Titration Thoughts

[Beany Boo]

Give up on relaxing.

Go for bringing the stress level down to a tolerable level over and over; at least once a day.

Regret is your brain telling you your stress level is maxing out. If it’s continuously happening it’s because you’re so close to the ceiling: bump, bump, bump…

Meditation, particularly ones that allow you to experience your bodily sensations, allow you to experience your breathing.

Once you learn to read how your body is reacting on a subtler level, you can swerve.

‘Non-striving’

Or less ‘efforting’

Not an expert.

[Beany Boo]

I was mid-flow, getting home from work. Walking out of the supermarket my thoughts were pretty negative. And I spontaneously noticed it and felt compelled to interrupt the flow. I thought as I walked up the hill “OK um… good job walking up this hill!” Something about being specific to the location and the activity, my brain totally accepted that feedback and I felt about 50% better.

[snoringdog]

Sounds like mindfulness, and good job!

This morning I noticed myself starting down a negative thought spiral, and was able to ask myself why I'm spending energy that way- it's not helpful....
And Voila! it worked (this time). I moved along and did something productive...

[Beany Boo]

I tried again this morning, sitting at my desk at work. I said, “You’re doing a good job of sitting and looking at your computer.” It worked. I got kind of protective about it. “You bet I am!”

I’m also finding that I am ashamed of feeling bored. I’ve had a few days of feeling bored without the shame and it actually feels amazing. Life is boring! It’s not my responsibility to change that.

[Beany Boo]

I’ve begun to spend moments quietly saying, ‘no’ to mental actions that compel themselves to be pursued. No matter how ‘sensible’ they sound, they feel panicked, and I realize I am just casting around for a panacea.

It’s an end to perseverating.

I think the combination of Pilates and mindful meditation is creating the gap in which to risk the ‘no’. It also feels like the limbic system takes the ‘no’ on, returns to the drawing board and comes back - hours, days later - with thoughts that are fractionally more practicable.

[Beany Boo]

I bought a small bowl to eat vegetables out of. For no reason my brain accepts eating less vegetables out of a smaller bowl, more often, over any other course of action.

And that seems to be a good guiding principle for tweaks of habit. The obstacle commonly presents as a fear of wastage; of money, time, reputation, resource etc. If I can find a simple alleviation of the fear (a smaller bowl) then the tweak sticks.

Similar application for use of words.