The Off-Button For Your Brain

It’s Psychology Sunday at 10almonds, and we’re here to help you get the most out of your brain and your life, one easy tip at a time. Today we have:

• The warm beverage leverage—works for yourself and others!

• How stressed are you, really?—the two-minute stress test

• The off-button for your brain—how to “just say no” to your racing mind

• Your new best friend—self-care now comes with an outsourcing option!

• The Cluttered Mind—organizing the junk drawer of your mind

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

☕️ The Warm Beverage Leverage

Daphne Alroy-Thiberge, MSW, LCSW has a great little channel with short psychology tips to improve your life. Here’s a quick (1:28) example, which she calls the “warm beverage leverage”:

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We’ll drink to that!

⏱ QUICK CHECK-IN

😓 How Stressed Are You, Really?

Sometimes our responsibilities build up around us so slowly yet so inexorably that we don’t notice how much they’re piling up until it’s too late. Take a moment to do a quick check-in:

The Psych Central Stress Test (2 Minutes)

It advises it will take five minutes. It won’t.

🧠 MAIN FEATURE

💤 The Off-Button For Your Brain

We evolved our emotions for our own benefit as a species. Even the “negative” ones:

• Stress keeps us safe by making sure we take important situations seriously

• Anger keeps us safe by protecting us from threats

• Disgust keeps us safe by helping us to avoid things that might cause disease

• Anxiety keeps us safe by ensuring we don’t get complacent

• Guilt keeps us safe by ensuring we can function as a community

• Sadness keeps us safe by ensuring we value things that are important to us, and learn to become averse to losing them

• …and so on

But that’s not always useful. What was once a very good response to a common source of fear (for example, a sabre-toothed tiger) is no longer a helpful response to a modern source of fear (for example, an important interview).

Sometimes it’s good to take the time and energy to process our feelings and the event(s) that prompted those feelings. Sometimes, we don’t have that luxury.

For example, if you are stressed about your workload? Then staying awake half the night thinking about it is only going to make your problems worse the next day.

So, how to switch that off, or at least put a pause on it?

The human mind tends to have a “negative bias”, evolved for our own protection. If something is “good enough”, we don’t need to worry about it, so we move on to the next thing, until we find something that is a problem, then we dwell on that. That’s not always helpful, and the good news is, there’s a way to flip the switch on this process:

Identifying the positive, and releasing the rest

This exercise can be done when you’re trying to sleep, or at any time you need a calmer, quieter mind.

Take a moment to notice whatever you’re experiencing.

If it’s something that feels good, or neutral, identify it with a single word. For example:

• Warmth

• Soft

• Security

• Smile

• Peace

If it’s something that feels bad, then instead of identifying it, simply say (or think) to yourself “release”.

You can’t fight bad feelings with force, and you can’t “just not think about them”, but you can dismiss them as soon as they arrive and move onto the next thing. So where your train of thought may previously have been:

Now your train of thought may be more like:

And if you do this in a situation where you’re not going to sleep? Same process, just a more wakeful result, for example, let’s move the scene to an office where your meeting will shortly take place:

In summary:

If you need to stop a train of thought, this method may help. Especially if you’re in a situation where you can’t use some external distraction to keep you from thinking about the bad thing!

You’re probably still going to have to deal with the Bad Thing™ at some point—you’ve just recognized that now isn’t the time for that. Mentally postpone that so that you will be well-rested when you choose to deal with the Bad Thing™ later at your convenience.

So remember: identify the positive (with a single word), and anything else, just release.

📱 THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT

❤️‍🩹 Self-Care, Outsourced?

Do you remember Tamagotchi? This digital pet craze from the 90s sparks nostalgia for many... Do you remember looking after this little cyber-creature?

Finch is a great little app that is basically a lot like a Tamagotchi that takes care of you in turn.

How does it do it?

Sometimes it’s easier to take care of others than it is to take care of ourselves.

In this case, the main way to look after this digital pet—after naming and customizing it—is by performing acts of self-care for ourselves. It also offers motivational messages, and (short, but enjoyable and productive) DBT-based dialogues that also help guide us to better thought processes.

Finch also helps you set daily goals (big or small), and rewards your pet for you completing them. No, it won’t punish your pet for you not completing them, but there’s a definite feeling of teamwork as your pet encourages you. For many things, it will even guide you though the activities, if they’re something like a breathing exercise or a yoga routine or a journaling effort.

Unlike many habit-forming or streak-tracking apps, this one recognizes that not all days are equal... For this reason, it has settings for even the toughest days. On such days, Finch will recognize the value of goals like “literally just survive the day” or “stand up for 10 seconds”.

There are a lot of apps out there that encourage us to do things that are good for us, but this is the first time we’ve seen an app that really understands some of the harder moments of the human condition like that.

Check Out Finch (iOS and Android), And Prepare For A Little Extra TLC

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Cluttered Mind - by Deborah McKenna

Coming from an eclectic psychotherapy background, Deborah McKenna outlines a wide array of techniques to “do what it says on the tin”, that is:

Organizing the junk drawer of your mind.

McKenna argues that it’s natural for something so gargantuan as our mind to get cluttered... but that it’s perfectly possible, with a good system, to tidy up considerably.

The benefit of this is much like the benefit of tidying a room:

Imagine a kitchen in which half the things have not been put away; there are dishes in the sink, something is growing behind the trash can… and you have a vague suspicion that if you open a certain cupboard, its contents are going to come falling out on your head. How are you going to cook a meal here?

Imagine a mind when many thoughts have been left untended; there are things you needed to process, and there’s a steady resentment of something growing in some dark part of your mind… and there’s some part of your memory that you’re afraid to even look at it, because of all it’ll cause to come surging back at you. How are you going to strategize your life here?

Fortunately, McKenna is here to guide you through doing for your mind what Marie Kondo would do for your home. And, even better, McKenna does it with a simple and clear writing style, assorted diagrams, and a step-by-step approach to getting everything in order.

Give Your Mind A Spring-Cleaning With This Book From Amazon Today

Wishing you a calm and clear day ahead,

The 10almonds Team