3 simple ways to stay in the present moment

The age of distraction

Writing in the Guardian, James Williams, a former google advertising strategist and Oxford-trained philosopher said, “I now believe the liberation of human attention may be the defining moral and political struggle of our time.”

It’s a bold and thought-provoking statement but one which, in the age of the internet, social media, fake news, false realities, and the omnipresent mobile phone, is hard to dispute. As I wrote this, I noted how other things I deemed ‘necessary’ to do before writing the first paragraph. Researching quotes, looking up scientific studies, reading other articles on the topic, searching for relevant yoga classes to recommend… I notice how many tabs I have open on my laptop (21), how many times I’ve paused to check my work messages or emails in the past hour… (way too many).

There is no doubt we live in the age of distraction. But why is it so important to try and combat the seemingly ever-increasing tussle for our attention?

Coming back to the present moment

If you practice meditation and yoga, you’re probably familiar with being urged to live in the present moment:
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” said the Buddha. “Happiness lies not in finding what is missing, but in finding what is present”, says Tara Brach. “Realise deeply the present moment is all you’ll ever have”, urges Eckhart Tolle.

One of the key ways to be present is by practising mindfulness. The simplest definition of mindfulness I’ve found is from Dipa Ma, an Indian meditation teacher and Buddhist master in Asia. She said: “Whatever you are doing, be aware of it.”

We cannot be aware of something that we’re doing (or feeling or seeing or experiencing) unless we are right there, in that moment. In essence, mindfulness could be described as the gateway to presence.

Benefits of mindfulness

There are many studies that attest to the efficacy of mindfulness but the fact is scientists still don’t have a full understanding of what actually happens in the brain when we practice it. Though the practice was founded in Buddhism around 2,600 years ago, studies on mindfulness really only began in the 1970s. In other words, we’re really at the tip of the iceberg in our understanding. Practice of mindfulness has been shown to:

• Reduce levels of anxiety and depression

• Improve focus and attention

• Reduce stress

• Decrease emotional reactivity

• Promote empathy and compassion

And though these longer-term benefits are worth pursuing the practice for, to instantly get a ‘feel’ for how you could benefit from being more present, you might ask yourself:

• How does my mind feel when I’m trying to juggle lots of things at the same time?

• What’s my general mood when I’ve spent an hour (or three) scrolling Instagram?

• What feedback is my body giving me? Have I noticed my breath at all?

Why do we avoid the present moment?

In Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando, the narrator wonders, “For what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment? That we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side and the future on another.”

Whilst this article is written to highlight the power of presence, I would be naive not to acknowledge how astoundingly difficult it is much of the time. Think of times when we’re at work, but dreaming of the weekend or being on holiday (holidays – remember those?!)…. Yet when we are lying on that beach or sipping those cocktails we’re worrying about the barrage of work awaiting us.

Right now at the time of writing (early 2021), you may also argue that the present moment isn’t exactly appealing some of the time. And you’d be right. Sometimes it’s just much easier to numb ourselves to the reality of the present moment.

Where life happens

According to the writer and professor of economics at the Hebrew University, Eyal Winter, ‘human psychology is evolutionarily hard-wired to live in the past and the future. Other species have instincts and reflexes to help with their survival, but human survival relies very much on learning and planning. You can’t learn without living in the past, and you can’t plan without living in the future.’

That being said, learning and planning are all very well but what about life? Does the warmth of the sun on your face, or the burst of birdsong in the trees, or soft purr of your cat as it greets you, or the crunch of the Autumn leaves under your feet teach you anything other than how delightful it is to experience them?

And does experiencing them demand anything of you other than just to BE? 

Indeed, for me, this is the most powerful reason of all. There’s a pure simplicity in being truly present, a kind of ‘leaning in’ to what life is offering us, be it ‘good’ or bad’. It’s a deep, undefended, uncomplicated trust that asks nothing of us but to pay attention. 

If you are feeling overwhelmed and out of touch with your body, here are three, really simple tips to guide you back into the here and now.

1. Close the tabs: Do one thing at a time

When life speeds up, we have a tendency to go faster too, in the (mis)belief that we’ll ‘achieve’ more if we double the number of plates we’re spinning. Even in our so-called downtime, we watch Netflix or a movie whilst having half an eye on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook feed.

In fact, what is known as ‘multitasking’ is actually more accurately ‘task-switching’ because our brains aren’t actually capable of focusing on two serious tasks at the same time.

So the next time you find yourself ‘multitasking’, try to focus on doing one thing at a time and do only that. Close the extra tabs on your laptop when you’re working on something, resist the urge to google the name of that actor in the film you’re watching. If you’re waiting in line for something, try and keep your phone in your pocket. And if are scrolling Instagram, fully give yourself over to it – scroll like you mean it! To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hanh’s verse, ‘Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in…’ Scrolling mindlessly, I know that I am scrolling mindlessly.’

2. Ask yourself: Are my mind and body in the same place?

Have you ever had the experience of driving somewhere and realised when you’ve got there you have no recollection of the route? Or you’re out with your dog and spent the whole walk ruminating about work? Even – and often – the briefest of activities such as cleaning our teeth, washing the dishes, or folding the laundry test our ability to be fully present. It’s little wonder Eckhart Tolle defined the human race as “lost in thought”! 

I’ve found the question above one of the simplest and most effective ways to bring myself back into the present moment. If the answer is “no” then you could follow it up with asking yourself, ‘what is here now?’ If we consider that it’s estimated the average person has up to 60,000 thoughts a day and 90% of those are exactly the same thoughts as the day before, then perhaps it’s fair to say our external or internal landscape is usually far richer and more interesting!

3. Take one breath

It’s not for nothing that many meditation teachers ask us to take a couple of deep breaths at the start of our sitting practice – it’s one of simplest and most instant ways to come into the present, into our bodies. Paying attention to our breath is a fundamental way to connect to ourselves because the breath is the invisible bridge between the body and the mind. As long as we’re alive, it’s readily available and our one constant. 

See if you can follow your breath for one full cycle. Pay attention from the moment the wave of breath comes into your body. Notice your belly soften and inflate, your ribs widen, your chest rise. See if you can follow its gentle journey all the way up to its apex. Notice the slight pause before the inhale turns into an exhale… what happens in that gap? ….and then follow the breath all the way back out again.

Article Author: Kirsty Tomlinson

Article Source: https://www.ekhartyoga.com/articles/practice/3-simple-ways-to-stay-in-the-present-moment

SVADHYAYA - Self Study

In order to move forward, to work towards our goals and to build the life we want, we often have to first look inward. We need to be aware of our thoughts, our actions, and perhaps our inactions. Shying away from these this can be tempting, but can potentially hold us back. The article below discusses one of the yoga Niyamas - Svadhyaya, and how we can work this practice into our daily lives in order to work towards the life we want.

The word itself is made up of Sva, meaning own, self, or the human soul, and Adhyaya, meaning lesson, lecture, or reading, and can imply the practice of studying scriptures, as well as a practice of studying the Self.

‘self’ study and ‘Self’ study….

