Maine Calm Clinic, Florence Gardner

This ring true for anyone else?
"Many of us have a mind that measures self-worth in terms of productivity. If I did not produce anything today, if I did not write a book, give a speech, bake bread, earn money, sell something, buy something, get a good grade on a test, or find my soul mate, then my day was wasted and I am a failure."

This is a really lovely short piece to calm the relentless striving voices in all of us:

The Gift of Waiting Jan Chozen Bays describes the unsung benefits of presence in an excerpt of her book, How to Train a Wild Elephant

A small basket of coping skills for the holiday season...

How to Be Happy Happiness isn’t something that just happens to you: Take these small steps to create a happier life.

Helpful new angle on mindfulness research, two simple things to focus on to improve mood: present moment awareness and non-judgmental acceptance.

Which Mindfulness Skills Can Benefit You? A new study examines how different aspects of mindfulness influence our emotional well-being.

What therapy does, if it's working:

"If you’re lucky you stop taking your gripes, your feelings of injustice, and your insecurities as seriously as you did when you began. This relaxation allows a more flexible and realistic attitude toward everything. It permits the self to adapt to the change that it is intrinsically part of, rather than trying to hold itself apart. And it permits a natural compassion to arise, both toward yourself, caught in whatever you still get caught in, and toward others, caught in their own pain."

What Changes? Psychotherapy, Buddhism, and a sense of boundless support

"We don’t find anything strange about spending years learning to walk, read and write, or acquire professional skills. We spend hours doing physical exercises to get our bodies into shape. Sometimes we expend tremendous physical energy pedaling a stationary bike. To sustain such tasks requires a minimum of interest or enthusiasm. This interest comes from believing that these efforts are going to benefit us in the long run.

Working with the mind follows the same logic."

Why Should I Meditate? Matthieu Ricard explains what Buddhist meditation is and why we do it.

Nice one on how motivation is related to autonomy and choice. Worth thinking about in terms of how we relate to kids too:

How to Get Back on Track When You’ve Lost Your Motivation Motivation can be fleeting, and it's OK to simply give it a rest. But when you need to get unstuck and get moving again, these two simple things can help.

"Choosing to slow down and not accomplish anything is a revolution in itself."

The Joy of Letting Go: Spring Cleaning Inside and Out Sister Ocean, who is ordained in the Plum Village tradition by Thich Nhat Hanh, offers some spring cleaning tips.

9 simple things...

A Positive Outlook May Be Good for Your Health Actively cultivating positive emotions may boost the immune system and counter depression.

"No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can always set our compass to our highest intentions in the present moment. Perhaps it is nothing more than being in a heated conversation with another person and stopping to take a breath and ask yourself, “What is my highest intention in this moment?”

—Jack Kornfield, "Set the Compass of Your Heart"

Set the Compass of Your Heart You need a reliable compass to set your direction and steer through the rough waters when you are going through hard times, when you’ve been betrayed, when you’ve lost your job, when you’ve lost friends or loved ones, when you’re in conflict with your family, or when you’re going through illness. Bu...

Let's practice compassion! Here's a nice collection of short guided meditations from the Center for Compassion Focused Therapy in New York:

Meditations Meditations

This kind of research underscores why we all need access to good mental health care. Untreated anxiety and depression are bad for our health:

Depression and Anxiety Tied to Cancer Deaths The associations were particularly strong for colon and re**al, prostate, pancreatic and esophageal cancers, and for leukemia.

We could all use a little compassion right about now. Here's a nice spot for short self-compassion exercises and tools on one page:

Self-Compassion Exercises by Dr. Kristin Neff Self-Compassion Exercises by Dr. Kristin Neff

It's that time of year again to listen to the Danes about how to get all "hygge"!

The Year of Hygge, the Danish Obsession with Getting Cozy At least six books about the concept of Scandinavian coziness were published in the U.S. this year, with more to come in 2017.

Is your child's school literate about stress? Some specific recommendations:

Stress is making our children ill; here is what we can do about it [...] while these young adults may not have used terms like anxiety and depression, I gradually got the sense that their “reality” was sometimes darker than their smiles would suggest. The causes of student distress vary, but 1 in 3 teens told the American Psychological Association that stress was a...

Don't try to control your thoughts... this is a nice short overview of how cognitive therapy works with our negative thinking bias. I think there's a deeper lesson here about how trying to control any unwanted thing (someone else's behavior, anxiety, anger, etc) tends to backfire. Acceptance and nonjudgmental curiosity is the way...

The Year of Conquering Negative Thinking Constant negativity can get in the way of happiness, but with practice, you can learn to disrupt and tame negative cycles.

Simple things:

How to Have a Mindful New Year Everyday activities like brushing your teeth or drinking coffee are opportunities to be present and mindful.

A timely practice for shifting our relationship with people we find to be difficult:

Trading Places The Difficult Person exercise provides a tool for us to focus on one particular person with whom we are having a hard time.

Why keep a journal during difficult times:

How to Journal Through Your Struggles Stuck in negativity? Writing down your feelings can be a healthy way to cope, a new book explains.

Big studies confirming what we already know, that exercise is one of our most effective tools against depression:

How Exercise Might Keep Depression at Bay Three new studies involving more than a million men and women strongly suggest that regular exercise makes us resistant to despair.

Therapy through reading fiction? Sign me up! (thank you to Jodie):

Can Reading Make You Happier? After the First World War, traumatized soldiers were often prescribed a course of reading.

The best piece on resilience I know (thank you to Renee):

How People Learn to Become Resilient Resilience is a set of skills—and psychologists know how you can learn them.

Why meditate?
"If we can train ourselves through meditation to be more open and more accepting toward the wild arc of our experience, if we can lean into the difficulties of life and the ride of our minds, we can become more settled and relaxed amid whatever life brings us."

5 Reasons to Meditate The simple act of stopping, says Pema Chödrön, is the best way to cultivate our good qualities. Here are five ways meditation makes us better people.

"The best solution is to drop your standards – possibly precipitously. The most annoyed people are the most perfectionist, and perfectionism is dangerous because they make everyone else, as well as themselves, feel terrible."

A wonderful piece of writing here:

Annoyance is part of family life, so get over it To really find peace, you need to train yourself not to mind about stuff – and Zen philosophy can help

Ouija Boards used and misused therapeutically... Happy Halloween!

How Ouija boards work. (Hint: It's not ghosts.) No, demons will not possess you if you use one.

Monster/human friendships:

what did you see when your eyes were opened?

Five quick tips for being a good listener from the folks who have a huge amount of experience listening. Could be used in any conversation:

SHUSH listening tips | Samaritans

Three steps to stop ruminating:

Mindfulness: The Gift of Taking Refuge in the Present Moment Bringing your attention to the present moment offers relief from your troubles.

Simple tools for finding balance in our use of digital distractions:

Dropping Distraction | Tricycle