A Year to Change Your Mind: Ideas from the Therapy Room to Help You Live Better

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Daily purpose reminders: Create visual cues or reminders of your purpose and place them in prominent locations. Celebrate milestones: Acknowledge and celebrate your achievements, reinforcing your commitment to your purpose. Self-care practices: Engage in activities that nurture your physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing regularly. Take it one step at a time, and don't forget to be compassionate towards yourself throughout the journey. Forgiving imperfections: Embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth and practice self-forgiveness.

Compassion for self and others: Extend compassion to yourself and others, recognizing that everyone makes mistakes and deserves understanding. Gratitude rituals: Develop gratitude rituals, such as saying grace before meals or expressing gratitude before bedtime. Sleep-friendly environment: Ensure your bedroom is conducive to sleep by keeping it cool, dark, and quiet.

Intellectual challenges: Engage in activities that challenge your thinking, such as puzzles, brain games, or learning a new language. Perhaps the most comforting – and discomfiting – thing about this book is that it sketches a world of pain and injustice in which it’s nonetheless possible to enjoy life.

From the tendency to lack motivation in January and to experience red-hot anger in the heat of August, to the weight of expectation associated with that back-to-school feeling in September and the pressure to enjoy the December holiday season, we're shown recognisable features of behaviour over the course of the year. But the message we might also take away is that, while circumstances afford us at least the possibility of feeling good, we should be thankful – and not waste the opportunity.

Side note: I don't understand why this book isn't more popular/talked about/has more ratings on Goodreads? It’s a good idea to try to do something about these things, however insignificant your efforts might feel. From the tendency to lack motivation in January and to experience red-hot anger in the heat of August, to the weight of expectation associated with that back-to-school feeling in September and the pressure to enjoy the December holiday season, we’re shown recognisable features of behaviour over the course of the year.

Supportive self-talk: Provide yourself with the support and encouragement you would offer a friend in challenging times. Psychology underpins everything we do, determining the decisions we make, the relationships we build, the roles we play and the places we live, and our behaviour is further influenced by the changing seasons, encouraging many of us to fall into unhelpful patterns again and again each year.Acts of kindness: Regularly engage in acts of kindness towards strangers, friends, family, or colleagues. Helpful strategies from therapy are presented as ways to cope with every-day issues or to improve life in general, and examples are given to better understand how these strategies can help us. Resilient role models: Seek inspiration from individuals who have overcome adversity and learn from their experiences. This review will break down the main principles outlined in each chapter, offering an actionable checklist to incorporate these recommendations into your daily routine for a happier, healthier mind.