In many pieces of writing regarding the practice of yoga, when we see the word self written with a small ‘s’, it refers to ourselves in this physical form, our ego, and who we consider ourselves to be on a daily basis. When you read the word ‘Self’ with a capital ‘S’, this is likely to refer to the true self, Atman, or the divine within us.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra says: “Study thy self, discover the divine” II.44

It’s probably fair to say that the more we realise what we are not, the closer we come to realising who or what we truly are. By studying ‘the self’ and recognising our habits and thought processes, we realise how much of what we do and think is far from who we really know we are.

When we listen to the ego, we often do things that don’t always align with our true beliefs or intuition. The ‘I’ or small ‘self’ is mostly concerned with survival, which usually entails getting what it wants in all situations, and proving it is indeed ‘the best’ despite what consequences that might have for us. The small self judges, criticises, fears, conditions, doubts and is essentially the cause of the chitta vrittis, or ‘fluctuations of the mind’.

By paying attention to, or ‘studying’ our ‘self’, we become more aware of the things we do that harm us, and also those which serve us and bring us closer to that process of ‘yoking’ or ‘uniting’ with the true Self.

Studying the scriptures

There are thousands of yogic texts containing fascinating, inspiring and transformational writing about the practice of yoga in all its many forms. Some of the most popular and well-known texts which are still studied today include The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, The Bhagavad Gita, and The Hatha Yoga Pradipika.

While it is advised that any sincere and dedicated student of yoga would benefit from reading, studying and reflecting upon these texts, not everyone who practises is going to be able to make time to delve into this ancient wisdom.

If we apply the practice of svadhyaha to our modern-day lives and the situations we’re in right now, ‘studying of the scriptures’ does not strictly have to mean sitting down with a huge copy of The Upanishads or chanting The Vedas; it might mean finding a book or a piece of writing that deepens your own yoga practice. Reading articles online about yoga, or a book which helps us move closer towards ‘Self-realisation’, is also a way of studying. By deepening our own knowledge, understanding and connection to yoga by continuing to read, research, be curious about yoga off the mat, we therefore cultivate our own practice of svadhyaya.

(It’s not enough to just read, though….)

While yes, reading about yoga and all its different aspects is beneficial, it doesn’t make very much difference unless we reflect upon it. When reading something about yogic practice, we can meditate upon how it resonates with us, whether it bears any resemblance to our own experiences, and therefore apply it to our own lives. Having a lot of books and information is one thing, but fully understanding and living what we learn allows our yoga practice to become more a part of our lives.

Svadhyaya on the mat

Studying our habits on the yoga mat can go a long way towards recognising our habits off the mat too. The way in which we practise yoga is actually very reflective of the way we practise life…. and a person’s physical yoga practice often reveals a lot more about them than they may think.

When we’re on the mat, there’s nowhere else to hide. The daily distractions of phones, chores, emails, and TV are no longer there to take our minds away from ourselves. We actually have to pay attention…. This can be a little intimidating at first, and a yoga practice can sometimes reveal more about where our problems are rather than how perfect we are – which as we know, is very good for destroying the ego.

Studying the breath is key

This is usually the first thing we learn when starting a yoga practice. The breath tells us how we are. A short, shallow breath held high up in the chest is often a signal that we’re stressed or worried about something, or that we’re physically pushing ourselves beyond healthy boundaries during the practice. If you notice your breath resembles this, first ask yourself why. Is there a reason to be stressed or worried? And does it matter right now?

Where do you hold tension?

The jaw, forehead, neck, shoulders and upper back are common places we tend to store our fears and worries. When you get to your mat, first become aware of what you can un-do before you begin to ‘do’ anything else. Ask yourself why this tension might be present, and how often does it arise during your practice?

What thoughts are filling your head?

If our time on the mat is the only time we give permission to ourselves to stop, it’s often also the time when our mind decides to unload its millions of whirling thoughts. If you notice your mind becomes especially busy when you come to practice, it’s not a case of ‘blocking out’ thoughts, rather it’s more useful to recognise and acknowledge them for what they are – as this will teach us a lot more about ourselves. Realising what thoughts enter our mind on a regular basis helps us become aware of many other aspects of ourselves.

Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they become character; watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. – Author Unknown

Svadhyaya in everyday life

As we’ve mentioned, reading anything which helps deepen your own yoga practice and move closer towards the Self can be a daily practice of svadhyaya – whether it’s ‘studying’ a traditional text, a blog, a book you really resonate with, or a poem.

Svadhyaya in the sense of studying our selves in daily life though, requires us to really take our yoga practice off the mat….

Knowing what we’re doing in each moment requires us to pay attention, but asking the question “why am I doing this?” requires us to be aware and fully present, which is ‘paying attention’ on a whole other level. Questioning our actions is something we may often avoid, as it is usually a catalyst for change, and as humans we don’t often like change….

Again, it comes down to recognising our habits, and discerning between the ones which come largely from an ego-based place, and which ones are the result of listening to our true Self.

The practice of taking a proverbial step back and observing and questioning our actions can eventually allow us to disentangle ourselves from those aspects of our lives that are harmful towards our wellbeing. As with anything worth doing, it isn’t easy, but it’s well worth the effort and dedication.

A Self-study practice

Observe yourself as though you were watching someone else; observe the way you speak to friends and family, the way you react when plans change, the way you hold yourself when walking or sitting, or even just the way in which you get dressed each morning… it all tells the story of who and how we are in this moment.

The practice of svadhyaya requires satya (honesty) in order to view ourselves from an honest standpoint, tapas (discipline) – because taking an honest look at ourselves isn’t always something we like doing…. And ahimsa (non violence) which reminds us to look upon ourselves without judgement or criticism.

“Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the Self” – The Bhagavad Gita’

Article author: Emma Newlyn

Article source: https://www.ekhartyoga.com/articles/philosophy/the-niyamas-svadhyaya-or-self-study

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Self-limiting beliefs

The way we think & our attitudes and beliefs can have a dramatic effect on how we approach life and opportunities that come our way. Thoughts are strongly influenced by the experiences we have had throughout our lives and can therefore be challenging to alter. However, it can be done and if we are able to change our thinking for the better, the opportunities can be endless! The article below discusses what self limiting beliefs are and how we can work towards changing them. Take a read!

Many of us are constantly striving to grow professionally and personally in our lives. Every new year we set aside some time to establish brand new objectives and things we want to achieve. We start the year off with admirable willpower but it’s not uncommon to arrive at a point when our motivation drops off and our plans lose their lustre.

How many goals have been set but never reached the finish line? Of course, some big and small life changes could have affected your goals from coming to fruition but your beliefs and attitude play an important part in what does and doesn’t happen.

Tony Robbins once said:

“The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.”

What you tell yourself is what you believe. This can play a big role in how you see the world and how you feel. Open your mind and you will discover a belief that's preventing you from being successful. This is also known as limiting beliefs. What type of excuses do you tell yourself that is limiting you from being who you want to be or where you want to be?

What Are Limiting Beliefs?

Limiting beliefs are thoughts, opinions that one believes to be the absolute truth. They tend to have a negative impact on one's life by stopping them from moving forward and growing on a personal and professional level.

In most cases, limiting beliefs are unconscious thoughts that act as a defence mechanism to avoid possible negative or lower vibrating emotions (e.g. frustration, anxiety, anger, sadness).

