Category Archives: Talking With Terrie – 180 seconds to a better life

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Message 305

The mastery minute 

Today’s message comes from a newsletter called the Daily wellness.   

Essentially the mastery minute is committing to one small, skill- building task every day 

It’s something that takes hardly any time – just a few minutes but you do it each day and it stretches you just a bit beyond your comfort zone. 

You see all these “daily” things like word of the day or some of the language programs that you do every day and then I guess get points for consistency. Maybe learning to play a new  chord on an instrument. 

The key is for it to be short, achievable and gives you a tiny sense of accomplishment. This is not a smart goal even though it sounds like it. It’s too give you something you definitely can achieve every day 

You’ve proved to yourself that you’re capable of growth by doing something challenging even if it’s small. It builds self efficacy which is your belief in your ability to learn and improve

Pick one small skill you want to develop or are curious about. 

Each day, spend just 3-5 minutes doing something related to it that feels slightly challenging but doable. 

After you finish, take a moment to acknowledge it. Even just a quick “I did that” counts.

The goal isn’t perfection or dramatic progress, just consistent practice that proves you can show up for yourself 

It’s Perfect for building confidence, breaking out of a rut, or developing skills you’ve always wanted. It’s especially helpful when you’re feeling stuck. These tiny wins remind you that you’re capable of more than you think.

Keep a simple log of what you practiced each day. Looking back at a week or a month of consistent effort is surprisingly motivating and shows you concrete evidence of your growth.

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Message #304

Veteran’s Day and impact vs intent

I imagine you noticed that I didn’t mention veteran’s day yesterday. That was intentional.

Why?

Because I’m not sure how I feel about my service right now. There’s so much going on in the country right now and much of that involves the military. I don’t want this call to be political but I feel I have some ability to address things that affect the military.

In case you didn’t know it, the National Guard is an integral part of the military. And they have been deployed into cities to exert force against American citizens. And you all know that the administration has said the military – I guess the mean other parts of the military
into the same cities. To keep Americans from protesting amongst other things.

And I guess my biggest problem was the speech to the 800 or so general officers, essentially telling then what they had to think and do.

What do you think “thank you for your service “ really means in light of that possibility

I served for nearly 30 years and took my job and my oath very seriously. I sure didn’t stay all that time for the money. I loved my country and wanted to take care of the others who were protecting me and all Americans. Not attacking them.
I don’t consider this a time for celebration.

Enough on this.

I wanted to mention a phrase I heard the other day that I think all of us can benefit from.

It’s that there is a difference between impact and intent.

How often do you hear someone say “I didn’t mean it” after they did something hurtful or said something hurtful. That’s the intent. But the impact has already occurred. And no matter what the intent was it won’t change that impact.

This is a primary reason for you to take a pause before you react or respond to something someone has said or done.

When you take that pause think about what you want the impact to be. Then you can tailor your response to ensure that you act or talk so that impact you want has a better chance of occurring.

It’s ok to be angry but the key point is not to express that anger in a harmful way.

Can you start practicing that pause ?

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Conditioned responses and routines

A conditioned response is a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus that has been paired with an eliciting stimulus.

So what you’re probably asking? Well the “what” is that there may be things happening in your life that you’re not happy with. These may be conditioned responses and with a fair amount of effort – sometimes a lot of effort – you may be able to reverse them.

Here’s some examples in my life. The funniest one is that if I pick up a book to read in the morning and start to read, I will begin to yawn. This happens without fail. Maybe you’re thinking it’s becaue I’m tired in the morning. But that’s not it. I’ve been up and working at my morning routine long before I pick up a book. It’s that someone a few a years ago my brain associated yawning with a book. I can read online a nothing happens.

This is the breakdown:
There’s pairing. I started reading a book and I yawned at the same time.

Then there’s association. My brain associated a yawn with opening a book.

The conditioned response develops so that when my brain sees me open a book it thinks it’s time to yawn

Then when I’m walking on a certain route – one where i know the porta potties are as soon as I get to a certain point on that route, my bladder begins to send messages to my brain that “it has to go”. When I’m on another route – leaving under the exact same conditions like how much I drink and when I pee at home, I’m fine at the same distance because the porta potty on that route is not for another mile. It took me a while to realize this one but when I found that I was feeling fine all the way until about 1/2 mile from the potty and all of a sudden I really had to go.
So what does this have to do with routines?

I have been having chronic daily headaches for the past 5-6 weeks and I have associated most of it with my daily morning routine. There’s more to it though because it’s most often there when I wake up.
But i decided to change my morning routine and see what happened. It’s been less than a week so I can’t really tell about the effect on my headaches except that so far they have not occurred when I wake up. But what I have noticed is that I feel a sense of freedom and excitement now that I’ve changed up that routine. I do parts of it in the evening or throughout the day so I haven’t eliminated anything. I’ve just reordered my routine.
Take a look at your days and see if there are things you might be doing “just because”. You started doing them sometime but maybe they have become stagnant. It’s important for the things we do to be stimulating and exciting so analyze your activities and see if there’s any shaking up you can do. And maybe you’ll find some conditioned responses that you weren’t aware of either.