice
6 min - What is it for?Instead of asking where a feeling or habit comes from, ask what job it might be doing for you.Practice
6 min - The courage to be imperfectFeeling "not enough" is human, and can push you to grow. Act without waiting to be perfect.Practice
6 min - Act as ifAsk "what would I do if this problem were gone?", then try acting that way, as an experiment, for a set time.Practice
6 min - How can I contribute?When your attention keeps circling yourself, turn it outward: do something small for someone else.Practice
6 min
Humanistic
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow led a "third force" in 1950s psychology, after psychoanalysis and behaviorism. It trusts people to grow when they are accepted as they are, and listens closely to how things feel from the inside.
- FocusingFind the vague, bodily feel of a problem, give it a word that fits, and wait for what it tells you.Practice
9 min - I'm only OK if…Find the condition you put on your own worth, then break it a little and see what actually happens.Practice
8 min - The empty chairSay what you never said to someone, out loud, to an empty chair. Then sit in it and answer as them.Practice
9 min - Say what you actually feelMake what you say match what you feel: the feeling, what set it off, and what you would like.Practice
7 min
Philosophy
Schools of philosophy, ancient and modern, that set out to answer how to live.
Cynicism
Not cynical in the modern sense. Diogenes and the Cynics of 4th-century BC Athens lived on almost nothing and ignored convention, to show how little you need and how little other people's opinions can touch you. The Stoics grew out of them.
- Practice being refusedMake small asks you expect to be turned down, and find out that a no is smaller than you feared.Practice
8 min - What do you actually need?Diogenes threw away his cup and asked the most powerful man alive to move out of his light. Much of what feels like a need is a preference.Reading
5 min - Take one comfort awayGive up one comfort on purpose for a set time. You find out you can manage without it, and you enjoy it more when it comes back.Practice
8 min - Say it plainlyFind the one sentence you mean, cut the padding, and say it about the thing, not the person.Practice
8 min
Stoicism
The Stoics of Greece and Rome, among them Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, taught that our judgments, not events, are what disturb us. CBT's founders named them as an influence.
- What's up to meSplit a worry into the part that's yours to act on and the part that isn't, and set goals only in the first.Practice
7 min - View from abovePicture your situation from high above, and across many years, to see how much of the picture it really takes up.Practice
6 min - Evening reviewGo over your day once, on purpose and fairly: name what went wrong, decide what changes tomorrow, then put the day down.Practice
6 min - Rehearse the setbackPicture a likely setback all the way through to how you would handle it, so it can't catch you unprepared.Practice
6 min
Epicureanism
Epicurus taught that a good life is a calm one: simple pleasures, friendship, and freedom from fear and from wants that can never be satisfied.
Taoism
The Tao Te Ching, traditionally credited to Laozi, praises water: soft and yielding, yet able to wear away stone. Its practices are about not forcing what can't be forced.
Existentialism
Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus and Viktor Frankl wrote about freedom, anxiety and finding meaning without guarantees. Their central idea is uncomfortable and freeing at once: what your life means is partly up to you.
- The dizziness of freedomSome anxiety is a sign that a real choice is open, not proof that something is wrong.Practice
6 min - Imagine Sisyphus happyWhen a struggle never ends, stop waiting for it to. See it clearly, and carry it your own way.Practice
6 min - Bad faith checkCatch the "I have to" or "that's just how I am" that hides a choice, and say it as a choice.Practice
6 min - What could this be for?When you can't change what is happening, ask what it is asking of you, and choose how you meet it.Practice
7 min - Whose voice is this?Ask whether a "should" is really yours, or the anonymous voice of what "one" does.Practice
6 min
Religion & spirituality
Contemplative practices from the world's religions.
Buddhism
Buddhist practice trains attention: seeing thoughts and feelings clearly, as events that arise and pass. Mindfulness-based therapies grew out of it, and some of these practices have been studied.
- The second arrowSeparate the pain that happens to you from the extra suffering you add on top.Practice
9 min - Metta: loving-kindnessDeliberately wish yourself and others well, in a set order that ends with someone difficult.Practice
7 min - NotingA meditation: name each thing as it arises ("thinking", "hearing", "tight"), moment after moment, and let it pass.Practice
6 min
Christianity
From Christian contemplative practice: the Serenity Prayer, and the Examen, a daily review taught by Ignatius of Loyola.
- Dark night of the soulWhen prayer goes dry and what used to move you goes flat, it may be a passage, not a failure.Practice
7 min - The ExamenA short review of the day: give thanks, notice where you felt alive and where you felt drained, own where you fell short, and pick one thing for tomorrow.Practice
7 min
Judaism
From Jewish practice: hitbodedut, the solitary spoken prayer taught by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and the Sabbath, which Abraham Joshua Heschel called a palace in time.
Islam
From Islam: tawakkul, trusting God while doing your part, as in the saying "trust in God, but tie your camel", and the Sufi poetry of Rumi.
Hinduism
From Hindu and yogic thought: the Bhagavad Gita on acting without clinging to results, and the idea of the witness, the part of you that notices your thoughts.
- Act without clingingPut your whole attention into the work itself, not the verdict on it. Absorbed in the doing, there is less room for fear of the result.Practice
7 min - The witnessTurn your attention from the thoughts to the one who is watching them. Thoughts and moods change; the one aware of them doesn't.Practice
6 min
More lessons are on the way.