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Tag Archives: Stress Management

No. 122: Use the Positivity Ratio

December 15, 2012 11:54 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…I am going to practice using the Positivity Ratio to help shift my thoughts and feelings. Researchers in the field of Positive Psychology have found that it takes three positive thoughts to shift a negative thought. This week, I am going to practice consciously having positive thoughts, so that when I find my thoughts going dark, I will be able to use my skills to improve the moment. As I go through each day, I will try to pause whenever I remember to and list three positive things I have recently noticed. I will work to list the smallest things I can, as well as noticing bigger things. This will help me get really used to noticing the elements of things that might bring me some joy. This week, I am going to learn how to notice the things that might give me joy. I will let them exist alongside anything that I find unpleasant or distressing. As I list my three positive things, I will focus my awareness on each thing and make myself really mindful of all of the good things about it and what it is that makes it positive to me. I will try to do this at least two or three times every day this week, regardless of how I feel. It might help to schedule in to do it in the morning and at night so I remember to practice – remembering to practice can be really hard. When I am familiar with purposefully thinking of three small positives, I will add ‘ Use the Positivity Ratio’ to my Personal Coping Kete. When I notice myself having pessimistic thoughts or feeling really bad, I will use the positivity ratio to make myself mindfully aware of three good things, however small they may be. I will let those three good things, exist side-by-side with whatever else I am experiencing so that the hard things do not stop me from noticing the good things.
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No. 120: Reserve Judgement

November 24, 2012 6:54 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…I will practice reserving judgement about what the future might bring. Each day, when I find myself moving into a new task or situation, I will take a couple of seconds to say to myself “Lets just see what happens, whatever happens, I’ ll handle it. For now I reserve judgement.” Then I will move on to the next part of my day with an open mind. When I am comfortable saying this to myself in ordinary, everyday situations and moving forward with an open mind, I will add this strategy to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of improving my mood during times of stress and distress. When I find myself stressed or distressed about what I think might happen in the future, I will take a moment to reserve judgement and trust myself to handle whatever comes my way. This might help me balance out my fears and worries, when they seem overwhelming.
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No. 119: Talk About Solutions

November 18, 2012 5:38 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…I will practice positive communication as a way of expressing myself. This week, I will practice talking to people about solutions, rather than identifying things I am unhappy about. Whenever I feel like complaining or raising an issue with someone, I will practice flipping it on its head and talking about what I want to see instead. For example, instead of saying “I don’ t like it when you spill food on the carpet,” this week I would say “I’ d really like you to have a plate.” First off, I will need to take a moment to think about what I would like to see in the situation so I can express it to those around me. I’ ll use simple, positive language to let the people around me know what I want to happen. In this way, throughout the week I will get used to identifying solutions to problems and negative feelings and expressing them to the people around me. Once I am comfortable talking about solutions to everyday problems to the people around me, I will add the strategy to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of dealing with distressing situations with other people. If I find myself upset or stressed about something, I will be able to think about the possible solutions to the problems and talk to the person about those solutions and how we could put them into action together.
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No. 118: Declare a Peace Treaty with the Moment

November 3, 2012 2:41 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing … Coping Kete… I will practice mindful distraction and self-soothing by regularly pausing and declaring a peace treaty with the current moment. When I declare a peace treaty with a moment, that means I am committing to spend a moment in peace before moving on to my next experience of the day. I will surrender whatever is on my mind for a moment and peacefully engage my attention in my surroundings. This week, when I am in between tasks, I will practice saying to myself either silently or out loud “I declare a peace treaty with this moment.” I will then take a minute or more to ground myself peacefully in the current moment before I move on to the next task before me. Declaring a peace treaty with a moment means that for this moment I will interact with myself and my surroundings in a kind, calm way. I will take 10 slow, deep breaths while I stop and mindfully observe my current surroundings. As I notice thoughts about the past or the future surfacing, I will remind myself of my peace treaty with this moment and turn my attention back to my peaceful breathing and the space around me in this current moment. In accordance with my peace treaty, if I notice critical or judgemental thoughts, I will say something kind or accepting to myself to soothe them. I will then bring my attention back to my breathing and observing my current surroundings. In this way, I will practice giving myself times of relaxation and release from worrying or critical self-talk. By practicing breathing at the same time, I will be able to return to the next task of the day with a clearer mind and calmer mood. Each time I find myself in between tasks, I will stop and practice declaring a peace treaty with the moment again. Throughout the week I will experiment with different ways of doing it until I find what works well for me. I will keep a record of the things that make it tricky and how to respond to them differently next time, so I can start to build a good list of what a Peace Treaty with the Moment looks like and involves for me. Once I have become familiar with the practice of declaring a peace treaty with a moment and taking some time to be present and kind to myself in between ordinary, daily tasks, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete for times when I find myself struggling against stress and distress. I will be able to declare a peace treaty with the difficult moment, disengage from feelings of conflict and take some time out to send myself some mindful messages of calm and compassion before I respond. _ _ _ _ Acknowledgement: This mindfulness strategy was inspired by Thich Naht Hanh’ s Peace Treaty method for communication during conflict. Thich Naht Hanh is known for creating the Engaged Buddhism movement and popularising mindfulness in the Western world.
Posted in: Mindful Distraction, Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

