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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
So count the actual events. How many times this week did you sit with someone, not message them. A number you can check beats a resolution to be more sociable, because the resolution dissolves quietly and the number does not. Two a week is a fair place to start, and putting them in the calendar as fixed things helps far more than intending to arrange something soon.
'to make your hearts strong and your feet firm' (Quran 8:11). Firm feet are the practical half of this, the part that actually walks over.
الأنفال
إِذۡ يُغَشِّيكُمُ ٱلنُّعَاسَ أَمَنَةࣰ مِّنۡهُ وَيُنَزِّلُ عَلَيۡكُم مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ لِّيُطَهِّرَكُم بِهِۦ وَيُذۡهِبَ عَنكُمۡ رِجۡزَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ وَلِيَرۡبِطَ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِكُمۡ وَيُثَبِّتَ بِهِ ٱلۡأَقۡدَامَ
Remember when He gave you sleep as a reassurance from Him, and sent down water from the sky to cleanse you, to remove Satan’s pollution from you, to make your hearts strong and your feet firm
Qur’an 8:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of 212 studies covering 80,850 young people set out how coping and emotion regulation relate to both internalising and externalising symptoms. It supports the general point that what people actually do matters for how they fare. It did not test counting social contact, so the specific prescription here comes from clinical practice rather than from a measured dose.
Compas BE, Jaser SS, Bettis AH, Watson KH, Gruhn MA, Dunbar JP, Williams E, Thigpen JC. (2017). Coping, emotion regulation, and psychopathology in childhood and adolescence: A meta-analysis and narrative review.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Vague goals disappear under a poor memory for intentions, while a countable one survives.
Tell your partner, on a good day, that the things you say at full volume are not a fair record of what you think. Not as an excuse. As information about how you work.
Self-restraint runs on a supply that stress uses up. In a week when everything is late and nothing has been slept on, you will react to things you would normally let go.
When your child comes to you in a spin, the kind thing is to stay warm and steady rather than to promise that it will be fine. Reassurance settles the next ten minutes and feeds the asking.