Day 1579: Action

When people take the action of joining my therapy groups, I recommend these weekly actions:

1.  Do something mindfully, using your senses to stay in the moment.
2. Take one action you think would be helpful.
3. Notice and challenge an unhelpful thought.

For example, I am writing this blog post mindfully, using my senses to stay in the moment. I just took the helpful action of writing an email to my realtor, expressing my thoughts and feelings about a property.  My next action is to notice unhelpful thoughts about an action I took yesterday:

I’ve made another mistake.  I should have known better.

Here’s the action of challenging that unhelpful thought:

 Everybody makes mistakes.  I’m doing the best I can. Every mistake is an opportunity for me to learn and grow.

Yesterday, my actions included:

• Voting for myself to be the next president of a group psychotherapy organization,
• Putting an offer on a house near the water,
• Expressing appreciation for the departing interns at work, and
• Facilitating two therapy groups.

Every day, I take action shots and share the action here.

When I show up at YouTube and gently search for “action” there, it’s true that I find this:

If you think it would be helpful to make a comment below, please take action.

My final action in this post?  Expressing gratitude to all who helped me create it and to you — of course! — for your action of visiting this blog today.

Day 562: What Helps (continued)

In my office, I have lots of things on the walls, including my white board:

 

… art work:

 

… a clock:

 

… and stickies of various sizes:

That last poster-sized stickie is a list of What Helps (shown in a year-old photograph). People who do group therapy in my office have been adding to that poster for a long time.  As you can see, there wasn’t a lot of room for more additions (although we’ve been doing our best to squeeze things in).

A few days ago, I took someone’s advice and added a new poster, right next to that one, titled “What Helps (continued).” Since then, that poster remained empty of new entries.

It can be daunting to add new words to something blank, don’t you think?

Yesterday, there was a break-through:

There’s a lot more room for new entries.  Are there any you would like to add to that list?

Thanks to all those who do their best naming actions, thoughts, feeling, quotes, etc. that help them. And thanks to you — of course! — for continuing here, today.