Mental schemas are an approach to understanding the kinds of issues that come up in our lives over and over, usually problems that we didn’t get a chance to work out when we were young that are still sticking with us today, like feeling abandoned or alienated, having trouble with trust or self-control, and so on. A brief introduction to mental schemas and a list of all of the schemas can be found on my mental schemas page, where you’ll also find links to the individual articles on each of the schemas that I’ve been adding to the site over time.

If you’re interested in learning more about mental schemas, here are some useful resources.

Dr. Tara Bennett-Goleman’s book Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart delves into using mindfulness to make use of the insights of schema therapy. The link between mindfulness and schemas is an important one, because unless we learn to be aware (that is, mindful) of our schemas and notice when they’re kicking in, we have little hope of making progress in overcoming them.

Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide is a substantial, informative, readable book by the man who developed schema therapy, Dr. Jeffrey Young, with Janet Klosko and Marjorie Weishaar. It’s available in book form as well as for the Amazon Kindle, and most of it can be found online through Google Books.

Finally, a 13-page PDF called A Client’s Guide to Schema Therapy, by Dr. David Bricker with, again, Dr. Young, is available online for free. This gives a variety of helpful examples in the course of providing an introduction to the subject.

While most people know that facial expressions and body language can tell others something about what we’re thinking and feeling, there’s a less well-known use for body language: changing our own attitudes and moods.

Follow the smile
Take smiling, for instance. According to research, a person who is unhappy but who tries smiling will tend to become happier. Strangely, while our brains send signals to our bodies to broadcast the mental state we’re in, our bodies also send signals back that our brain tends to obey. While a forced smile will feel awkward (and often look fake) at first, our brains can soon begin to catch up, transforming the smile into a genuine one–as long as our intention is actually to be happy rather than to try to fool someone else into thinking we are.

Opening up
Another good use for changing our body language is to become more open and confident. Typically when we feel threatened, defensive, or resistant, our bodies reflect this by closing off and turning away: we’ll find ourselves pointing a foot toward the door instead of the person who’s talking, or cross our arms in front of our chests, or turn our bodies away, or clasp our hands. If we want to feel more open and receptive–and to broadcast that to the person we’re talking to, even if they have no conscious knowledge of body language–then we can turn our bodies and feet to face the speaker, spread our hands, and even turn our palms up. This conveys to the speaker that we’re listening and keeping an open mind, which may help that person relax–at the same time that it helps us relax, be open, and pay attention.

Reading our own body language
Mindfulness of our own body language also has a lot to offer us. Just noticing that you’ve crossed your arms or clasped your hands, for instance, can help make hidden discomfort conscious so that something can be done about it. Or you might say something and then notice that you’ve touched your nose–a classic signal that a person may not be telling the whole truth, that something’s being held back. Realizing what we’re broadcasting with our bodies offers the chance of noticing the undercurrents of our own moods and thoughts and of trying to change them if we want to.

One shark does not make a feeding frenzy
One final note that’s worth considering whenever we talk about body language: a single gesture is not a reliable indicator of a person’s mood. If you want to read body language, including your own, it’s important to take in the whole person. For example, sometimes a person’s nose genuinely itches while they’re talking–no matter how open and truthful they’re being–and crossing arms can mean that a person feels cold instead of threatened. Reading body language can provide terrific hints toward what’s going on as long as we avoid taking a single gesture as ironclad proof of anything.

The book I recommend on this subject, if you’re interested in learning about it in more depth, is The Definitive Book of Body Language.

Photo by Marco40134

Over time I’ve noticed a clear difference between the goals I consistently follow through on and the ones I don’t: commitment. I might have the same intention to repot my long-suffering ficus as I do to wash the dishes, for instance, but my dishes get washed while my ficus languishes uncomplainingly (though if potted plants could talk, I imagine I’d get quite an earful). The difference is that I’ve faced the question of living in a house full of filthy dishes and decided absolutely that I don’t want to do it, while I haven’t made the same commitment to my ficus.