No. 116: A Moment for Self-Care

October 19, 2012 4:13 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete… I will practice using small moments of self-care to create positive experiences in my day. Self-care is the act of caring for myself by meeting my basic needs for food and water, movement, fresh air, sunlight, stillness, and physical care. I will spend some time every morning and evening focused on a self-care activity from one of these categories. I will start out by making a list of activities I like for each kind of self-care first and then use my diary to plan which activities I will do each morning and night. I might even add to these categories if I want to, I could add ‘ Connection’ or ‘ Noise’ or any other kind of activity that I feel fits with my idea of what my ‘ basic needs’ are.
For example:

Food and water

Sit down and eat breakfast
Take time to prepare lunch
Make something really healthy for dinner
Eat a favourite food
Stop to drink a glass of water

Movement

Dance to music in my room
Go to a ‘No Lights No Lycra’ event
Do some yoga stretches
Take mini-breaks to stroll round the room

Fresh air

Pause and do some belly-breathing
Stand outside and breathe deep for a moment
Pop my head out an open window

Sunlight

Read a book in the sun
Do some gardening
Eat lunch outside

Stillness

Go to bed early to read a book
Light some candles and listen to chill-out music
Paint something on that blank canvas I have sitting around

Physical care

Make one of the spaces in my house nice to be in
Cleanse and moisturise my face
Wash and brush my hair
Wear something that feels good to be in

As I do each activity I will focus all my attention on the task at hand, being aware as I go that I am making a simple gesture of caring to myself. As I move through the week, I will be mindful of how I am affected by my moments of self-care so I can tell which activities work to shift my mood and whether I want to adjust them at all. Once I am comfortable purposefully doing self-care activities on a regular basis and have found some that boost my mood, I will add them to my Personal Coping Kete and use ‘ A Moment of Self-Care’ as a way of nurturing and valuing myself during times of stress and distress.

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No. 115: Noticing My Small Contributions to Others

October 13, 2012 7:54 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete… I will actively recall times I have been kind, giving or friendly towards other people and practice noticing the good bits about myself. Each morning or the night before I will jot down a few times I can remember myself being good to others, they could be recent, historical or a mix of both. Then I will practice reminding myself of these small contributions to others throughout the day. As I move through the day during the week, I will take moments to pause and mentally run through my list of past examples as a reminder of my good intentions and value to those around me. This week, I will practice noticing the positive effects I have on others and in so doing, I will practice building my sense of self-worth and valuing even my smallest contributions. If I notice my mind wandering onto times when I have not had a positive effect on others, I will notice those thoughts and compassionately bring my mind back to the exercise of recalling interactions in which I have been kind, caring, friendly, supportive or helpful to another person. I am more than my mistakes. Once I am familiar with the task of remembering and noticing my past and current positive contributions on a daily basis, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a self-soothing strategy for times of distress when I notice I am devaluing myself and my place in my community.
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No. 114: List Poems

September 28, 2012 10:55 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…I will spend 10 – 15 minutes every day writing a list poem about the things I have seen, done and felt that day. Each evening, I will sit down with a notebook and write a list of five things I saw that day, five things I did that day and five things I felt or thought. I will try to make each item on each list different. Then I will rearrange or join the items on my lists into a poem. I might add words and images or change things in my lists as well. In this way I will practice regularly reflecting on my daily experience and finding a creative way to express it. While I am thinking of the words to use and working on rearranging the lines, I might get a bit of time out from worrying about things. If I get distracted by concerns of the day I will work them into the list and return my focus to the creative task at hand. By working to include a number of different experiences in the list I will practice having an expansive awareness of my day without letting one experience override everything I have been aware of. If I felt like it, I could share my poems with someone else as a way to connect with support and encouragement, but they are really something that I will do just for myself. Once I am comfortable making list poems about a typical day, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for distracting myself from the moment and creatively expressing myself in times of stress and distress.Example list poem.

28/09/2012

The aluminium sky

the neighbour’ s stray cat

my own reflection in the window

outside the path littered with petals

the wind-blown tree.

 

I have typed so many messages

dressed myself to match

bought new socks and worn them

cooked hot food and eaten it

peeled an orange and given you half.

My small victories.

 

I was caring about everything

sadness for all the news

I thought I saw you flinch when I said that

worrying over the day’ s mathematics

joy in the act of nurturing something.

