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Areas › Anger › Making it stick
All or nothing scoring is the quickest route from one lapse to giving the whole thing up: I lost it, so none of it was working, so why bother. Count the other way instead, and treat each success as a precedent that stands on its own. You now have proof you can do it, which you did not have yesterday.
Whenever you forget, remember your Lord and say, 'May my Lord guide me closer to what is right' (Quran 18:24). Forgetting is assumed, and the way back is written into the instruction.
الكهف
إِلَّآ أَن يَشَآءَ ٱللَّهُۚ وَٱذۡكُر رَّبَّكَ إِذَا نَسِيتَ وَقُلۡ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَهۡدِيَنِ رَبِّي لِأَقۡرَبَ مِنۡ هَٰذَا رَشَدࣰ ا
without adding, ‘God willing,’ and, whenever you forget, remember your Lord and say, ‘May my Lord guide me closer to what is right.’
Qur’an 18:24read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Cochrane reviewers have looked repeatedly at programmes designed to stop people returning to smoking after they quit, and the most recent update still found limited evidence that these specific additions help. Slipping and starting again is the ordinary picture, even with support in place. That is smoking rather than anger, and it argues for expecting lapses rather than for any particular way of handling them.
Livingstone-Banks J, Norris E, Hartmann-Boyce J, West R, Jarvis M, Hajek P. (2019). Relapse prevention interventions for smoking cessation.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A slip only becomes a collapse if you decide it wiped out everything before it.
Rehearsing a calmer response is not thinking about change, it is the change. Each repetition makes that route slightly quicker to reach for.
When you offer a practice to someone, use their words for it rather than yours. Keep the fuller version ready for the day they ask where it comes from.
It does get better, but not by waiting for time to pass. The improvement comes from the walking, and the walking is small and unremarkable.