Daily Gratitude: Habits are simply “apps” you’ve installed in your subconscious. Once installed, all yo have to do is push a button and the app executes what it’s supposed to do. If you get in the habit of meeting everything with “good mental training”, you’ll be convincing your subconscious that everything really is good and that everything is good mental training. This helps you accept all the “not so good” things that you encounter. But in order to install it properly and permanently, I recommend using it with all sorts of things that come into your life. I’ll give you an example from years ago where I should have used it. In my last years in the navy I worked 75 miles from my home – in Washington DC. and I commuted up and down interstate 95 – a nightmare. One day they forecast a big snow storm so I asked my boss if I could leave early. He usually said yes in situations like that. But this time we were having a guest speaker so my boss said no. Instead of using this phrase I resorted to my usual childish behavior and just pouted. When the lecture was over, i hurriedly got into my car and headed home. Well it turns out that I couldn’t go anywhere near I-95 because there had been a 100 car pileup due to the storm. Had I left when I wanted, I would have been caught right in the middle of all that. And maybe seriously injured. Had I just known about this and said “good! It’s good mental training” the outcome would have been the same but I would have enjoyed the lecture and not been so worried. Next time you’re stuck in traffic say “good. It’s good mental training. This is helping me learn patience”. Practice all day long and it will become second nature to you and you’ll ultimately be grateful when something really big happens and you just blurt this out!

Daily Gratitude: Of course since I study Internal Family Systems I believe there is you and a lot of other “yours” (your parts) but the concept is the same. You have relationships with your parts (or the one other you if that’s what you choose to believe. Once I realized that there really was a big old family inside of me, I began to feel less alone and also started to understand many of the behaviors I could not comprehend. That was the beginning of my developing a strong relationship for the first time. I’ve continued with this relationship building and it’s been the best experience of my life. You have to know what’s going on inside of you. That’s the only way you can present your true self to the world. It helps you be more authentic and calm when being in the world. Stop focusing on things outside of your world and pay attention to what’s going on inside of you. If you don’t, your nervous system will continue to go haywire and you’ll manifest it in physical symptoms. Work on yourself please.

Daily Gratitude: This is so important. I was (and sometimes still am) a victim of this thinking. “I’ll be happy when I do this or do that (lose weight, gain weight, gain muscle, graduate, etc)”. What if that never happens? All those days and weeks and sometimes years went to waste. The ironic part is that many of us won’t even be happy when we lose those 10 pounds or get x amount of money. We have to look deep – at the reason behind this desire. What are we really looking for? That is the important question to examine. When you find yourself saying “I can’t wait until x,y, or z” stop and ask yourself why you can’t just be happy and enjoy the now? It may be all you have.