Practices
Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.
Narrowed down
264 practicesArea
How long you have · Twenty minutes
Who it is written for
Where you are right now
On your own, or with someone · On my own
Theme
Approach
Steadiness under provocation is built the way immunity is, in small doses taken on purpose, at a size you can still handle. Waiting for a real fight to test yourself is too big a dose to learn anything from.
In practice that means choosing something that stings a little and staying with it rather than swerving: the colleague whose tone you brace against,…
What you are proudest of will tell you where you are most easily wounded. The two grow on the same root.
Write down two or three things you would hate to be thought about you, then look at where they meet your ordinary week. Who is likely to imply it, in…
Go to the gym without the getting ready. No mirror check, no fixing your hair, just train and come home.
This works because it lands exactly where many people quietly keep their worth, and because the real consequences are nil. Nobody there is thinking…
A belief about yourself comes with a feeling somewhere in the body, an emotion, and a set of things you then do or avoid. Argue only with the words and the rest of it carries on exactly as before.
This is the gap behind I know it is not true but I do not feel it. Next time you catch the belief, note where it sits physically, what emotion turned…
There is a point where a to do list stops being a tool and becomes something you flinch away from. If you have not opened yours in a fortnight, it has passed that point.
The usual advice is to work through it, which is precisely what nobody does with a list that long. It is kinder and quicker to start a fresh page…
Take one of the gaps you already have, the commute or the walk or the shower, and use it to ask what is coming up this week and what might be slipping. No new tool, no new app, just the question.
That turns something accidental into something you can count on. It works best in the same place each time, so that the place starts asking the…
Anything that comes round every month should be leaving your account without you. Direct debits and standing orders take the remembering out of the job altogether, which beats any reminder you could set.
It is worth an afternoon. List what recurs, automate what can be automated, and put one calendar note to check the statement each month instead of…
Every extra step in a task is another place to lose it. Three clicks and done beats a process with a form, an envelope and a walk to the postbox, even when the second one saves a little money.
Before you commit to a routine, count its steps, then take some out. Bin bags stored next to the bin, stamps kept with the envelopes, paying on the…
Where the harm has truly stopped, begin to set down a grievance you have carried.
Not forgetting, releasing. Once the wound is no longer being made, let it start to close.
Rest is not the prize waiting at the end of the work. It is part of what makes the work possible, and it does not have to be earned first.
Self control runs down over a day the way a battery does, and the thing that fills it back up is properly stopping. What that looks like is yours to…
If you carry a firm picture of how the world is supposed to work, the world will break it several times a day. No coping skill outpaces a supply of grievance that never runs out.
This is not a case for caring less about fairness. It is about telling apart an injustice you could act on from the general refusal of life to be…
Anger runs on the word should, and should is a word about debt. Write out what you believe this person owes you, then mark which of those they ever actually agreed to.
Most lists come out in two parts. There are the real agreements, said out loud and accepted, and there are the ones you assumed any decent person…
Anger sticks around because it works, at least in the short run. Before trying to put it down, be honest about what it has been buying you.
Usually it is some form of leverage: people move faster, back down, stop asking. Sometimes it is plainer than that, a way to feel like something…
Build one place or time in your day that reliably feels safe, and return to it when you need steadying.
Healing needs a floor to stand on. A predictable pocket of safety is that floor; protect it.
Check, feel the small relief, put it down, feel the pull again a minute later. If your phone use has that shape, it is running like a compulsion, whatever else it is.
The structure matters more here than the label. An urge rises, checking brings it down, and every check teaches the urge to come back sooner. Which…
Sitting with one long unrewarding task has got harder for almost everyone. If you are planning work for yourself, or setting it for someone else, build the variety in rather than hoping for stamina.
In practice that means breaking a long stretch into shorter ones with something marking the end of each, changing what the work looks like part way…
A whole evening can go into recording an evening. It is worth asking, with no scolding in it, whether you were there for the thing you now have a photograph of.
This lands better than a rule about hours, because it is about something you would miss rather than something you are doing wrong. Try leaving the…
If the phone was giving you company, an evening class in something practical will not cover it. Match what you put in its place to what it was actually providing.
Subtracting an hour and leaving the hour empty is the version that collapses by Thursday. If it was company, the replacement has people in it. If it…
Write down three to five things you actually enjoy, small ones, and do one of them a day. That is the whole instruction.
They have to be yours rather than the ones that sound impressive. Sitting in the garden with tea counts. Ten minutes on the guitar counts. Keep the…
Most parents setting rules about an app have never scrolled it for ten minutes. The rules are usually reasonable and the picture underneath them is missing.
This is not really about being permissive. If you do not know that the feed is chosen for you, that one worried search brings a fortnight of similar…
Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.