These beliefs are often triggered according to specific episodes that may have made you suffer in the past. So your subconscious tries to block it by altering your behaviour which can result in negative outcomes like procrastination, conformism, overthinking, anxiety, impostor syndrome, and other reactions.

The Origin Of Self-Limiting Beliefs

Most limiting beliefs are largely developed during childhood. The author of the bestselling book The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton, talks about how from birth to around age seven, you operate primarily in brain wavelengths that are very close to a hypnotic state. When you are a kid, you are literally a sponge, soaking up every little thing around you in order to record "bad and good" behaviours/emotions.

This means that everyone develops beliefs from early childhood, some of which are supportive, and some of which are limiting. For instance, children who are treated as though they are loved and valued will develop the belief that they are loved and wanted. On the contrary, children who are abused or neglected will tend to develop the belief that they are unworthy and unwanted.

There are many ways to identify your limiting beliefs. A natural way of doing that is by listening to the little voices in your head. It's that voice that is constantly telling you that you cannot do, be, or have something.

Let me tell you a personal story that I went through this year. Every three months Atlassian holds an event called ShipIt — a 24 hour innovation time to work on something outside of your job description or take on something to improve your team's work.

This year I decided to participate by leading a project which I had no clue on where or who to ask to help me develop my idea. I am a very quiet remote worker who doesn't (virtually) socialise much so in order to be successful, I needed someone who had some specific programming knowledge that I didn't have. I would have to search for that person in the company. Before submitting my idea to the project board to recruit people to be part of, I instantly thought: "No one is going to care about this topic" and "This project will be a failure".

It took me a few weeks to overcome my thoughts and act upon them. Yes, procrastination is my weakness when I have to deal with something that's uncomfortable for me. Every time my team lead would ask me about this project, another thought would come to my mind: "Why (the heck) did I tell her that I was going to this? Now I have to do it." In the end, telling my co-worker helped empower me to follow through with the project.

Bottom line: I decided in my mind that since I thought this project would be a failure, I should at least try and learn from it. In the end, I not only managed to have the right five people on the project, but we also won the prize for that ShipIt. I was indeed shocked by the end result.

Let's discover how self-limiting beliefs can have a larger impact on a team.

How Do Limiting Beliefs Impact A Team's Success?

Psychologist, Robert M., describes in his research the importance and impact of beliefs in our lives. He says:

“Beliefs are like filters on a camera. What the camera ‘sees’ is a function of the filters through which it is viewing its subject. In other words, how we ‘see’ the world is a function of our beliefs and profoundly influences personality.

As a result of our beliefs, we define ourselves as worthy or worthless, powerful or powerless, competent or incompetent, trusting or suspicious, belonging or outcast, self-reliant or dependent, flexible or judgmental, fairly treated or victimized, loved or hated. Your beliefs have far-reaching consequences, both positive and negative, in your life. Beliefs affect your moods, relationships, job performance, self-esteem, physical health, even your religious or spiritual outlook.”

If teams are made by a group of people then, each of them has their own personal stories, beliefs, and values. When the team bands together, it could make or break the culture, project, or task that they are collaborating on to build and execute.

The fact is that someone's limiting beliefs can have an impact on the team because they can create a real stumbling block not for oneself but also for others. For instance, say Joana is getting closer to her project's deadline but there's no sign of that being accomplished in time. A teammate offers help, but she says "Don't worry, I got this!". There are many beliefs that could be stopping Joanna to accept help, for example, the belief of "being untrustworthy", "not smart enough", "not reliable when she said she could do it."

When you start developing your self-awareness to identify your limiting beliefs, you can take the same situation and create an opportunity for improvement. Doing so will empower you to problem solve, rather than limit yourself to grow. If everyone on the team is open to doing the same, then your team will evolve into a high-functioning team.

Leaders can also inspire their team by encouraging them to get their work done and brag about it to the whole company. The more a leader encourages their team with a positive leadership style to stretch and break through those limiting beliefs, the more effective and productive a team will become.

Beware The Pitfalls Of These Limiting Beliefs

There are two key self-limiting beliefs that can hurt your team. Let’s start breaking them down to help create a better and more productive workplace for your entire team.

"I need my colleagues to like me in order to feel loved or valued."

This limiting belief also relates to something like, "If I don't get the approval of [name/entity] , I feel [emotion] ."

When you are constantly seeking approval from others to like you, you tend to accept things even though you don't like them. It's like your mind is already programmed to say "yes" before you think that's something you like. This can lead to a great deal of stress in the relationship of your team. You are likely to blame them for anything that goes wrong as a result of you agreeing to do what they asked for. This can also have a bandwagon effect. The fear of being an odd-one-out and coupled with the belief that agreeing to someone's perspective will make a person like you can prevent you from speaking up and expressing an alternative view. Making your team blind in a situation you could have contributed to a better solution. On the flip side, it can also lead to burnout for those who don't speak up.

Try this: First, understand why you are saying yes to everything. Then, begin pinpointing the little things you can say no to before being able to say “no” to a bigger project or task. That way you can learn more about how you feel along the way without freaking out in the long run.

"It's not perfect, I need more time before I share"

Another limiting belief in the workplace is when you take too much time to deliver your work because it doesn’t feel perfect yet. This can slow down your team's productivity and potentially backfire with negative effects like depression and anxiety. If you are being critical of your own imperfections, you are probably doing the same to members of your team.

Marie Forleo wrote a whole chapter about perfectionism in her book Everything Is Figureoutable. She explains:

"Life doesn’t demand perfection. It doesn’t require you to be constantly fearless, confident, or self-assured. Life simply requires that you keep showing up."

Try this: Cultivate an awareness of your tendencies toward perfectionism. Instead of holding the work until you perfect it, ask your team members for feedback by using the 30/60/90 framework. That way you can move faster by acknowledging the pain points of your work and leaving behind the gritty details.

Identify, Reframe, And Move Forward

We all have limiting beliefs that stop us from achieving our dreams or even our everyday goals. In order to identify and change those beliefs, you need to work on your self-awareness muscle. The secret is to be accountable and take responsibility for the beliefs you created for yourself. Ultimately, you want to get into the practice of recognising a limiting belief and reframing it to help you take a step forward.

And if you're still encountering limiting beliefs, remember the advice of Mahatma Gandhi:

"You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

Change starts within you. Once you start, embrace your teammates to do the same, then you will see a shift in your team's behaviour and performance which will contribute to success and eventually make a difference in the world.’

Article source: A blog for teams by Trello
Author: Amanda Alvernaz

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Building & maintaining healthy habits

Building habits and equally breaking habits can be a challenging process with many ups, down & possibly multiple attempts. Generally, approaching habits with a plan and some forethought can set you up for success. James Clear, author of New York Times bestselling book ‘Atomic Habits’, outlines below how you can track your habits and why this approach is beneficial.

If you want to stick with a habit for good, one simple and effective thing you can do is keep a habit tracker.

Here's why:

Elite performers will often measure, quantify, and track their progress in various ways. Each little measurement provides feedback. It offers a signal of whether they are making progress or need to change course.

