What's your own role? The Practice: See your part. Why? In situations or relationships with any kind of difficulty – tension, feeling hurt, conflicts, mismatches of wants . . . the usual crud – it’s natural to focus on what others have done that’s problematic. This could be useful for a while: it can energize you, highlight what you most care about, and help you see more clearly what you’d like others to change. But there is also a cost: fixating on the harms (actual or imagined) done by others revves up your case about them (see Drop the Case),…
Today Forrest and I explore how we can better resource ourselves to face the challenging, and even traumatic, experiences that lie in our past.
Is there enough? The Practice: Feel already full. Why? One slice of the pie of life feels relaxed and contented. And then there is that other slice, in which we feel driven and stressed. Trying to get pleasures, avoid pains, pile up accomplishments and recognitions, be loved by more people. Lose more weight, try to fill the hole in the heart. Slake the thirst, satisfy the hunger. Strive, strain, press. This other slice is the conventional strategy for happiness. We pursue it for four reasons. The brain evolved through its reptilian, mammalian, and primate/human stages to meet three needs: avoid…
