# The Book in a Nutshell “Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me This Before” is a self-help book written by Julie Smith that offers valuable insights and practical tips for anyone looking to improve their personal and professional lives. The author draws on her own experiences and research to offer advice on topics such as goal setting, overcoming obstacles, building confidence, and finding happiness. The book is written in a conversational, easy-to-read style, making it accessible to a wide range of readers. Smith’s approach is positive and encouraging, and she provides real-world examples and exercises to help readers apply the concepts she discusses. One of the book’s main strengths is its focus on practical tips and actionable advice. Rather than offering generic platitudes, Smith provides specific strategies and techniques that readers can use to make meaningful changes in their lives. The book is also well-organized, with each chapter covering a specific topic and building on the previous chapters. In short, "Why No One Told Me This Before" is an engaging and informative read that offers practical advice and inspiration for anyone looking to improve their life. # How This Book Changed Me I read this book in early 2023 and it was one of the most comprehensive reads to better understand the feelings and emotions we experience. The book covers a variety of topics such as fear, insecurity, happiness, grief, stress, motivation, etc. Understanding how to identify and think about each of these feelings is essential for a healthier and more balanced life, which is why this book was very important to me and I will certainly read it again in the future. # Notes - [[Diferença entre valores e objetivos]] # My 3 Favorite Highlights # Highlights While longer-term, more in-depth therapy is appropriate for some people, there were so many who simply needed some education about how their mind and body work and how they could manage their mental health day-to-day. ^ref-34017 --- But, in therapy, before we can expect anyone to work on healing any past traumas, we must ensure they have the tools in place to build resilience and the ability to tolerate distressing emotions safely. ^ref-29830 --- It’s just the same with mental health. The more work we do on building self-awareness and resilience when all is well, the better able we are to face life’s challenges when they come our way. ^ref-41593 --- It will describe the tools you need to keep re-evaluating and finding your direction, returning to healthier habits and self-awareness. ^ref-36432 --- Something that I have come to realize over the years of working as a psychologist is how much people struggle with low mood and never tell a soul. Their friends and family would never know. They mask it, push it away and focus on meeting expectations. ^ref-56379 --- Our body temperature is affected by our environment, both internal and external, and we also have the power to influence it ourselves. Mood is much the same. ^ref-41667 --- There is such power in understanding the many ways you can influence how you feel and nurture good mental health. ^ref-45322 --- Even when you are feeling good and don’t think you need it, these skills are nutrition for your mind. ^ref-39836 --- The tools I have acquired do not stop life throwing stuff at you. They help you to navigate, swerve, take a hit and get back up. They don’t stop you getting lost along the way. They help you to notice when you have lost your way and bravely turn on your heel and head back towards a life that feels meaningful and purposeful to you. ^ref-9297 --- So this book is not necessarily going to ensure that you live the rest of your days with a smile on your face. It will let you know which tools you can use to make sure that when you do smile, it is because you genuinely feel something. ^ref-21258 --- Everyone has low days. Everyone. But we all differ in how frequent the low days are and how severe the low mood. ^ref-35987 --- When we experience low mood, it may have been influenced by several factors from our internal and external world, but when we understand what those influences are, we can use that knowledge to shift it in the direction we want it to go. ^ref-47709 --- It reminds us that our mood is not fixed and it does not define who we are; it is a sensation we experience. ^ref-39364 --- Not all low mood is unidentified dehydration, but when dealing with mood it is essential to remember that it’s not all in your head. ^ref-54291 --- when dealing with mood it is essential to remember that it’s not all in your head. It’s also in your body state, your relationships, your past and present, your living conditions and lifestyle. ^ref-54944 --- It pieces all these clues together with memories of when you have felt similar in the past and makes a suggestion, a best guess about what is happening and what you do about it. ^ref-46728 --- Lots of self-help books tell us to get our mindset right. They tell us, ‘What you think will change how you feel.’ But they often miss something crucial. It doesn’t end there. The relationship works both ways. The way you feel also influences the types of thoughts that can pop into your head, making you more vulnerable to experiencing thoughts that are negative and self-critical. ^ref-50564 --- Not all low mood is unidentified dehydration, but when dealing with mood it is essential to remember that it’s not all in your head. It’s also in your body state, your relationships, your past and present, your living conditions and lifestyle. It’s in everything you do and don’t do, in your diet and your thoughts, your movements and memories. How you feel is not simply a product of your brain. ^ref-56105 --- So when it comes to changing your mood, the ingredients that go in will determine what comes out. ^ref-51096 --- How we think is not the whole picture. Everything we do and don’t do influences our mood too. ^ref-51101 --- But we don’t experience our thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions and actions all separately. We experience them together as one. ^ref-30441 --- All these things are interacting to create our experience. But we don’t experience our thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions and actions all separately. We experience them together as one. ^ref-41937 --- constant feedback between the brain, the body and our environment means that we can use those to influence how we feel.          