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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19 practices

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Put your small interruption right before the moment you already know is hard. If it is the drive home, do it as you get into the car.

Anger tends to be patterned rather than random: the same commute, the same meeting, the same hour of the evening, the same name coming up on the…

A minuteChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 3:186One line of research

Your body gets up in the morning and your mind often does not. Half a day can go by in a sort of waking dream, and whatever meets you in it gets the sleepwalker's answer.

So make waking the moment you decide something, before the day has handed you anything to react to. Thirty seconds on the edge of the bed will do:…

A minuteChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 24:22One line of research

The version of you making sensible plans this afternoon is not the version standing in the kitchen at eleven at night. Plan for the other one.

That means leaving things in place instead of relying on your future good sense: the phone charging in the hall, an agreement that either of you can…

Five minutesChoosing your responseMindfulnessQur’an 2:153One line of research

If your whole plan is to keep your mouth shut next time, ask yourself how. Most of us go blank at that question, and the blank is worth more attention than another promise to try harder.

Willpower has been available to you every time this went wrong, so more of it is not the missing piece. What helps is something you can say out loud…

Five minutesChoosing your responseMindfulnessQur’an 2:153One line of research

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

If you are on autopilot, the part of you that would notice is asleep as well. So do not count on waking yourself in the moment, arrange for something outside you to do the waking.

That might be a practice kept at fixed times, a phrase agreed with someone at home, a note left where you will genuinely see it, or a plain if this…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 29:45One line of research

Hardly any of us were taught how to acquire a habit. You can know which one you want, agree it is a good idea, and still have no procedure, which is a different problem from not caring.

A procedure is boring and specific: one behaviour, one cue that sets it off, one time of day, and some way of noticing whether it happened. If you…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 42:43One line of research

Change seems to need three things at once: a reason, a method, and enough freedom in the moment to use the method. When you stall, work out which one is missing before trying harder at all of them.

A reason on its own leaves you with a wish. A method on its own leaves you with something you never reach for. Freedom is the one that gets skipped,…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 7:199One line of research

Draw a small circle on three separate scraps of paper without thinking about it. Then look: same size, same spot on the page, same direction of stroke, same starting point, nearly every time.

It is worth actually doing rather than reading about, because the evidence is yours and it is hard to argue with. Nobody chose those four things,…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 25:63One line of research

Choosing has two halves: seeing that there is more than one thing you could do, and then actually taking one. Failing at either looks identical from outside and needs quite different work.

Some people genuinely cannot picture a second option in the moment, and the job there is building a menu in calmer hours. Others can list four…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 16:126One line of research

If you are helping someone set up a practice like this, ask them for ideas before you offer yours. Keep a few in your back pocket for when they run dry.

What people invent for themselves fits their actual life, and they are far more likely to do it. Have suggestions ready anyway, because a brainstorm…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 3:159One line of research

Offer a practice as a question rather than an instruction. What do you think it would be like to wake yourself up once a day? That is a very different sentence from you should.

People argue with instructions, particularly people who were sent rather than came. A question leaves them to make the case, and the case they make…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 16:125One line of research

You are not stuck with the temper you have had so far. Reactions are learnt, which is unglamorous news and also the hopeful kind.

People say things like "I have always been this way" as though it settles the matter, when what it usually describes is a lot of practice. Look for…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 41:35One line of research

Open with the difficulty instead of the accusation. "This is hard for me to say" and "I am worried you will not like this" buy you a hearing that "you always" never will.

Two things happen at once when you start this way. The other person stops preparing a defence, because nothing has been thrown at them yet. And you…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCBTQur’an 16:125One line of research

Set the terms of a break while nobody is angry: what you will say, how long you will take, where you will go, and that you will not drive. Then it is a shared arrangement rather than something you do to the other person.

Leaving can be used as a weapon. Two days of silence, walking out while someone is crying, driving off into the night: all of that can wear the…

Twenty minutesChoosing your responseGottmanQur’an 3:159One line of research

You cannot talk yourself out of a state you are not in yet. Anything you want to have available when you are angry has to be practised, not merely understood.

Reading about a technique and having it in your hands with a hot face are two different things. So rehearse while you are calm and it feels a bit…

LongerChoosing your responseMindfulnessQur’an 29:45One line of research

What changes things is what you actually rehearse. Advice you agreed with does very little on its own.

So take one thing and repeat it rather than collecting ten good ideas. One breathing practice, one line to say, one route out of the room. Repeated…

LongerChoosing your responseMindfulnessQur’an 13:22One line of research

No medicine installs a skill. Staying steady when you are provoked is closer to a language you practise than to something anyone can prescribe you.

Medication can settle sleep, mood or attention, and that can be what makes practice possible in the first place. The response you actually want,…

LongerChoosing your responseMindfulnessQur’an 41:35One line of research

Hours in a room do not do the work on their own. If you are counting sessions towards a total, the count will run out and leave you roughly where you started.

This bites hardest when the attendance was ordered rather than chosen. A better question at the end of each week is what you practised and what…

LongerChoosing your responseMindfulnessQur’an 28:54One line of research

Changing how you react is two jobs, not one: loosening the old response and building the new one. Most people only do the second and then wonder why the old one keeps winning.

The new response is usually fine in calm conditions and then vanishes the moment your pulse is up, because the old one is still there, faster and far…

LongerChoosing your responseCoreQur’an 29:45One line of research