Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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14 practices

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By the time you feel the anger, your body has already set off. That feeling is news arriving late, not proof that you have failed at anything.

So the thing worth practising is noticing earlier: heat in the face, a jaw setting, the voice climbing half a tone. You are not trying to stop the…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 7:201One line of research

Awareness runs a step behind the feeling. The work is not to stop anger arriving, it is to widen the gap between noticing it and acting on it.

Two things can be trained separately here: how fast you notice, and how long you can hold before you respond. Aiming at never getting angry sets you…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 21:37One line of research

When someone's tone lands as an attack, part of that reading was made years ago. Your alarm hands you stored learning dressed up as a plain fact about right now.

Knowing this takes the accusation out of the word bias. You are not a suspicious person by nature, you are a person carrying a file that was built…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 13:11One line of research

Your body knows before you have words for it. A tightening jaw or a hot face is the first news, and it arrives well before any thought about what they meant by that.

So the earliest place to catch anger is physical rather than verbal. Learn your own two or three signs and check for them the way you check a pocket…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 7:200One line of research

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Breaking the worry loop

Food, caffeine and fuel

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When you use something to cope

Choosing your response

Growing empathy

Reading, numbers and learning differences

When anger turns to harm

Making it stick

When everything feels flat

Self-compassion

Emotions as signals

Anger, alcohol and the body

Facing it a step at a time

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Tolerate distress

Obsessions and compulsions

Use your strengths

Being seen and judged

Touch and bodywork

Help someone grieving

Shame

Rest and pacing

Question the thought

Practising under provocation

Angry eyes and focused eyes look alike because they are doing the same job. Anger is your attention locked hard onto one target.

That description is more useful than a moral one, because attention is something you can practise and being a good person is not something you can…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 7:199One line of research

Strong feeling narrows what you are aiming at, a narrow aim makes anything touching it look enormous, and that makes the feeling stronger. Get in early, because the loop is cheapest to interrupt at the start.

Waiting until you notice how big it has become means waiting until the loop has already gained. The practical version is to act on signals you would…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 23:98One line of research

In a row, the words themselves rarely do the damage. The damage comes from what you do once you have decided the words mean something about you.

Someone can say something ugly and you can hear it as noise coming out of a person having a bad life. That is not pretending it was fine. It is…

A minuteThe moment before you snapMindfulnessQur’an 28:55One line of research

Picture a quick accelerator and a sluggish brake. In the moment the useful question is not "am I right", it is "which pedal is my foot on".

The brake also gets tired. After a long day of holding things in, the same remark lands harder, and that is worth planning around rather than judging…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 3:134One line of research

Sometimes you dislike a person or a room before you can say why. The fast part of you stores feelings, not explanations, so the reaction arrives whole and wordless.

If you cannot account for your reaction, you are not being evasive, and neither is anyone else who cannot account for theirs. Asking "why are you…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 23:97One line of research

Your mind is judging everything all the time, quietly sorting what is safe from what is not. You cannot switch that off, and you would not want to.

The question is not whether you appraise but how coarsely. Angry appraisal is fast and sweeping: he is against me, this always happens. Slower…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 8:29One line of research

If you are going to keep a record of the rough moments, name it in your own words. A hassle log gets filled in. A frustration inventory gathers dust.

The language you actually use in your head is the language that keeps a habit alive. Write the entries the same way: he was hassling me, she went…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCBTQur’an 17:53One line of research

Writing down what happened puts a little distance between you and it. Later you are not inside the row any more, you are a person reading about one.

Two things come out of a few weeks of this. You get data: the same time of day, the same person, the same bad night behind it. And you get practice…

Five minutesThe moment before you snapCBTQur’an 7:201One line of research

If waiting has always been hard for you, and your attention has always been restless, that belongs in the anger picture rather than in a separate story.

Irritability, reactivity and a mind that will not settle often arrive as a set. Working on the anger while ignoring the attention leaves the ground…

Twenty minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 2:268One line of research

Most of us rehearse the crushing line we wish we had said. Try spending that same time writing what you would actually like to say next time, and keep it short enough to remember.

Take one real episode from the past week and write two things: what happened, and one sentence you would rather have used. Something like I am…

Twenty minutesThe moment before you snapCBTQur’an 41:34One line of research