As humans, we are wired to take quick actions by instinct. We’ve often noticed it: Someone says something and we immediately have a snappy comeback. Someone cuts us off, and we want to shout at him or her for being crazy drivers. For every stimulus in our lives, there’s part of us that wants to […]

Its very name is appealing – comfort food. What could be more wonderful than a food that helps us feel better? Almost everyone can name something that they eat when they’re just feeling sour or sad. Chinese take-out, chocolate cake, raspberry ice cream, banana pancakes and many others make the list. Of course, we know […]

In addition to the way that stress becomes quite relentless and ever present in our lives, it also has a terrible habit of refusing to respect boundaries. No matter how we might assume that everything’s been taken care of, something always seems to come up to intrude into our few free moments and rob us […]

Sometimes the problem that we’re dealing with isn’t necessarily a matter of the stress itself, but rather the way we’re approaching it. After all, we can’t lay all the blame on outside forces – we do make our own problems just as often. Fortunately, this also means that we can correct those same problems that […]

We’ve talked about stress and the elements that bring it into our lives, or stressors. Identifying our stressors can be a powerful first step, for obvious reasons – if we know what’s giving us grief, we can take steps to put it out of our way, resolve it or come to terms with it. Even […]

Newton tells us that a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon; likewise, a body at rest will stay at rest until acted upon. This gives us a powerful metaphor for the difficulties of getting into a proper, healthy exercise habit that can help shed weight and keep it off. Habits can […]

It’s very easy to take our perception as reality. We see a wall six feet away, we say it’s six feet away. We feel hot, we say it is hot. The problem is, perceptions are a matter of perspective and information. Suppose someone who’s usually cheerful at work comes in and is much more curt […]

So far, we’ve been focusing on using small steps and independent techniques to help deal with the stress which piles up in our lives. We know about using the STOP method to interrupt difficult thoughts, or to get our attention where we need it instead of where it’s trying to go. We know about taking […]

It’s hard to make a good choice instead of a bad one. It can be even harder to go back and undo a bad choice that we made some time ago. Instead, many times we stubbornly reinforce it again and again, letting it build up over time to continue burying us in worry, regret and […]

Having confidence in your goal is important. It’s tough to stick to something we don’t believe we can do, after all. We’ve talked in other articles about how easy it is to get frustrated, and about controlling negative thoughts in our effort to build up good and healthy habits. We’ve also talked about rewards and […]