Gabrielle Hamilton, a chef in New York City, provides a good example. During an interview with the New York Times, she said, “The one thing I see that consistently separates the chef from the home cook is that we taste everything, all the time, before we commit it to the dish, right down to the grains of salt. We slurp shot glasses of olive oil and aerate them in our mouths as if it were a wine we were trying to know. We taste the lamb, the fish, the butter, the milk before we use it… we chew salt to see how we like it in our teeth, on our tongues, and to know its flavour, its salinity.”

For the chef, tasting the ingredients tells them whether they are making progress toward their desired end goal. It provides the immediate feedback they need to get the recipe just right.

Like a chef improving a recipe through trial and error, we often improve our habits through trial and error. If one approach doesn't deliver the desired effect, then we adjust—like a chef tweaking the amount of an ingredient.

However, there is an important difference between getting feedback while cooking a meal and getting feedback while building a habit. When it comes to building a habit, feedback is often delayed. It's easy to taste an ingredient or to watch bread rise in the oven. But it can be difficult to visualize the progress you are making with your habits. Perhaps you've been running for a month, but you still don't see a change in your body. Or maybe you managed to meditate for 16 straight days, but you still feel stressed and anxious at work.

Habit formation is a long race. It often takes time for the desired results to appear. And while you are waiting for the long-term rewards of your efforts to accumulate, you need a reason to stick with it in the short-term. You need some immediate feedback that shows you are on the right path.

And this is where a habit tracker can help.

The Habit Tracker: What It Is and How It Works

A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit.

The most basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick with your routine. For example, if you meditate on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, each of those dates gets an X. As time rolls by, the calendar becomes a record of your habit streak.

To make this process as easy as possible, I created the Habit Journal, which includes 12 habit tracker templates—one for each month. All you have to do is add your habit and start crossing off the days.

Placing an X on each day is the classic look. I prefer something a little more design-oriented, so I shade in the cells on my habit tracker. You could also use checkmarks or fill your habit tracker with dots.

No matter what design you choose, the key point is your habit tracker provides immediate evidence that you completed your habit. It's a signal that you are making progress. Of course, that's not all it does…

Habit tracking is powerful for three reasons.

1. It creates a visual cue that can remind you to act.

2. It is motivating to see the progress you are making. You don't want to break your streak.

3. It feels satisfying to record your success in the moment.

Let's break down each one.

Benefit #1: A habit tracker reminds you to act.

Habit tracking naturally builds a series of visual cues. When you look at the calendar and see your streak, you’ll be reminded to act again.

Research has shown that people who track their progress on goals like losing weight, quitting smoking, and lowering blood pressure are all more likely to improve than those who don’t. One study of more than sixteen hundred people found that those who kept a daily food log lost twice as much weight as those who did not. A habit tracker is a simple way to log your behaviour, and the mere act of tracking a behaviour can spark the urge to change it.

Habit tracking also keeps you honest. Most of us think we act better than we do. Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behaviour and notice what’s really going on each day. When the evidence is right in front of you, you’re less likely to lie to yourself.

Benefit #2: A habit tracker motivates you to continue.

The most effective form of motivation is progress. When we get a signal that we are moving forward, we become more motivated to continue down that path. In this way, habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation. Each small win feeds your desire.

This can be particularly powerful on a bad day. When you’re feeling down, it’s easy to forget about all the progress you have already made. Habit tracking provides visual proof of your hard work—a subtle reminder of how far you've come. Plus, the empty square you see each morning can motivate you to get started because you don't want to lose your progress by breaking your streak.

Benefit #3: A habit tracker provides immediate satisfaction.

Finally, tracking feels rewarding. It is satisfying to cross an item off your to-do list, to complete an entry in your workout log, or to mark an X on the calendar. It feels good to watch your results grow and if it feels good, then you’re more likely to endure.

Habit tracking also helps keep your eye on the ball: you’re focused on the process rather than the result. You’re not fixated on getting six-pack abs, you’re just trying to keep the streak alive and become the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts.

Habit Tracker Ideas

Alright, those benefits sound great, but it's not necessary to fill your habit tracker with every habit that makes up your day. In fact, if you're already sticking to a habit, then it seems like extra work to me to track it as well. So what should you measure in your habit tracker?

Habit tracking can help kickstart a new habit or keep you on track with behaviours that you tend to forget or let slide when things get busy.

In Atomic Habits, I recommend using the Two-Minute Rule, which suggests you scale your habits down until they take two minutes or less to perform. You can track whatever habits you want in your habit tracker, but I recommend starting with these super small habits to make sure that you are at least showing up in a small way each day. I'll share some examples below and break them out by daily, weekly, and monthly habits.

Common daily habits to track:

• journal 1 sentence

• read 1 page

• meditate 1 minute

• do 1 push up

• stretch for 1 minute

• write 1 thing I'm grateful for

• make your bed

• wake up by [TIME]

• go to bed by [TIME]

• take a shower

• floss teeth

• weigh myself

• take medication

• take vitamins/supplements

• play [INSTRUMENT] for 1 minute

• contact 1 potential client

• prioritize to-do list

• say “I love you” at least once

• put all dishes put away

• take a walk outside

• call mom

• walk the dog

Notice that most items on this list can be completed in two minutes or less. Make your habits so easy that you can stick to them even on the hard days.

For something to become truly habitual, you need to repeat it frequently. As a result, most habits are daily. But it can also be helpful to use a habit tracker for various weekly or monthly routines. These behaviours won't become “automatic” like tying your shoes or brushing your teeth, but a habit tracker can remind you to complete them nonetheless.

Common weekly habits to track:

• publish blog post

• vacuum

• take out trash/recycling

• do the laundry

• water the plants

• tidy up your bedroom

• write a thank you note

Monthly habits:

• review finances

• transfer money to savings account

• pay off credit cards

• pay bills

• deep clean the house

You can also use a habit tracker to simply count how often you do something. For example, if you want to keep track of how many days you travel for work each month.

Other ideas:

• days spent traveling

• conduct weekly review

• conduct monthly review

Finally, you can use a habit tracker to measure what you don't do. I call these “habits of avoidance” (that is, behaviours you are trying to avoid).

Habits of avoidance:

• no alcohol

• no Netflix

• no online purchases

• no soda

• no sugar

• no caffeine

• no smoking

Again, the Habit Journal offers a proven template and the fastest way to create your habit tracker. No need to spend an hour drawing your own grid. Just write your habits down and you're ready to go.

How to Get in the Habit of Using Your Habit Tracker

Despite all of the benefits, a habit tracker is not something that makes sense in every situation or for every person. Many people resist the idea of tracking and measuring. It can feel like a burden because it forces you into two habits: the habit you’re trying to build and the habit of tracking it. That said, nearly anyone can benefit from habit tracking in one form or another—even if it’s only temporary.

What can we do to make habit tracking easier?

First, manual tracking should be limited to your most important habits. It is better to consistently track one habit than to sporadically track ten. I tend to keep my habit tracker simple and limit it to my three or four most important habits.

Second, record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs. The completion of the habit is the cue to write it down. (This is a twist on the “habit stacking” approach I discuss in Chapter 5 of Atomic Habits.)

Here's the basic formula: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [TRACK MY HABIT].

For example:

• After I hang up the phone from a sales call, I will mark the “call 1 potential client” column.

