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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11 practices

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You do not actually know what they are about to say, or why they did it. Swapping the finished sentence in your head for help me understand costs nothing and changes the whole exchange.

Finishing people's sentences, deciding in advance what they meant, hearing the insult before it has been made: all of it feels like insight and most…

A minuteEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 6:59One line of research

You do not have to jump straight to understanding. Try the step before it: hands open, honestly puzzled, help me see what just happened here.

It has to be a real question. The rhetorical version, asked with your jaw set, makes things worse and both of you know it. Ask, then stay quiet long…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 6:59One line of research

When someone protests that swallowing their feelings is unnatural, agree with them, because it is. Then add the part they have not said: it is also necessary, and there are better ways to do it than swallowing.

Arguing that calm comes naturally costs you your credibility in a single sentence. Conceding the true half leaves nothing to defend, and the…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveCoreQur’an 2:157One line of research

When someone tells the story with every detail, the exact words, the way the door shut, what she was wearing, they are not wandering off the point. The detail is telling you how unsafe it felt.

Steering them back to the summary usually lands as being told their experience is a nuisance. Let it run a while and hear the detail as a reading of…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulness

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

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Use your strengths

Validate yourself and others

Anger, alcohol and the body

Tolerate distress

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Fondness and admiration

Moving your body

Qur’an 6:59

One line of research

Those same four dots could have been joined into a cross. You never saw the cross, because the square had already settled.

The second step matters more than the first. Not only did you build the picture, you built one of several that fitted the same dots. So when a tone…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 3:190One line of research

The same cup is a drinking cup at home and contraband in a prison, because the role you are standing in has already decided what you are looking at.

You have roles too, and they are quieter than a uniform: the wronged partner, the one who never gets thanked, the employee nobody respects. Standing…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 57:23One line of research

Think about the last person who shouted at you. Were they angry with you, or were they afraid? The honest answer is usually both, and both is allowed.

This is not about excusing anyone. Fear and anger arrive together so often that reading only the anger leaves half of it out. Seeing the frightened…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 2:155One line of research

You cannot check whether your own view is fair while standing entirely inside it. Being certain you are right is a feeling, and feelings are not evidence.

In a row, the sense of being obviously in the right is the thing that gives you permission to hit back. Try holding your version as your version:…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 22:46One line of research

Their account makes sense from where they are standing. So does yours. Granting the first does not cost you the second.

This is the part people refuse, because they hear it as folding. It is not. You can say plainly that from where they sat it looked like that, and…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 6:59One line of research

When someone insults you they are aiming at a description of you: your job, your name, your reputation. The more loosely you hold those, the less of you is standing in the way.

Ask who you would be if the description came off. Not as a trick, and not to erase yourself, only to notice that you were never only that word. Some…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 28:88One line of research

You can be completely right and still lose the room. Usually the trouble is not the point you are making, it is the edge you are making it with.

Softening how you say something is not conceding it. It is the difference between being heard and being braced against. Listen for the tells in your…

Five minutesEquanimity and perspectiveMindfulnessQur’an 41:46One line of research