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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Notice how many of your goals are stated as things that must not happen. Do not be late, do not lose your temper, do not forget the form. Each one keeps its own bad outcome awake. Rewriting them as where you are heading, on time, calm, form in the bag, gives you something to move towards instead of something to dodge.
'truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace' (Quran 13:28). What you say to yourself and repeat either settles the heart or unsettles it, so the words are worth choosing.
الرعد
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of brain imaging studies found that reappraising a situation, which is deliberately putting it in different words, brings in frontal and parietal control regions that then damp down the amygdala's response. So the rewording is doing something measurable. Averages across imaging studies are still a long way from telling you it will work for you on a difficult morning.
Buhle JT, Silvers JA, Wager TD, Lopez R, Onyemekwu C, Kober H, Weber J, Ochsner KN. (2014). Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: a meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies.. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
To follow a sentence about not doing something you have to picture doing it first, so the warning keeps the feared thing alive.
A wave across the road, a joke with the man in the shop, asking someone how they are and meaning it. These unplanned seconds count for more than they look like they should.
Time with people is not the nice extra you get to once the real work is done. Put it alongside sleep, medication and exercise rather than underneath them.
A small annoyance can be steered. A full blaze cannot. Nearly all of the winnable work happens in the first thirty seconds, before the feeling has finished arriving.