Here’s what I mean by committing to something instead of just intending to do it:

• If I’m committed to something, I’m willing to hold off on other things in order to get it done. Many of us have a lot more we’d like to do in a day than 24 hours can actually hold, so if we don’t make a special effort not to try to do everything, then the things that are most important to us can be lost in the shuffle.
• If I’m committed to something that isn’t a habit yet, I’ll think about it practically every day and find time to work on it regularly–not just in big pushes every once in a while.
• Being committed to a goal means that I’ve decided to look for ways to do more toward that goal rather than excuses to not do it. For instance, if I’m committed to exercising, then when I go on vacation I’ll think “What are some special opportunities I’ll have to exercise?” and not “Well, this is going to totally disrupt my exercise routine–I guess I’ll just start up again when I get back.”
• Being committed means that I’ll want to pay attention when it’s time to make choices about my goal. If an opportunity to make a choice comes up, I’ll want to take the extra time to be mindful of what’s going on and to use all of the abilities at my disposal to make a good choice.
• If I’m committed to building a habit, then that means I’ve decided ahead of time that I’m OK working on that habit virtually every day for a couple of months or longer. Factors like how complicated the behavior is and whether I’ll be doing it in about same environment every day can make the period of time longer or shorter until the habit develops. (See How Long Does It Take to Form a Habit?)
• Finally, a commitment means that I’m willing to at least some of the time to prioritize my goal over things like relaxation, entertainment, and less important tasks (even if those less important tasks are right in my face and insisting on being done right away). I don’t have to give up all enjoyment, but I do have to get comfortable with the idea that pursuing my goal may not always be convenient.

These thoughts and practices aren’t all that complicated, but it’s easy to come up with an intention and not think through what it would really mean to commit to it. Pursuing a goal takes time, effort, and attention. Yes following through in this way with a well-chosen goal can make an enormous difference in our happiness, self-confidence, and success.

Photo by darkmatter

I’ve often pictured a sudden mental transformation, fantasized that some particular idea would click into place and immediately, some behavior I’d been wanting to change for a long time would change without any further great effort required from me. Can willpower really work that way?

Generally speaking, the answer is no. Habits are ingrained over a long period of time: neural connections in our brains don’t change in large ways all of a sudden except in the case of brain damage. Habits reflect repeatedly strengthened neural connections–basically, we’ve done something over and over so much that it becomes hardly any effort to keep doing it.

There are exceptions, but they’re special cases. For instance, if I go to the doctor and find out that I will drop dead the next time I have a bite of ice cream (fortunately, not a very likely diagnosis), then I can pretty much guarantee you I will never have a bite of ice cream again. But these kinds of changes in behavior are fueled by drastic, unavoidable consequences based on clear-cut behaviors. Most goals don’t fit that description.

But even though we usually can’t experience immediate habit change, we can experience immediate behavior change. If we adopt tactics that help us be mindful of what we’re doing and that keep us in close touch with the consequences, we can see progress right away. While this isn’t the kind of dramatic change many of us would like, it does yield immediate benefits and lead to the end we have in mind, even as it gets easier and easier over time to repeat the good acts we’re learning.

Photo by Thomas Hawk

I don’t know about you, sometimes I find myself in a mood where I feel out of sorts but can’t point to any one thing as being the cause. That kind of state rarely does me any good: usually it means I won’t get a lot done, won’t enjoy the day as much, and am no help to the moods of people around me–unless I get out of it. To accomplish that, I have a very simple process I use, which is to list out worries in writing.

The idea here is just emptying my head. It’s related to David Allen‘s recommended practice of getting all of your thoughts and concerns on paper so that you can organize them, although in this case organization isn’t the point. It’s also related to decision logging, the practice of writing down notes about your own situation and choices as things happen in order to increase mindfulness, but it isn’t about mindfulness per se. In fact, the thing it’s most like that I’ve mentioned is swatting deer flies by letting them settle on you before you hit them (although I promise it’s much less nerve-wracking): that is, it’s about paying simple, direct attention to worries individually, one after the other.

This tactic doesn’t take any preparation: just grab paper and pen or fire up a computer, then start writing a list of whatever comes to mind that’s bugging you. It might look something like this:

– I’m still annoyed about that guy at the store who wouldn’t stop talking to me
– I can’t believe I forgot to pay my cell phone bill on time
– How in the world am I going to find time to take that refresher course?
– Do I need to go shopping? I don’t think there’s anything for dinner
– My car’s making that noise again

It’s not necessary to do anything about these issues as they come up, but when you’re done listing, you might want to start writing out your thoughts about each one, and to look for broken ideas. Sometimes all that’s needed to completely solve an issue is to reframe it in a healthy and accurate way.