• After I finish meditating, I will fill the “meditate for 1 minute” column.

• After I put my plate in the dishwasher, I will complete the “put all dishes away” column.

Basically, what we are talking about here is getting in the habit of using your habit tracker. These little rules help you remember to pick up your habit tracker and mark off another accomplishment.

How to Recover Quickly When Your Habits Break Down

Finally, I want to discuss what to do when you fall off the wagon.

Every habit streak ends at some point. Perfection is not possible. Before long, an emergency will pop up—you get sick or you have to travel for work or your family needs a little more of your time. Whenever this happens to me, I try to remind myself of a simple rule:

Never miss twice.

If I miss one day, I try to get back into it as quickly as possible. Missing one workout happens, but I’m not going to miss two in a row. Maybe I’ll eat an entire pizza, but I’ll follow it up with a healthy meal. As soon as one streak ends, I get started on the next one. I can’t be perfect, but I can avoid the second mistake.

Generally speaking, the first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. As I write in Atomic Habits, “Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”

Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can't do something perfectly, then you shouldn't do it at all.

Sure, a perfectly filled-in habit tracker looks beautiful and you should strive to achieve it whenever possible. But life is messy. In the long run, what matters is that you find a way to get back on track.

How Long Do I Need to Track My Habits?

One of the most common questions I get is “How long does it take to build a habit?”

You'll see all kinds of answers: 21 days, 30 days, 100 days. One popular answer right now is 66 days because there was one study that found that, on average, it took 66 days to build a habit. However, even within that study the range was quite wide depending on the difficulty of the habit.

I find that people are really trying to get at something else when they ask, “How long does it take to build a habit?” What they often mean is, “How long until it's easy? How long until I don't have to put much effort in anymore?”

Look, all habits get easier with practice. But this line of questioning ignores the real purpose of building better habits in the first place.

How long does it take? The honest answer is: forever. Because once you stop doing it, it is no longer a habit.

A habit is a lifestyle to be lived, not a finish line to be crossed. You are looking to make small, sustainable changes you can stick with for years. And a habit tracker is one tool in your toolbox on the road to behaviour change. It is an effective way to prove to visualize your progress and motivate you to show up again tomorrow.

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Practical techniques for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

What influences the way we think and behave is very complex. From our environment, the way we grew up, social media, what we watch, who we spend time with - these things can all shape us in one way or another. However, our feelings, reactions and behaviours are ultimately up to us and they can be changed. The article below outlines Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - what it is, how it can help us to explore/ modify our thoughts & behaviours, and techniques we can implement.

Even if you’re relatively unfamiliar with psychology, chances are you’ve heard of cognitive-behavioural therapy, commonly known as CBT. It’s an extremely common type of talk therapy practiced around the world.

If you’ve ever interacted with a mental health therapist, a counsellor, or a psychiatry clinician in a professional setting, it’s likely you’ve participated in CBT. If you’ve ever heard friends or loved ones talk about how a mental health professional helped them identify unhelpful thoughts and patterns and behaviour and alter them to more effectively work towards their goals, you’ve heard about the impacts of CBT.

CBT is one of the most frequently used tools in the psychologist’s toolbox. Though it’s based on simple principles, it can have wildly positive outcomes when put into practice.

What is CBT?

“This simple idea is that our unique patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving are significant factors in our experiences, both good and bad. Since these patterns have such a significant impact on our experiences, it follows that altering these patterns can change our experiences” (Martin, 2016).

Cognitive-behavioural therapy aims to change our thought patterns, our conscious and unconscious beliefs, our attitudes, and, ultimately, our behaviour, in order to help us face difficulties and achieve our goals.

Psychiatrist Aaron Beck was the first to practice cognitive behavioural therapy. Like most mental health professionals at the time, Beck was a psychoanalysis practitioner.

While practicing psychoanalysis, Beck noticed the prevalence of internal dialogue in his clients and realised how strong the link between thoughts and feelings can be. He altered the therapy he practiced in order to help his clients identify, understand, and deal with the automatic, emotion-filled thoughts that regularly arose in his clients.

Beck found that a combination of cognitive therapy and behavioural techniques produced the best results for his clients. In describing and honing this new therapy, Beck laid the foundations of the most popular and influential form of therapy of the last 50 years.

This form of therapy is not designed for lifelong participation and aims to help clients meet their goals in the near future. Most CBT treatment regimens last from five to ten months, with clients participating in one 50- to 60-minute session per week.

CBT is a hands-on approach that requires both the therapist and the client to be invested in the process and willing to actively participate. The therapist and client work together as a team to identify the problems the client is facing, come up with strategies for addressing them, and creating positive solutions (Martin, 2016).

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Cognitive Distortions

Many of the most popular and effective cognitive-behavioural therapy techniques are applied to what psychologists call “cognitive distortions,” inaccurate thoughts that reinforce negative thought patterns or emotions (Grohol, 2016).

There are 15 main cognitive distortions that can plague even the most balanced thinkers.

1. Filtering

Filtering refers to the way a person can ignore all of the positive and good things in life to focus solely on the negative. It’s the trap of dwelling on a single negative aspect of a situation, even when surrounded by an abundance of good things.

2. Polarised thinking / Black-and-white thinking

This cognitive distortion is all-or-nothing thinking, with no room for complexity or nuance—everything’s either black or white, never shades of grey.

If you don’t perform perfectly in some area, then you may see yourself as a total failure instead of simply recognising that you may be unskilled in one area.

3. Overgeneralisation

Overgeneralisation is taking a single incident or point in time and using it as the sole piece of evidence for a broad conclusion.

For example, someone who overgeneralizes could bomb an important job interview and instead of brushing it off as one bad experience and trying again, they conclude that they are terrible at interviewing and will never get a job offer.

4. Jumping to conclusions

Similar to overgeneralisation, this distortion involves faulty reasoning in how one makes conclusions. Unlike overgeneralising one incident, jumping to conclusions refers to the tendency to be sure of something without any evidence at all.

For example, we might be convinced that someone dislikes us without having any real evidence, or we might believe that our fears will come true before we have a chance to really find out.

5. Catastrophising / Magnifying or Minimising

This distortion involves expecting that the worst will happen or has happened, based on an incident that is nowhere near as catastrophic as it is made out to be. For example, you may make a small mistake at work and be convinced that it will ruin the project you are working on, that your boss will be furious, and that you’ll lose your job.

Alternatively, one might minimise the importance of positive things, such as an accomplishment at work or a desirable personal characteristic.

6. Personalisation

This is a distortion where an individual believes that everything they do has an impact on external events or other people, no matter how irrational that may be. A person with this distortion will feel that he or she has an exaggerated role in the bad things that happen around them.

For instance, a person may believe that arriving a few minutes late to a meeting led to it being derailed and that everything would have been fine if they were on time.

7. Control fallacies

This distortion involves feeling like everything that happens to you is either a result of purely external forces or entirely due to your own actions. Sometimes what happens to us is due to forces we can’t control, and sometimes what it’s due to our own actions, but the distortion is assuming that it is always one or the other.

We might assume that difficult co-workers are to blame for our own less-than-stellar work, or alternatively assume that every mistake another person makes is because of something we did.

