Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
The hidden finger tap is weaker than a mark on paper. Better to know that now than to find it out when it fails you.
A written page holds you to it. The marks are still there afterwards, and there is no pretending you drifted for ten minutes. So learn it that way first, until the noticing is second nature. The tap is for taking it out into the world once the noticing no longer needs propping up.
Qur’an and Sunnah
when you recite the Quran, seek God's protection from the outcast, Satan (Quran 16:98). The protection is set up at the start, before anything has gone wrong, which is the same order of operations.
فَإِذَا قَرَأۡتَ ٱلۡقُرۡءَانَ فَٱسۡتَعِذۡ بِٱللَّهِ مِنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ ٱلرَّجِيمِ
[Prophet], when you recite the Quran, seek God’s protection from the outcast, Satan
Qur’an 16:98read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A twelve week mindfulness and kindness programme improved preschoolers' self regulation and their sharing compared with a control group. What stands out is the twelve weeks: these capacities came with sustained practice rather than one good sitting. It was young children in classrooms, a long way from an adult with a notepad, so take it as a point about duration.
Flook L, Goldberg SB, Pinger L, Davidson RJ. (2015). Promoting prosocial behavior and self-regulatory skills in preschool children through a mindfulness-based Kindness Curriculum.. Developmental psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Something you can see afterwards keeps you more honest than something that leaves no trace.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
That small press of your own finger does two jobs. It marks the thought, and it gives you a bit of contact with yourself while everything around you is loud.
Writing down what happened puts a little distance between you and it. Later you are not inside the row any more, you are a person reading about one.
If the language of mindfulness puts you off, drop the language. Call it noticing what your mind is doing, and use it anyway.