You might think that writing these things down would cause more anxiety instead of less, but it really tends to produce relief. Instead of being plagued with multiple, unnamed anxieties, instead we’ve now got a list of clear, specific issues–issues we might even be able to do something about, although just getting them down in writing itself makes a real difference. My favorite moment in this process is when I ask myself “OK, what else?” and I just can’t think of anything. In that moment I’m reminded that the things I worry about have a limit, and that I might be able to make some progress in fixing them them … or even, until I can do something about them, just accept them … just for now.

Photo by Phoney Nickle

One early morning recently I went running with a friend. The sun shone out of a blue sky onto woods and meadows showing twenty shades of green, the air was mild, and the breeze was soft. We jogged up a hilly dirt road between open fields, counting our blessings and waiting for our bodies to wake up and provide the power that we’d need as the slope began to rise more steeply a little further into the run. Then the deer flies came, in little, hovering groups of six or eight or ten.

Stand or panic?
Now, I’m usually a pretty calm guy. While I have my better and worse days, usually my reaction to trouble, perhaps after an initial few seconds of cussing, is “OK, what do I need to do?” Sometimes I even skip the cussing. But where groups of biting insects are concerned, I tend to lose my cool. I don’t want to get bitten, so I hop around and slap at any least sensation on my skin (real or imagined) and turn in circles to try to catch the little beasts in the act. It’s difficult to get running done under these circumstances, and with the flies circling and dodging, it’s also difficult to swat them.

My friend has a different approach. When she realized that the flies weren’t going to leave her alone, she stopped and waited. If one came very close she would sometimes clap her hands together (sometimes getting it, often not), but most of the time she stood there and held up her arms. The deer flies buzzed around her, but after a moment or two one would alight on her arm, getting ready to bite, and then she would swat it–and hold up her arms for the next one. Using this approach, and helping each other by watching for the flies that landed on backs or ears, we could wipe out a whole group of deer flies in just a couple of minutes–even though the first few times we did this, I did more hopping around than effective swatting.

We probably had to stop four or five times during our run to take care of deer flies, but as my paranoia about being bitten gradually relaxed, I found I was able to enjoy the run despite the insects.

Swatting worries
Using mindfulness to settle annoyances and figure things out is a lot like swatting deer flies. If, like me with the deer flies, you’re so worried about being being bitten that you spend all of your time flailing at circling troubles, you’re not likely to actually get rid of many of them, even with an occasional lucky clap. But if when you first notice that problems are circling, you wait for them to settle and watch them–that is, if instead of getting carried away with the worry you allow yourself to relax and see what it really is–then as the problems settle, you can take care of each individual one, then let the next settle.

It’s easier with a friend to watch your back and ears, but even alone, you can catch more flies by watching than you can by flapping your arms and turning in circles. And when you’re done, you can turn back to the road and focus once again on ascending that hill.

Photo by net_efekt

In an ideal world, we would all eat exactly the things that our bodies needed in exactly the right amounts, and those things would be incredibly delicious to us. Unfortunately, of course, many of us don’t live in that world. It’s not uncommon to come up with any number of reasons to eat that have little to do with what our bodies need–and surprisingly enough, often little to do with even enjoying our food.

But if we become more aware of why we’re eating when we’re eating dysfunctionally (those of us who eat dysfunctionally sometimes), then our options improve, and it becomes easier to make choices that will increase our happiness and health. This is a way of practicing mindfulness: noticing patterns in ourselves that, once seen and understood a little, can be changed.

These patterns are useful to notice not just for eating more healthily, but also for taking more pleasure in what we do eat. Many of these patterns contribute to eating food that is meant to be pleasurable in a way that prevents it from providing any enjoyment–and what good is that?