– M. Barr

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No. 113: Time to Think

September 21, 2012 10:38 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…I will give myself a little while to think each day. I will plan a 15 minute slot of time into each of my days, to allow myself time to simply think. Life can get so busy and the tasks of daily living can become so much the focus that we don’ t get time to actively make sense of what we go through each day, whether it is enjoyable or distressing or a mixture of both. First, I will sit down with my schedule and plan in each of my 15-minute spots – they could be at the same, regular time each day or just whenever I can fit them in. Then for the rest of the week, no matter how I feel, I will sit down at my scheduled time to think each day. I will consider this my own private “defrag” time – a moment to organise my mental files of the day and figure them out. I might think things through better when I have a pen and paper to jot things down or I might just think to myself silently. For 15 minutes I will cast my mind over my day and my responses and let the things I need to sort out, rise to the surface. I will think about resolving problems that have arisen, talking to a supporter about things I have found upsetting, giving myself comfort for the things that have been hard and congratulating myself for the things I have survived and done well with. In this way, each day, I will spend a moment in which my automatic thoughts and feelings are able to rise to the surface where I can be aware of them and do something to about them if I wish. This week, I will make sure life slows down for 15-minutes a day to allow me to process my experiences and make sense of where I am at. This could help prevent me from getting overwhelmed by things, especially when life gets really busy. Once I am comfortable taking 15 minutes to think on a regular basis, I will add ‘ Time to Think’ to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for coping with stress and distress. When I find my thoughts are getting repeatedly stuck on something negative or find myself constantly trying ‘ not to think about it’ , I will use this strategy to insert a moment in each day when I give myself permission to think about what my daily life is throwing at me lately and how I might shift the unwanted elements of my experience. When I find myself thinking unwanted thoughts during my day, I will mindfully notice the thoughts and remind myself to think about them later when I get my ‘ time to think.’ I will then be able to turn my attention to something in my present moment, with the knowledge that I will think about it later.
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No. 112: Build My Willpower Muscles

September 14, 2012 12:02 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellness… Coping Kete…I will practice changing my automatic responses by working on doing small, unimportant things differently on a daily basis. I will first choose something really basic like doing something different from my norm when I arrive home each day or trying to always lift my coffee mug with the opposite hand. Then as I move through my week, I will practice checking myself and switching my cup to the other hand. I will practice being understanding with my self-talk when I forget to do the small thing differently or find it uncomfortable or difficult. In this way I will slowly get used to seeing myself as someone who can do small things differently and use my willpower to resist a habit. This might help me to feel better about attempting to change something bigger and more important to me, such as reducing alcohol intake or changing my daily routine. Once I am comfortable with interrupting a small habit and replacing it with something different, I will add ‘ Use my Willpower Muscles’ to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for shifting my attention and energies to small habits and automatic responses that I am able to change. I might need to think a bit about what my automatic responses have been before I am able to choose one small thing to work on changing. I will remind myself of my previous experience with changing something small and how I was able to do it in the end.
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No. 111: Make Someone a Card

August 31, 2012 5:09 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain, or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…I will practice turning my attention to something positive by taking time in my week to make a card for someone I am grateful to for something and deliver or post it to them. I will schedule a time later in the week to make the card, so I have plenty of time to get organised. For the next little while, I will think over the people and things that I am grateful for until I think of a person I want to acknowledge and make a card for. It could be for something big, something small, something recent, or something from a long time ago. It doesn’ t really matter, but if this kind of thing makes me nervous, I could pick something small, like a recent favour from a friend. Once I have thought of someone, I will start getting ready to get creative. I will want to find some card or paper to make it out of and design my own image for the front – I could draw something or cut pictures out of magazines or print something off a computer – but I won’ t buy the card, this week’ s strategy is also about using my creativity. Finally, I will write a short thank-you message on the inside, letting them know I appreciate what they have added to my life. I might need to spend a little while drafting what I want to say on some scrap paper. No matter what is happening in my day this week, I will find time each day to think about or work on making my card to someone I am thankful for. It is much harder to do these things when we feel low, so I might do it in little bursts, bringing my attention mindfully back to the card and where I am up to with it, whenever I am able. This week, I am practicing the art of emphasising the good stuff. It’ s not a skill that comes naturally to all of us, and modern life isn’ t set up to help us remember to notice and highlight the things we are grateful for. Making a thank-you card means I will practice turning my attention towards positive memories as well as get a chance to practice letting myself be creative. By sending the card, I am learning another way of sending positive vibes out into the lives of others. These are all things I could feel good about. Once I have gotten comfortable being aware of the things I am grateful for and making a card for someone at any old time, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of balancing my attention when life seems to be throwing all the hard stuff my way. When I notice I am finding things distressing on a regular basis, I will spend some time thinking of things I am grateful for, making a card to acknowledge one, and sending it to the person. Each time I notice myself getting pessimistic, I will bring my thoughts back to my card and the meaning behind it to help balance my thoughts and remember that it isn’ t all bad, all the time.
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