8. Fallacy of fairness

We are often concerned about fairness, but this concern can be taken to extremes. As we all know, life is not always fair. The person who goes through life looking for fairness in all their experiences will end up resentful and unhappy.

Sometimes things will go our way, and sometimes they will not, regardless of how fair it may seem. 

9. Blaming

When things don’t go our way, there are many ways we can explain or assign responsibility for the outcome. One method of assigning responsibility is blaming others for what goes wrong.

Sometimes we may blame others for making us feel or act a certain way, but this is a cognitive distortion. Only you are responsible for the way you feel or act.

10. “Shoulds”

“Shoulds” refer to the implicit or explicit rules we have about how we and others should behave. When others break our rules, we are upset. When we break our own rules, we feel guilty. For example, we may have an unofficial rule that customer service representatives should always be accommodating to the customer.

When we interact with a customer service representative that is not immediately accommodating, we might get angry. If we have an implicit rule that we are irresponsible if we spend money on unnecessary things, we may feel exceedingly guilty when we spend even a small amount of money on something we don’t need.

11. Emotional reasoning

This distortion involves thinking that if we feel a certain way, it must be true. For example, if we feel unattractive or uninteresting in the current moment, we think we are unattractive or uninteresting. This cognitive distortion boils down to:

“I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

Clearly, our emotions are not always indicative of the objective truth, but it can be difficult to look past how we feel.

12. Fallacy of change

The fallacy of change lies in expecting other people to change as it suits us. This ties into the feeling that our happiness depends on other people, and their unwillingness or inability to change, even if we demand it, keeps us from being happy.

This is a damaging way to think because no one is responsible for our own happiness except ourselves.

13. Global labelling / mislabelling

This cognitive distortion is an extreme form of generalising, in which we generalise one or two instances or qualities into a global judgment. For example, if we fail at a specific task, we may conclude that we are a total failure in not only that area but all areas.

Alternatively, when a stranger says something a bit rude, we may conclude that he or she is an unfriendly person in general. Mislabelling is specific to using exaggerated and emotionally loaded language, such as saying a woman has abandoned her children when she leaves her children with a babysitter to enjoy a night out.

14. Always being right

While we all enjoy being right, this distortion makes us think we must be right, that being wrong is unacceptable.

We may believe that being right is more important than the feelings of others, being able to admit when we’ve made a mistake or being fair and objective.

15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy

This distortion involves expecting that any sacrifice or self-denial will pay off. We may consider this karma, and expect that karma will always immediately reward us for our good deeds. This results in feelings of bitterness when we do not receive our reward (Grohol, 2016).

Many tools and techniques found in cognitive behavioural therapy are intended to address or reverse these cognitive distortions.

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9 Essential CBT Techniques and Tools

There are many tools and techniques used in cognitive behavioural therapy, many of which can be used in both a therapy context and in everyday life. The nine techniques and tools listed below are some of the most common and effective CBT practices.

1. Journaling

This technique is a way to gather about one’s moods and thoughts. A CBT journal can include the time of the mood or thought, the source of it, the extent or intensity, and how we reacted, among other factors.

This technique can help us to identify our thought patterns and emotional tendencies, describe them, and change, adapt, or cope with them (Utley & Garza, 2011).

2. Unravelling cognitive distortions

This is a primary goal of CBT and can be practiced with or without the help of a therapist. In order to unravel cognitive distortions, you must first become aware of the distortions from which you commonly suffer (Hamamci, 2002).

Part of this involves identifying and challenging harmful automatic thoughts, which frequently fall into one of the 15 categories listed earlier.

3. Cognitive restructuring

Once you identify the distortions you hold, you can begin to explore how those distortions took root and why you came to believe them. When you discover a belief that is destructive or harmful, you can begin to challenge it (Larsson, Hooper, Osborne, Bennett, & McHugh, 2015).

For example, if you believe that you must have a high-paying job to be a respectable person, but you’re then laid off from your high-paying job, you will begin to feel bad about yourself.

Instead of accepting this faulty belief that leads you to think negative thoughts about yourself, you could take an opportunity to think about what really makes a person “respectable,” a belief you may not have explicitly considered before.

4. Exposure and response prevention

This technique is specifically effective for those who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; Abramowitz, 1996). You can practice this technique by exposing yourself to whatever it is that normally elicits a compulsive behaviour, but doing your best to refrain from the behaviour.

You can combine journaling with this technique, or use journaling to understand how this technique makes you feel.

5. Interoceptive exposure

This technique is intended to treat panic and anxiety. It involves exposure to feared bodily sensations in order to elicit the response (Arntz, 2002). Doing so activates any unhelpful beliefs associated with the sensations, maintains the sensations without distraction or avoidance, and allows new learning about the sensations to take place.

It is intended to help the sufferer see that symptoms of panic are not dangerous, although they may be uncomfortable.

6. Nightmare exposure and rescripting

Nightmare exposure and rescripting are intended specifically for those suffering from nightmares. This technique is similar to interoceptive exposure, in that the nightmare is elicited, which brings up the relevant emotion (Pruiksma, Cranston, Rhudy, Micol, & Davis, 2018).

Once the emotion has arisen, the client and therapist work together to identify the desired emotion and develop a new image to accompany the desired emotion.

7. Play the script until the end

This technique is especially useful for those suffering from fear and anxiety. In this technique, the individual who is vulnerable to crippling fear or anxiety conducts a sort of thought experiment in which they imagine the outcome of the worst-case scenario.

Letting this scenario play out can help the individual to recognise that even if everything he or she fears comes to pass, the outcome will still be manageable (Chankapa, 2018).

8. Progressive muscle relaxation

This is a familiar technique to those who practice mindfulness. Similar to the body scan, this technique instructs you to relax one muscle group at a time until your whole body is in a state of relaxation (McCallie, Blum, & Hood, 2006).

You can use audio guidance, a YouTube video, or simply your own mind to practice this technique, and it can be especially helpful for calming nerves and soothing a busy and unfocused mind.

9. Relaxed breathing

This is another technique that will be familiar to practitioners of mindfulness. There are many ways to relax and bring regularity to your breath, including guided and unguided imagery, audio recordings, YouTube videos, and scripts. Bringing regularity and calm to your breath will allow you to approach your problems from a place of balance, facilitating more effective and rational decisions (Megan, 2016).

Some More CBT Interventions and Exercises

Haven’t had enough CBT tools and techniques yet? Read on for additional useful and effective exercises.

1. Behavioural experiments

These are related to thought experiments, in that you engage in a “what if” consideration. Behavioural experiments differ from thought experiments in that you actually test out these “what ifs” outside of your thoughts (Boyes, 2012).

In order to test a thought, you can experiment with the outcomes that different thoughts produce. For example, you can test the thoughts:

“If I criticise myself, I will be motivated to work harder” versus “If I am kind to myself, I will be motivated to work harder.”

First, you would try criticising yourself when you need the motivation to work harder and record the results. Then you would try being kind to yourself and recording the results. Next, you would compare the results to see which thought was closer to the truth.

These behavioural Experiments to Test Beliefs can help you learn how to achieve your therapeutic goals and how to be your best self.

2. Thought records

Thought records are useful in testing the validity of your thoughts (Boyes, 2012). They involve gathering and evaluating evidence for and against a particular thought, allowing for an evidence-based conclusion on whether the thought is valid or not.

