Instead of self-criticism, which leads to procrastination and negative feelings, practice self-compassion by: 1) being mindful of your current difficult feelings, 2) recognizing these feelings are part of common humanity, and 3) offering yourself kindness, as you would a friend. This approach improves performance, reduces trauma, and fosters growth by allowing your brain to be open-minded about progress.
When experiencing mental chatter, address yourself using your name or in the second/third person (e.g., ‘Laurie, why did you do that?’). This simple linguistic shift creates psychological distance, making the self-talk feel like advice from a wise mentor, which leads to kinder self-talk, reduced anxiety, and improved performance without significant cognitive effort.
To gain objectivity and reduce chatter, imagine how a skilled or wise person (e.g., ‘What would Beyonce do?’) would react to your situation. Taking this third-person perspective helps you perform better, feel less anxious, and quiet mental rumination by adopting a more impartial viewpoint.
Understand that your inner voice, which aids in planning and making sense of the world, is an adaptive and miraculous cognitive feature, distinct from mental chatter, which is the negative, ruminative, or self-critical aspect of inner dialogue. Recognizing this distinction helps you appreciate your brain’s capabilities and approach managing chatter with less resentment.
When practicing self-compassion, engage with yourself as you would a good friend who is struggling, offering kindness, curiosity, and understanding rather than a harsh, critical tone. This ‘fierce’ self-compassion, unlike self-indulgence, allows you to address tough problems and unlock growth by fostering a supportive internal dialogue.
When caught in rumination, imagine yourself in the future (e.g., 10 years from now) reflecting on the current issue. This future perspective typically reduces the emotional intensity of the present problem, as your future self will likely view it differently, often as a learning experience or something no longer significant.
If imagining your future self doesn’t alleviate current worries, reflect on past issues that once consumed your thoughts but are no longer a concern. This practice of collecting personal evidence of your past misforecasts can build confidence that current problems will also resolve or diminish in importance over time.
To gain a more accurate understanding of your happiness and avoid biases from remembered judgments, consciously pay attention to your moment-to-moment experiences, both positive and negative. This mindfulness helps you notice small good things in life and better evaluate your ’experienced self,’ leading to more informed decisions about your well-being.
To enhance your remembered happiness, consciously engineer experiences to end on a positive note, even if the overall event had less pleasant parts. This ‘peak-end effect’ demonstrates that the conclusion of an event significantly influences how positively it is recalled.
If a generally positive experience concludes with an unpleasant event (e.g., a great vacation ending with a terrible travel day), mentally separate the negative ending into a different ‘mental slot.’ This allows you to preserve the pleasant memory of the core experience, preventing the bad ending from spoiling the entire recollection.
Consider paying for services or experiences, such as a fancy meal, in advance. This removes the negative ’ending’ of receiving and paying the bill from the immediate conclusion of the enjoyable part, potentially leading to a more fondly remembered overall experience.
At the end of each day, reflect on your activities and rate how much fun they were. This practice helps you observe the distinction between experienced and remembered happiness, such as how intense physical exercise, despite being painful at the time, is often recalled as a highlight of the day.
Embrace activities that are not fun in the moment but offer deep and enduring pleasure upon completion, known as ‘Type Two Fun.’ This involves pushing through initial discomfort or difficulty for the satisfaction of achieving a challenging goal, making the effort worthwhile in retrospect.
When undertaking activities with initial friction (e.g., starting a run, talking to a stranger), understand that the journey involves cycling through multiple emotional states beyond the initial dread or awkwardness. Recognizing this helps you push past the ‘sucky’ first step to reach more positive and fulfilling stages.
For challenging activities like running or writing, commit to longer durations to move past initial friction and enter a state of flow or deeper engagement. Short periods may not allow you to experience the full range of positive emotional states and satisfaction that come with sustained effort.
When pursuing long-term goals, shift your focus beyond just the immediate achievement of the ‘destination’ to also consider the sustained benefits and ongoing experiences that follow. This mindset helps you appreciate the continuous process and long-term rewards, preventing mispredictions about the singular joy of arrival.