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Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Noticing how you are can leave you sitting in it. One more question turns it outward: what am I hoping for, what am I moving towards. It might be small, getting through the afternoon without snapping, or large, being someone your children can come to. Saying it plainly gives the rest of the day a direction to lean in.
when hardship afflicts you, it is to Him alone you cry out for help (Quran 16:53). Hardship is taken to turn into a reaching towards something, so naming what you are reaching for is honest rather than indulgent.
النحل
وَمَا بِكُم مِّن نِّعۡمَةࣲ فَمِنَ ٱللَّهِۖ ثُمَّ إِذَا مَسَّكُمُ ٱلضُّرُّ فَإِلَيۡهِ تَجۡـَٔرُونَ
Whatever good things you possess come from God, and when hardship afflicts you, it is to Him alone you cry out for help
Qur’an 16:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised experiment, people given a brief mindfulness induction were better able to re-see a distressing situation than those told to suppress it or left to their own thoughts. The sample was small, 44 people, so hold it lightly. It does suggest that a short settling practice leaves you better placed to think about what matters to you, which is the move this tip is making.
Garland EL, Hanley A, Farb NA, Froeliger BE. (2015). State Mindfulness During Meditation Predicts Enhanced Cognitive Reappraisal.. Mindfulness doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
Naming what you are moving towards gives you somewhere to walk to, instead of only something to get away from.
Start with a couple of minutes of movement before any of the difficult talking. Not a warm up for its own sake: a body that has moved is easier to think in.
Attention problems often travel with anxiety or low mood, and those two eat working memory as well. Settling that layer can make everything else look quite different.
Before you walk into a room with someone, ask what you are carrying in with you, and what you are likely to leave behind when you go.