For example, you may have the belief “My friend thinks I’m a bad friend.” You would think of all the evidence for this belief, such as “She didn’t answer the phone the last time I called,” or “She cancelled our plans at the last minute,” and evidence against this belief, like “She called me back after not answering the phone,” and “She invited me to her barbecue next week. If she thought I was a bad friend, she probably wouldn’t have invited me.”

Once you have evidence for and against, the goal is to come up with more balanced thoughts, such as, “My friend is busy and has other friends, so she can’t always answer the phone when I call. If I am understanding of this, I will truly be a good friend.”

Thought records apply the use of logic to ward off unreasonable negative thoughts and replace them with more balanced, rational thoughts (Boyes, 2012).

Here’s a helpful Thought Record Worksheet to download.

3. Pleasant activity scheduling

This technique can be especially helpful for dealing with depression (Boyes, 2012). It involves scheduling activities in the near future that you can look forward to.

For example, you may write down one activity per day that you will engage in over the next week. This can be as simple as watching a movie you are excited to see or calling a friend to chat. It can be anything that is pleasant for you, as long as it is not unhealthy (i.e., eating a whole cake in one sitting or smoking).

You can also try scheduling an activity for each day that provides you with a sense of mastery or accomplishment (Boyes, 2012). It’s great to do something pleasant, but doing something small that can make you feel accomplished may have more long-lasting and far-reaching effects.

This simple technique can introduce more positivity into your life, and our Pleasant Activity Scheduling Worksheet is designed to help.

4. Imagery-based exposure

This exercise involves thinking about a recent memory that produced strong negative emotions and analysing the situation.

For example, if you recently had a fight with your significant other and they said something hurtful, you can bring that situation to mind and try to remember it in detail. Next, you would try to label the emotions and thoughts you experienced during the situation and identify the urges you felt (e.g., to run away, to yell at your significant other, or to cry).

Visualising this negative situation, especially for a prolonged period of time, can help you to take away its ability to trigger you and reduce avoidance coping (Boyes, 2012). When you expose yourself to all of the feelings and urges you felt in the situation and survive experiencing the memory, it takes some of its power away.

5. Graded exposure worksheet

This technique may sound complicated, but it’s relatively simple.

Making a situation exposure hierarchy involves means listing situations that you would normally avoid (Boyes, 2012). For example, someone with severe social anxiety may typically avoid making a phone call or asking someone on a date.

Next, you rate each item on how distressed you think you would be, on a scale from 0 to 10, if you engaged in it. For the person suffering from severe social anxiety, asking someone on a date may be rated a 10 on the scale, while making a phone call might be rated closer to a 3 or 4.

Once you have rated the situations, you rank them according to their distress rating. This will help you recognise the biggest difficulties you face, which can help you decide which items to address and in what order. It’s often advised to start with the least distressing items and work your way up to the most distressing items.

Here are some of the most popular workbooks and manuals for clients to use alone or with a therapist:

• The CBT Toolbox: A Workbook for Clients and Clinicians by Jeff Riggenbach;

• Client’s Guidebook: “Activities and Your Mood” by Community Partners in Care;

• The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety: A Step-by-Step Program by William J. Knaus and Jon Carlson;

• The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression: A Step-by-Step Program by William J. Knaus and Albert Ellis;

• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Skills Workbook by Barry Gregory;

• A Course in CBT Techniques: A Free Online CBT Workbook by Albert Bonfil and Suraji Wagage.

There are many other manuals and workbooks available that can help get you started with CBT, but the tools above are a good start.

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5 Final Cognitive behavioural Activities

Before we go, there are a few more CBT activities and exercises that may be helpful for you or your clients that we’d like to cover.

1. Mindfulness meditation

Mindfulness can have a wide range of positive impacts, including helping with depression, anxiety, addiction, and many other mental illnesses or difficulties.

The practice can help those suffering from harmful automatic thoughts to disengage from rumination and obsession by helping them stay firmly grounded in the present (Jain et al., 2007).

Mindfulness meditations, in particular, can function as helpful tools for your clients in between therapy sessions, such as to help ground them in the present moment during times of stress.

2. Successive approximation

This is a fancy name for a simple idea that you have likely already heard of: breaking up large tasks into small steps.

It can be overwhelming to be faced with a huge goal, like opening a business or remodelling a house. This is true in mental health treatment as well, since the goal to overcome depression or anxiety and achieve mental wellness can seem like a monumental task.

By breaking the large goal into small, easy-to-accomplish steps, we can map out the path to success and make the journey seem a little less overwhelming (e.g., Emmelkamp & Ultee, 1974).

3. Writing self-statements to counteract negative thoughts

This technique can be difficult for someone who’s new to CBT treatment or suffering from severe symptoms, but it can also be extremely effective (Anderson, 2014).

When you (or your client) are being plagued by negative thoughts, it can be hard to confront them, especially if your belief in these thoughts is strong. To counteract these negative thoughts, it can be helpful to write down a positive, opposite thought.

For example, if the thought “I am worthless” keeps popping into your head, try writing down a statement like “I am a person with worth,” or “I am a person with potential.” In the beginning, it can be difficult to accept these replacement thoughts, but the more you bring out these positive thoughts to counteract the negative ones, the stronger the association will be.

4. Visualise the best parts of your day

When you are feeling depressed or negative, it is difficult to recognise that there are positive aspects of life. This simple technique of bringing to mind the good parts of your day can be a small step in the direction of recognising the positive (Anderson, 2014).

All you need to do is write down the things in your life that you are thankful for or the most positive events that happen in a given day. The simple act of writing down these good things can forge new associations in your brain that make it easier to see the positive, even when you are experiencing negative emotions.

5. Reframe your negative thoughts

It can be easy to succumb to negative thoughts as a default setting. If you find yourself immediately thinking a negative thought when you see something new, such as entering an unfamiliar room and thinking “I hate the colour of that wall,” give reframing a try (Anderson, 2014).

Reframing involves countering the negative thought(s) by noticing things you feel positive about as quickly as possible. For instance, in the example where you immediately think of how much you hate the colour of that wall, you would push yourself to notice five things in the room that you feel positively about (e.g., the carpet looks comfortable, the lampshade is pretty, the windows let in a lot of sunshine).

You can set your phone to remind you throughout the day to stop what you are doing and think of the positive things around you. This can help you to push your thoughts back into the realm of the positive instead of the negative.

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A Take-Home Message

In this post, we offered many techniques, tools, and resources that can be effective in the battle against depression, anxiety, OCD, and a host of other problems or difficulties.

However, as is the case with many treatments, they depend on you (or your client) putting in a lot of effort. We encourage you to give these techniques a real try and allow yourself the luxury of thinking that they could actually work.

When we approach a potential solution with the assumption that it will not work, that assumption often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we approach a potential solution with an open mind and the belief that it just might work, it has a much better chance of succeeding.

So if you are struggling with negative automatic thoughts, please consider these tips and techniques and give them a shot. Likewise, if your client is struggling, encourage them to make the effort, because the payoff can be better than they can imagine.’

