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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.
If you are going to keep a record of the rough moments, name it in your own words. A hassle log gets filled in. A frustration inventory gathers dust.
The language you actually use in your head is the language that keeps a habit alive. Write the entries the same way: he was hassling me, she went…
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.
Two things come out of a few weeks of this. You get data: the same time of day, the same person, the same bad night behind it. And you get practice…
Think of your mind as a river and yourself as someone sitting on the bank. Thoughts, feelings, aches, pictures and urges all go past in the current, and you are the one on the grass watching them go.
The point of the image is that it gives you somewhere to sit. Being told to observe your thoughts is abstract, while a bank and a river gives your…
You can sit on a bench a few feet from a waterfall and be perfectly safe. Step in and you go over. Feeling something powerful is not the danger, and getting swept into it is.
This is why the aim is never to keep away from what upsets you. You can be right up close to a feeling, hearing it roar, and still be the one on the…
Look inside. The moment you catch something going past, put a small dot on the paper and go back to looking. That is the whole exercise, over and over.
Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.
The dot is doing something specific: it turns a private, slippery moment of noticing into an act you can see and count. No words, no keeping score,…