Figure 2: Spending time with negative thoughts makes it highly likely that I will feel low in mood. ^ref-37928 --- The constant feedback between the brain, the body and our environment means that we can use those to influence how we feel. ^ref-2559 --- The first step to begin getting a grasp on low mood is to build our awareness of each aspect of the experience. ^ref-11107 --- The first step to begin getting a grasp on low mood is to build our awareness of each aspect of the experience. This simply means noticing each one. ^ref-36342 --- Take your time getting to know the details. When I am feeling this, what am I thinking about? When I am feeling this, what state is my body in? How was I looking after myself in the days or hours leading up to this feeling? Is this an emotion or just physical discomfort from an unmet need? ^ref-42944 --- Reflecting on moments after they happen will help to gradually build up the skill of noticing the links between those aspects of your experience as they happen. ^ref-2234 --- Low mood gives us the urge to do things that can make our mood even worse. ^ref-15306 --- Finding ways to manage low mood involves reflecting on the ways in which we respond to those feelings, having compassion for our human need for relief, while also being honest with ourselves about which of those attempts to cope are making things worse in the longer term. Often the things that work best in the long term are not fast-acting. ^ref-22311 --- You might notice that you feel the need for more reassurance from others when your mood is low. If you don’t get that extra reassurance you might automatically assume that they are thinking negatively about you. ^ref-34689 --- When we are struggling with low mood it only takes one thing to go wrong, and we have that tendency to write off the whole day. ^ref-37391 --- Overgeneralization is when we see this one event as a sign that today will be ‘one of those days’. ^ref-17159 --- Just as thoughts are not facts, feelings are not facts either. Emotions are information, but when that information is powerful, intense and loud, as emotions can be, then we are more vulnerable to believing in them as a true reflection of what is going on. ^ref-360 --- Emotional reasoning is a thought bias that leads us to use what we feel as evidence for something to be true, even when there might be plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. ^ref-12870 --- Information that challenges our beliefs about ourselves and the world is psychologically threatening. ^ref-20187 --- In evolutionary terms, it makes sense that when you feel vulnerable, you keep an extra lookout for signs of threat. But when you are trying to come back from a dark place, the mental filter is something to be aware of. ^ref-36424 --- When you are already struggling with mood, expecting yourself to do, be and have everything that you are when you’re at your best is not realistic or helpful. ^ref-780 --- All-or-nothing thinking Also known as black-and-white thinking, this is another thought bias that can make mood worse if we leave it unchecked. This is when we think in absolutes or extremes. ^ref-61705 --- THOUGHT BIAS   WHAT IS IT?   EXAMPLE  Mind reading   Making assumptions about what others are thinking and feeling.   ‘She hasn’t called in a while because she hates me.’   Overgeneralization   Taking one event and using it to generalize about other things.   ‘I failed my exam. My future is ruined.’   Egocentric thinking   Assuming that others have the same perspective and values as we have, and judging their behaviour through that lens.   ‘I would never be late like that. He obviously doesn’t care enough about me.’   Emotional reasoning   I feel it, therefore it must be true.   ‘I feel guilty, therefore I am a bad parent.’   Musts and shoulds   Relentless and unrealistic expectations that set us up to feel like a failure every day.   ‘I must always look perfect.’ ‘I should never do any less than my absolute best.’   All-or-nothing thinking ^ref-3008 --- Now you know some of the common thought biases that can make your mood worse, what next? We can’t stop those thoughts from arriving, ^ref-28282 Note: Nao podemps mesmo.bmas nao seria possivel mitigalos? --- If we can acknowledge that each of our thoughts presents just one possible idea among many, then we open ourselves up to the possibility of considering others. ^ref-64568 --- High emotion states can make it hard to think clearly, so it can be easier to start by reflecting on thought biases after the emotions of the moment have passed. You build your awareness by looking back, but that gradually builds towards awareness in real time. ^ref-50396 --- In trying to find alternatives, some people try to look for the correct answer. It is not so much the exact wording of the alternative perspective that is important. What matters more is the practice of stopping before you buy into a thought as fact and actively considering other views. ^ref-34680 --- Build up that ability to tolerate not knowing. ^ref-43844 --- It’s OK not to have a clear opinion on something while you take time to think about different sides of the story. So give yourself permission to sit on the fence for as long as you need to. Build up