Article author: Courtney Ackerman
Article source: https://positivepsychology.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-techniques-worksheets/

Ayurvedic practices to enhance your health & digestion

Overall health and well-being is so much more than just the absence of disease or illness. It should include the state of our mental health, our senses, and what we are actively doing to nurture and care for our bodies to prevent negative disruptions - illness or otherwise. Ayurveda takes a very holistic approach to wellness, the article below discusses in more detail what we can do to support a healthy and happy life..

‘The healing tradition of Ayurveda teaches that health and wellbeing depends upon our ability to digest everything we take in from the environment. This includes not only tangible substances like food and drink, but also our experiences, emotions, and the impressions we take in via our sensory portals, namely our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin.

Agni is the Sanskrit term for the “digestive fire” that breaks down the food and other things we ingest from the environment, assimilating what is useful, and eliminating the rest.

When our digestive ability, or agni, is strong, we create healthy tissues, eliminate waste products efficiently, and produce a subtle essence called ojas. Ojas, which is a Sanskrit word that means strength, can be envisioned as the innermost vital essence. According to Ayurveda, ojas is the basis for clarity of perception, physical strength, and immunity. On the other hand, if our agni is weakened through improper eating, lack of activity, negative emotional energy or unhealthy daily routine, our digestion will be hampered and we produce toxins that get stored in the body. According to Ayurveda, this toxic residue, known as ama, is the root cause of disease.

Uncovering the Root Causes of Digestive Issues

Whether we are coping with weight issues or uncomfortable GI symptoms such as bloating, gas, or indigestion, often the underlying root problem is weak agni, or poor digestion. Unfortunately, in Western medicine, we aren’t trained to ask the key question “How strong is my digestive fire?” Instead, we concentrate solely on the foods going in. When a patient goes to a health care provider trained in conventional allopathic medicine, the treatment options for digestive issues are typically medications, which serve to control symptoms, but do not treat the underlying cause.

Even when a provider’s approach includes testing and the elimination of offending foods, this is still only addressing part of the problem. While this treatment addresses the agent (or food) being ingested, it doesn’t look at why it is not being digested properly. Although eliminating foods that are bothersome can often alleviate symptoms, it is often difficult for patients to continually avoid those foods. It can often begin to disrupt their quality of life. The Ayurvedic concept of agni allows us to expand the conversation into answering the most important questions: “Why did the body begin to improperly digest, or not tolerate, this food?” and “How can we both eliminate the offending agent and concurrently increase agni or digestive power?” This approach opens up the possibility of re-introducing the food at a future time, allowing the person to fully experience foods again.

Getting Practical

Ayurveda recommends a variety of practical techniques for keeping our digestive fire strong. Incorporating these practices into your daily life can strengthen agni and, in turn, facilitate weight loss, improve the metabolism of food, and minimise uncomfortable GI symptoms.

Here are six powerful ways to strengthen your agni:

1. Meditate on a regular basis. Studies are increasingly confirming the genetic changes that occur with regular meditation, which can help restore the body’s homeostasis, including the processes controlling digestion. To achieve maximum benefit, meditate for 20 to 30 minutes, twice daily, once in the morning and once in the evening. To get started with meditation or to deepen your meditation practice, please visit the Chopra Center’s Meditation Resource Library.

2. Do some form of daily movement. Whether it is a little yoga every morning, or a daily walk, a recent study published in Diabetes Care showed that a short 15-minute walk after each meal helped to control sugar spikes after eating. These short post-meal walks were more effective than taking a longer, 45-minute walk once daily.

3. Don’t overeat. When we eat more food than our stomach can accommodate, we cannot properly break it down. We also tend to produce more acid, thus causing reflux and indigestion. In addition, the amount of digestive enzymes produced may not be able to completely break down the volume of food ingested, which leads to more gas formation, discomfort, or bloating. Ayurveda recommends that we leave one-third to one-quarter of our stomach empty to allow space for our body to easily digest our meal.

   Here is a simple way to gauge an ideal portion of food for a meal based on your body size: Cup your hands together with your fingertips touching, forming the shape of a bowl. The recommended amount of food for a meal is the equivalent of two of these handfuls of food. Of course, you can eat less than two handfuls if your appetite is smaller.

4. Sip on ginger tea throughout the day, and with meals. Ginger is known in Ayurveda as the “universal remedy” due to its many benefits for the body, and it has been used for more than 2,000 years to treat digestive issues. Ginger can relax the smooth muscle of the intestines, thereby relieving symptoms of gas and cramping.

   A recent study in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that ginger stimulates digestion by speeding up the movement of food from the stomach into the small intestine, and helps eliminates digestive discomfort after eating. In addition, ginger can stimulate saliva, bile, and gastric enzymes to aid in digestion of the food that has been ingested. The researchers concluded that these beneficial effects are a result of phenolic compounds, primarily gingerol and shogaol, and various other volatile oils that are present in ginger.

   Ginger Tea Recipe: Ginger tea is refreshing and easy to make. Just add one teaspoon of grated or sliced fresh ginger root to a cup of hot water. You can prepare a larger batch and keep it with you in a thermos bottle to sip throughout the day.

5. Eat your largest meal at lunchtime. Our bodies are most able to digest food at midday, when we are active. As studies have found, our digestive system secretes the highest concentration of “digestive juices” around noon, making this the best time to eat our largest meal. In the evening, our bodies are slowing down and preparing for sleep. If we eat our biggest meal at dinner, when our digestive fire is weaker, we will feel heavy and bloated and will be more likely to have difficulty falling asleep.

6. Focus on releasing negative emotions. You’ve no doubt noticed that your emotions influence your digestion. You may get heartburn when you’re under stress, lose your appetite when you feel sad, or become nauseated or even throw up before a big exam or presentation. A growing body of research is finding that the stress associated with unprocessed negative emotions can inhibit the natural digestive process and lead to chronic digestive issues.

   As we now know, a complex, independent nervous system called the enteric nervous system (ENS) lines the gastrointestinal tract. Dubbed “the second brain” by Dr. Michael Gershon, a researcher and physician at Columbia University Medical Center, the ENS contains many of the major neurotransmitters that are found in the brain, including serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, norepinephrine, and nitric oxide. In fact, about 95 percent of the serotonin contained in the body at any given time is in the ENS.

   This second brain controls our digestion and can work both independently and in conjunction with the brain in our head. Without getting bogged down in the details of this intricate system, we can briefly state that there is an intimate relationship between our brain and our gut, and our digestion responds to the thoughts and emotions. When we experience a situation that we interpret as stressful, signals from the brain can alter nerve function between the stomach and oesophagus, resulting in heartburn. With extreme stress, the brain sends signals to the gut immune cells that release chemicals leading to inflammation. This inflammation can then lead to malabsorption, and even food sensitivities if the stress becomes chronic. By learning how to manage stress and release emotional turbulence, we help our digestive tract to work naturally and efficiently.

Proper digestion, with a strong agni, plays a central role in our physical and emotional wellbeing. As Ayurveda recognises, we are not what we eat, but “we are what we digest.” By making choices that strengthen our digestive ability, we form the foundation for good health and vitality.’

Article Source: https://www.deepakchopra.com/articles/six-ayurvedic-practices-to-improve-your-digestion/
Article author: Deepak Chopra

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