1. Compensation eating: Eating as a consolation prize because something went wrong. Some examples are eating something we usually like because something we ate earlier was disappointing, or eating when something goes wrong (“I can’t go to the concert, but at least I can eat this huge bowl of ice cream.”)
2. Add-on eating: Continuing eating during a meal or snack even when we’ve had as much as our body needs at the moment. One of the reasons add-on eating happens is that it takes our bodies about 20 minutes to feel full even when we’ve eaten a substantial meal. Another reason is that eating something sweet starts a cycle that creates a craving for something else sweet.
3. Automatic eating: Eating because something is in front of us, not because we’re enjoying it a lot or because it’s something we need. Automatic eating is a good reason not to have conversations at the snack table at parties and not to open a bag of chips when sitting down to a movie: you look up after half an hour and realize you’ve eaten twice your body weight in junk food without really noticing or enjoying it.
4. Bounty eating: Eating because there is so much there to eat. College students (for example) often run into this problem at any event that offers free food, and sometimes it can occur as a result of having just stocked the cupboards to bursting or from being at an event where a huge amount of food has been put out.
5. Social eating: It’s not uncommon to eat in order to appease someone, to appear polite, to fit in, because everyone else is doing it, or to have something to do with our hands.
6. Supposed-to-be-delicious eating: Eating a favorite or very attractive-looking food not due to actually being hungry for it, but on the general idea that it’s desirable food and that therefore we should be enjoying it. Yet sometimes foods we like just aren’t what we need or even want at the moment.
7. “I just can’t resist” eating: Telling ourselves that although we wouldn’t be best served to eat a particular thing, we “just can’t resist.” This is an example of “all-or-nothing thinking”, a broken idea. In fact, there are almost always options.

Readers: have any patterns to add?

Photo by brotherxii

I’ve talked in other posts about the powerful effects of tracking progress daily when working toward important goals. Tracking gives better information to use in making decisions and offers a big boost to mindfulness–being aware of what we’re doing as we’re doing it so that we have the opportunity to make different choices.

Exactly how we track doesn’t matter much as long as it’s accessible, convenient, and does the job. For anyone who, like me, is around computers much more often than not, 42goals.com is an appealing, free, Web-based tool for tracking progress. Here are some good things about the site:

• entirely free
• very easy to use
• offers charts and graphs
• encourages daily tracking
• friendly and visual

As far as I know, there’s currently no mobile version of the site, which would certainly be a welcome addition.

One minor problem with the site is that in a way it encourages tracking many goals at once, as some of the examples on their site demonstrate. While I think they’re just intending to show off everything the system can do, I have to say that trying to track more than a very few, related things at once is an almost sure-fire way to fail. As human beings, we’re just not capable of tackling a lot of different major habit changes at once. As much as we’d love to perfect our lives all in one fell swoop, every time we try to do that we fall flat on our faces, because it requires spreading our time, attention, and effort too widely. Habit change requires focus.

With that said, for someone who wants to track one or a very few goals on the computer, 42goals (or a similar system; there are others available, although 42goals seems particularly well-implemented) will be a great help.

By the way, if you use a system like this, be sure to provide for situations when you can’t use your usual tools. For instance, when you’re going to be away from a computer for a stretch of time, it’s important to have a small notebook or something with you that you can use to record things to copy into your main system later. This has to be planned in advance, since waiting until something actually needs to be recorded usually makes it too effortful to get the tracking done, interrupting the tracking habit and often derailing it completely, even when you’re back in your usual routine.

If you’re tracking exercise and calories for weight loss, by the way, I’d suggest using a much more specialized (but still free) tool like SparkPeople.

For a month and a half now I’ve been pursuing My “Use ’em If You Got ’em” Challenge–basically, to get better and better at using the tools I already understand just when I need them, even at the seemingly worst times. It’s been challenging all right, but also educational, and I feel as though I’m slowly getting the hang of it. Of course it’s frustrating too, because when I don’t do a good job at using my self-motivation tools, because of my research I usually know exactly what I’m doing wrong. But Knowing Isn’t Enough: I’ve been needing to get in the habit of using self-motivation tactics as difficult situation arrives, and while it’s a very beneficial habit, it doesn’t come naturally!

And since it’s a difficult task, it’s been important for me to break it down to the simplest terms I can think of. The terms I’ve come up with make up the title of this post: relax, goals, choice, tactics. When I follow this approach, I have a very good chance of doing well. When I don’t, I’m more likely to rely on old, bad habits.

Before I talk about what each of the steps means, I need to mention the thing that makes any of them possible: mindfulness. I can only use my in-the-moment willpower tactics when I am consciously aware that I’m in a situation where I might make a bad choice. These really aren’t hard to recognize–I always feel a little doubtful, at least, when they come up. What’s hard is learning to wave a red flag at myself in those situations and say “Hey, pay attention to this! Think about what you’re doing!” Yet the more I do it, the easier it gets.

