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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Pick something you are sure of, something you would defend at a family dinner, and ask what it would look like if it were only mostly true. Where does it fail. Who does it fail. Doing that once, honestly, on your own ground does more for your temper than a hundred rounds of taking apart somebody else's argument.
man will only have what he has worked towards (Quran 53:39). Attention drifts to what other people have got wrong, and this pulls it back to your own portion.
النجم
وَأَن لَّيۡسَ لِلۡإِنسَٰنِ إِلَّا مَا سَعَىٰ
that man will only have what he has worked towards
Qur’an 53:39read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial with students who had symptoms of depression and anxiety, three sessions of either the Attention Training Technique or mindful self-compassion reduced symptoms, with neither clearly better than the other. Two quite different methods arriving at much the same place is a useful reminder that no single framework holds all of it. The trial was small and short, and it was not a test of self-scrutiny.
Haukaas RB, Gjerde IB, Varting G, Hallan HE, Solem S. (2018). A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing the Attention Training Technique and Mindful Self-Compassion for Students With Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety.. Frontiers in psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A belief you have already questioned yourself does not need defending when someone else prods it.
After you lose it, the sentence you say to yourself matters. I have no self control leads somewhere much worse than I have not drilled that one yet.
Ask the question twice. What do you see, and what else do you see. What do you think, and what else do you think. The second one does all the work.
The hand you put up to fend someone off is already halfway to a fist. There is no clean place to stop once the movement is underway, which is why the early moment is the one worth having.