Practices

When you ask a manager for regular check-ins, ask for them as a way of staying pointed in the right direction. That is a different conversation from asking to be watched.

Something like: could we take five minutes twice a week, so I can be sure I am working on what matters most to you. You are the one proposing it, so…

'It's bad for your health' and 'grades matter later' move nobody, least of all someone who has never seen what either one looks like.

If you want a future to carry any weight, it has to be pictured rather than stated. What does the day look like. Who is in the room. What is…

A consequence has to cost the person whose behaviour it is, in something they actually care about. If missing the bus mildly annoys your teenager and wrecks your morning, the cost is landing on the wrong person.

So move it. A few pounds for the lift, or the phone for the day. Say it plainly beforehand, then do it without the lecture attached. What counts as…

Ask people how it went. How was that meeting, how am I doing, what did you make of it. Nobody enjoys asking, and the information is not available any other way.

Ask one specific person about one specific thing rather than the room in general. If your read on yourself has been bent out of shape by years of…

Someone who will tell you the part that was not good is someone whose 'that was fine' you can believe. That is what settles the doubt, not reassurance.

Blanket praise carries no information, so it slides off and the doubt is back within the hour. If you tend to worry about how you came across, ask…

If the only real deadline is the fortnightly meeting, invent some smaller ones. A couple of short catch-ups a week will do more for the work than the formal review ever does.

Ask for them as something that helps you, because it is true and it also lands better: five minutes on Tuesday and Thursday keeps me pointed at the…

If you are helping someone set up a practice like this, ask them for ideas before you offer yours. Keep a few in your back pocket for when they run dry.

What people invent for themselves fits their actual life, and they are far more likely to do it. Have suggestions ready anyway, because a brainstorm…

Offer a practice as a question rather than an instruction. What do you think it would be like to wake yourself up once a day? That is a very different sentence from you should.

People argue with instructions, particularly people who were sent rather than came. A question leaves them to make the case, and the case they make…

Open with the difficulty instead of the accusation. "This is hard for me to say" and "I am worried you will not like this" buy you a hearing that "you always" never will.

Two things happen at once when you start this way. The other person stops preparing a defence, because nothing has been thrown at them yet. And you…

Yield to win: give ground in a disagreement the way you would for someone you love, not as a defeat.

Accepting influence from your partner is strength, not weakness. Generosity in giving in wins the relationship.

For a compromise, name your one true core need, then be genuinely flexible on everything around it.

Separate the small inflexible core from the wide flexible area. Guard the core, give on the rest.

Say out breath, not breath. Told to take a signal breath, most people pull air in hard, which stirs them up rather than settling them.

This is a small wording change that decides whether the technique works. Whether you are teaching someone else or reminding yourself, put the phase…

Anger pulls your attention towards whatever provoked it, the way a vacuum cleaner pulls at a curtain. Naming it that way makes it something happening to you rather than something wrong with you.

Rumination is an accurate word and a heavy one, and people who already feel judged tend to close up when it appears. A picture does the same job…

If someone already has a practice in their life, hang the new skill on that rather than handing them something foreign.

Someone who does yoga already knows what a hand gesture is for and will not find it odd. Someone who prays already has fixed times in the day and a…

People arrive at anger work braced for a lecture and an instruction to breathe deeply. Handing them something they did not see coming buys you their attention.

This matters most with people who did not choose to be there. If the session matches what they expected, they can sit through the whole thing without…

If open awareness sounds like too much, put it plainly: look at the background instead of the thing in front of it. That is the entire instruction.

People who bounce off contemplative language will happily follow a physical direction about where to point their eyes. Say background, say the space…

Open gazing and long unfocused staring do not suit everyone. If things start to feel unreal or far away, stop and look at something you can name.

This caution is usually left out, and it should not be. Practices that are open, unguided and without an anchor are the ones most often followed by…

Distant health warnings move almost nobody. The cost that lands is the one showing up this month: your memory, your marks, the work you know you could be doing.

So keep it specific and keep it near. Heavy drinking in the teens and early twenties shows up in memory and in school work, which is the exact ground…

What you tried at that age is a poor guide to what is in front of your child now. Cannabis today is far stronger than the same word used to mean.

The sentence that closes most of these conversations is I turned out fine. Try a different one: ask what it does for them, when they reach for it,…

Nicotine looks like the small problem next to everything else going on, and it is the one most likely to still be here in thirty years.

Most adults who smoke started as teenagers, and the earlier the start the harder the eventual stopping tends to be. So it earns a place on the list…