On to the four steps:

Relax: This is essential, and it’s so useful to me that most of the time it’s the only step I need. I find that when I’m in a situation where I’m in danger of making a bad choice, I tend to feel worked up about the problem–one part of me is ready to dig in and insist I make the bad choice, whereas another part of me is gearing up for a ferocious battle. Relaxing means letting go of both of these points of view and taking a few deep breaths. Is the question of whether I watch a movie or work on that project really life-or-death? No, it’s just an opportunity. I do my best to let go of my concerns and not take myself so seriously. Suddenly, making a good choice is no longer a struggle: it’s just one potential path I can take.

Goals: Once I’ve stepped away from the situation a little and let go of the tension, I have room to reflect for a moment on my goals. If I want to lose weight, get more work done, be more cool-headed in difficult conversations, be more organized, or whatever it may be, I can reflect on my vision for myself and remind myself why those goals are important. By thinking about my goals instead of about the bad choice I was considering, I become much more able to focus on good choices.

Choice: In that state of mind, I can choose what I want to do–even if I’m not prepared to do it yet. I can take a moment to visualize my behavior and consciously pick one of those paths. Being relaxed and having my goals in mind, the good choices tend to be much easier at this point, and the bad choices less tempting.

Tactics: If a good choice is not easy to make at this stage–although honestly, it generally is if I go this far in the process–then I can start looking at my available tactics. For instance, if I’m trying not to eat something, I can use any of my 24 Ways to Stop Feeling Hungry. If I’m trying to start a project that’s difficult for me, I can use any one of the 7 Tricks for Starting in on an Unappealing Task. There are dozens of tactics for supporting a good choice on this site, and having even a few available to choose from–whether on a printed list or a memorized or on a bookmarked page I can bring up on my computer–usually gives me enough leverage to make the good choice I want to make.

Relax – goals – choice – tactics is a bit of an advanced technique, but if you’re interested in cultivating good choices, it’s  a habit well worth cultivating. As for me, we’ll see how I do as I get better and better at using my four-step method.

Photo by  sytoha / Syed Touhid Hassan

The image we get of temptation is of something that’s itching for a fight. We tend to talk about temptation as something that we have to resist or give in to, if we don’t steer clear of it in the first place. How accurate is this? Is struggling with temptation the best way to get past it?

In a post a while back, I described successful willpower as thinking more about the right things and less about the wrong things. One inevitable side effect of fighting something is that we think about it more. The more we fight temptation head on, the more we’re giving our attention to it. In other words, locking horns with temptation makes the temptation more powerful. That doesn’t mean we can never win out in this way, but it does mean that fighting isn’t always going to be the most efficient or successful process. (I say more about the problem of resisting in the article “Resistance Really Is Useless: Why Willpower Isn’t About Fighting Ourselves.”)

One of the alternatives is to focus your attention elsewhere. You see a doughnut; the doughnut calls to you; and you respond by grabbing a novel that you’ve been reading. Within a few minutes, your head is deep in the book, and the doughnut has retreated.

But there’s also a simpler and more educational option, which is to relax and observe. When we’re tempted by things that we’re aware wouldn’t be in our best interests, we can consciously take a deep breath, reorient, and begin to examine our own thoughts and emotions. Why did the thing seem so tempting? Is there something else causing anxiety or sadness or frustration, something that encouraged acting out? Is there a particular broken idea playing in a mental loop?

By consciously relaxing and letting the tension go–whether by using meditation techniques, visualizing a peaceful place, counting to ten, talking ourselves down, or any other simple relaxation method–the urgency and sharpness of the temptation immediately lessen. In this environment it’s much easier to talk simple sense to ourselves and move on without having to avoid or battle temptation. Instead, we let temptation float up and drift away like letting go of a balloon.

Like yesterday’s tip about putting an undesired behavior off for a little while, this approach isn’t radical, difficult, or necessarily life-changing all alone–but it does show temptation in an entirely different light, as a state that we can get ourselves worked up into instead of something external that moves in and threatens us. As we recognize the amount of influence we have over our own states of mind, we begin to find more tools for changing our minds and more options for being the people we choose to be.

Photo by against the tide