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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645 practices

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You will not get the honest version in one go. Ask, let it be refused, carry on with something else, then come back to it later in the same conversation.

A defended story does not collapse, it wears down. Each pass takes a little off it, and the person needs the gaps in between to do the actual…

LongerWhat anger actually isCoreQur’an 15:47One line of research

Respect comes from the Latin for looking, with the prefix meaning again. It is literally the second look, the head that turns as somebody important walks past.

Knowing that does something useful. A word that felt close to sacred turns into a plain social behaviour you can examine: who gets looked at twice,…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 31:18One line of research

Disrespect is a paper tiger. It comes at you looking like something, and it has never once actually done you any damage.

Worth noticing what your body does anyway. The heart goes, the jaw sets, and you get ready as though something physical were about to happen. The…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 25:63One line of research

When your thinking comes back online mid-argument, say so and offer a restart. I could feel myself getting defensive and this is not helping either of us, shall we try that again?

Most people escalate sometimes. The skill worth having is not never starting but knowing how to get out once you have. Naming it yourself gives the…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 12:92One line of research

There is more about anger than the practices: the anger area has the themes and the courses too.

Anger and doubt cannot really occupy the same moment. Anger sharpens everything to a point, and a genuine maybe blunts it.

This is why an honest question does more than an argument. Not a challenge, which hardens things, but a real one: what if I have got part of this…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 2:206One line of research

Your mind is always slightly behind what is happening. Reality moves and you are the response, which leaves you permanently a step late and permanently not quite sure.

Put that way, uncertainty is not a flaw in your thinking, it is the position you are standing in. You are flying into the next moment without having…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 16:23One line of research

Not understanding what is happening frightens a person before it angers them. If you flare up when a situation is unclear, you are meeting something very old in yourself rather than a fault you invented.

Watch the order of it next time. First the blank, the not knowing what this means or where it is going, then a tightening in the chest or jaw, then…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 17:36One line of research

If you can see yourself, you need other people to do it far less. That is really the whole aim, and it is what takes the sting out of being misjudged.

Being seen properly by others is lovely, and it is also occasional, partial and outside your control. What you can do daily is notice what you did…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 91:9One line of research

Try saying the word until it goes silly. Respect, respect, respect: a socially agreed comment on how tall you are supposed to be.

The point of the joke is not to demolish respect, which is fine and worth having. It is to shrink the fear of not getting it, because that is the…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 7:48One line of research

Here is an uncomfortable way to look at it. To value someone is often to find them useful, and paying respect is a bit like looking after your tools: being nice to you is nice for me.

It is not the whole truth about people and it is not meant unkindly. It is useful because it makes generic respect a strange thing to organise a life…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 49:13One line of research

Some situations genuinely run on how you are seen. A job interview, a court hearing, a first meeting with in-laws: the image matters there, and it is honest to say so.

The claim is only that most of life is not one of those, and that the fear of disrespect is far larger than its actual cost. Keeping the exceptions…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 4:135One line of research

Demanding respect quietly puts you below the person you are demanding it from. You are asking for something only they can hand over, which makes you the one in need.

That is an odd position for a stance meant to prove you will not be pushed around. To anyone watching it usually reads as need rather than strength.…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 28:83One line of research

Say what you would prefer and what you will do, not what they have to feel. I do not like being spoken to this way, and if it carries on I am going to step out of the conversation.

The difference is small and it changes everything. A demand needs their cooperation to succeed, so it can be refused, and being refused is where the…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 42:41One line of research

A lizard's temperature is whatever the rock is. A mammal shivers, sweats and pants, and stays roughly the same whether it is a good day or not.

Self-esteem works like the lizard. It rises when things go well and drops when they do not, and other people supply the weather. Self-acceptance is…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 39:22One line of research

A cold-blooded animal that catches its dinner after dark cannot digest it until the sun comes back. It has the meal and it cannot use it.

That is what it looks like when good things only count once somebody else notices. The work is finished, the result is in, and it means nothing until…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 64:16One line of research

Esteem shares a root with estimate, and estimating needs a measure. Look at what you are measuring yourself with and you will usually find it was handed to you: money, height, thinness, numbers on a screen.

Those measures move. They differ between one country and the next, and between your grandfather's time and your own. Anything you score yourself on…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 53:32One line of research

Feeling good about yourself is not the safe end of this. The high and the low come from the same borrowed source, which means the high can be taken back at any point.

You feel valuable while you are fitting in and worthless when you are not, and neither reading was ever yours. It is why an insult can go off like a…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 2:34One line of research

Giving up certainty is a loss, and it is fair to treat it as one. People do grieve the version of themselves who knew exactly what was going on.

The same piece of work gets called several things: getting used to uncertainty in small doses, learning to sit with confusion, or grieving the loss…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 3:154One line of research

A lot of angry certainty is frightened certainty. Needing to know exactly what is going on, and exactly who is at fault, is more comfortable than admitting the situation cannot be fully read.

From the outside it looks like arrogance, and from the inside it feels like clarity. Underneath it is usually the same discomfort as any other…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 17:36One line of research

Not knowing is not a fault in you. It is the ordinary condition of being alive, and much of the distress comes from the belief that it ought to be otherwise.

There is the discomfort of not knowing, and then a second layer on top: the sense that you were supposed to know by now and something has gone wrong.…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 49:12One line of research