that ability to tolerate not knowing. ^ref-60890 --- When we feel low in mood, thoughts can become all-consuming in this way. The brain senses from the body that things are not OK and starts offering up lots of reasons why that may be. ^ref-37644 --- All those self-help books that told the world to just think positive didn’t account for the fact that you can’t control the thoughts that arrive in your mind. The part you can control is what you do once they appear. ^ref-56767 --- Metacognition is the process of stepping back from the thoughts and getting enough distance to allow us to see those thoughts for what they really are. ^ref-46941 --- Metacognition sounds complicated but it is simply the process of noticing which thoughts pop into your head and observing how they make you feel. ^ref-6012 --- The power of any thought is in how much we buy into it. How much we believe it to be true and meaningful. ^ref-18323 --- This is not the same as blocking thoughts and trying to ignore them. It is being intentional about which thoughts you give the limelight to, which ones you zoom in on and turn up the volume. ^ref-22459 --- Now I am not about to tell you that you can manifest things in your life just by focusing on them. But we have to look where we are going if we want to stay on course. ^ref-44305 --- The more you do something, the more established that neural activity becomes. This means the more you churn over painful thoughts or memories, the easier it becomes for you to bring those things to mind. You find yourself in a trap in which you continuously re-trigger painful emotions and distress and spiral down into a dark place. ^ref-18001 --- For anyone who is prone to rumination, time alone opens up the gates of the arena for the thoughts and memories and subsequent emotional pain to come flooding in and start circling your mind. ^ref-57497 --- Mindfulness is a state of mind that we can try to cultivate at any time. It means paying attention to the present moment, with awareness of thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations that arrive, without judgement or distraction. ^ref-2441 --- Gratitude practice is another simple way to get used to turning your attention. Find a small notebook and, once a day, write down three things that you feel grateful for. ^ref-8567 --- Now, this sounds almost too simple to be effective, but every time you engage in gratitude, your brain is getting practice at turning its attention to things that create pleasant emotional states. ^ref-6418 --- The problem with decision-making when you feel down is that low mood gives us the urge to do things that we know will keep us stuck. But the things that we know could help feel overwhelming. ^ref-19874 --- Perfectionism paralyses the decision-making process because every decision has some inherent uncertainty. And every choice includes some negative side-effects to be tolerated. ^ref-2135 --- A good decision is one that moves you in the direction you want to go. It doesn’t have to catapult you there. ^ref-6203 --- Pick one small change that you know you can action every day. Then make a promise to yourself that you will make it happen. ^ref-53209 --- Self-compassion does not have to be airy-fairy self-indulgence. It is being the voice that you most need to hear, one that will give you the strength to pull yourself back up rather than drive you further into the ground. ^ref-2065 --- But if we want to move away from what we don’t want, it helps to know where we do want to go instead. ^ref-40361 --- What we do and how we do it feeds back to our body and brain about how to feel, so shifting direction towards what matters most, and the person we want to be alongside our problems, can bring about big shifts in mood. ^ref-31539 --- We all have the tendency to neglect the basics. ^ref-1550 --- The basics are not glamorous. They don’t give us that hit of having bought something that promises to fix everything. But they are cash in the health bank. When life starts throwing things at you, those defences are going to keep you standing, and help to pull you back up if you fall. ^ref-37740 --- We underestimate the power of these defences so much that they are often the first things we let go when we are under stress or not feeling so good. ^ref-17453 --- So finding exercise you enjoy does not only offer you joy while you are exercising, but increases your sensitivity to find joy in all the other aspects of your life. ^ref-19538 --- A one-off workout won’t change everything, but a small increase in physical activity that you can keep up has the power to become a catalyst for significant life change. ^ref-57537 --- When it comes to screens, the research suggests it is less about the colour of the screen light and more about the brightness. ^ref-27984 --- So clear the desk and clear your mind as much as you can. ^ref-40232 --- In recent years the science has made strides in demonstrating this. How you feed your brain influences how you feel. ^ref-44521 --- But as I mentioned before, making huge life transformations overnight is less helpful if you cannot sustain them. Instead, it is helpful to ask ourselves on a regular basis, ‘What is one small change I could put in place today that would improve my nutritional intake?’ Then repeat this every day. ^ref-48055 --- That said, there is no perfect routine. Establishing a balance of predictability and adventure that works for you within your unique circumstances is key. Noticing when that goes off track and pulling it back is a big step in the right direction. ^ref-8620 --- Being with others (even when we don’t feel like it), to observe them, interact with them and build connections with them, can help to lift our mood and pull us out of our own head and back into the real world. ^ref-6024 --- So, when we are struggling and we want to pull ourselves up from low mood, one of the most powerful things we can do is swim against that strong tide that is pushing us towards isolation and loneliness. We must not wait until we feel like it, because feeling like it doesn’t come first, the action must come first. The feeling follows on after. ^ref-41563 --- When we struggle, connection helps. Good-quality, safe connection. If that can’t be found in family or friends, then professionals can provide that until you are able to find and create new, meaningful relationships in your own life. ^ref-15441 --- So many of us know exactly what we need to do, we just really don’t feel like doing it right now. And when later comes, we don’t feel like it then either. ^ref-51239 --- Procrastination is something everyone does. It’s when we put something off because the job we need to do triggers a stress reaction, or some other feeling that is aversive. ^ref-28012 --- Anhedonia is something different. This is when we stop taking pleasure in the things that we used to enjoy. ^ref-3709 --- When we feel that way, we start to question whether anything is worth the effort. Things that once brought joy start to feel meaningless. So we stop doing the things that have the potential to lift our mood because we have no desire for them any more. ^ref-30471 --- Motivation is a wonderful by-product of action. It’s that great feeling you get when you are on your way out of the gym, not on your way in. ^ref-55679 --- If you start doing that thing that you wish you felt like doing, you have more chance of stimulating your brain in a way that brings about enjoyment or a sense of motivation. ^ref-53247 --- You cannot change something you are not aware of. ^ref-12063 --- If we can better understand what caused the failure and that getting back on track is just part of the process, then we are in a good position to predict when it could happen again and steer around those challenges in the future. ^ref-14453 --- If that thing we are working on is not fresh in our minds we can quickly lose momentum. ^ref-41147 --- Keep it small Any big task will invite that ‘can’t be bothered’ feeling, so keep it small and keep it focused. ^ref-37733 --- When motivation for a long-term goal dips, it helps to have small rewards along the way. ^ref-9754 --- When we acknowledge the progress and small victories along the way, we start to recognize that our efforts can influence our world. ^ref-55253 --- The physiology of self-control is optimal when stress is low and heart-rate variability is high. ^ref-50152 --- So whatever change you are working on, increasing your level of activity, even in a small way, is a great way of strengthening your willpower to keep it up ^ref-38381 --- If we associate failure with unworthiness, then starting anything new is going to feel overwhelming and procrastination will be front and centre. ^ref-28848 --- Most people are shocked and surprised to find out that self-criticism is more likely to lead to an increase in depression rather than motivation (Gilbert et al., 2010). ^ref-23427 --- And there will always be things that we will never feel like doing. ^ref-57445 --- Feelings are often accompanied by urges. Those urges are suggestions, nudges, persuasions telling us to try this or that to relieve the discomfort that we feel or to seek the reward that we anticipate. While those urges can be powerful, we don’t have to do what they say. ^ref-60686 --- The opposite action skill is the deliberate attempt to take an action that is the opposite of what the emotion is telling you to do. This is especially helpful when your coping strategies tend to cause you harm. ^ref-50960 --- The best strategy for motivation is to take motivation out of the equation. There are things we do every day, whether we feel like it or not. ^ref-30344 --- path often enough, it will always be effortful. Any time that you are under stress your brain will ^ref-1849 --- Any time that you are under stress your brain will automatically choose the easiest route, which is the path well-trodden. But if you can repeat that new behaviour as often as you can, for enough times, then a new habit is established and becomes easier to use when you most need it. ^ref-39478 --- Over the years, psychology research has challenged the idea that success is all down to innate talents and has shown that grit (Duckworth et al., 2007) and, in particular, perseverance play a vital role in our ability to succeed (Crede et al., 2017). ^ref-54035 --- When we are working on long-term goals and making changes that we want to maintain, we have to learn to counter-balance the stress of effort with the replenishment of rest. ^ref-13343 --- But if we use those in-between moments to clear emails, scroll through social media or get a few things done, the body and brain will not be returning to a rest state to recharge. ^ref-58055 --- So, when the task ahead feels like a mountain to climb, you don’t look up at the peak. You narrow your focus and set yourself the challenge to make it to that next ridge. When you get there, you allow yourself to absorb that feeling of being on your way. Then you go again. ^ref-28923 --- Look ahead at the change you want to make. Write down all the potential hurdles that could cause you to get off track. For each hurdle, make a plan of action about how you will prevent those hurdles from causing you to get off track or give up on your goals. ^ref-34162 --- If you can anticipate the situations that may be difficult and have a plan in place to deal with them, you won’t have to think on your feet and wrestle with temptation or motivation at a time when you may feel vulnerable. ^ref-8060 --- As motivation rises and falls along the journey of change, returning to your sense of self and the identity you want to create can help you to persist when motivation has disappeared. ^ref-59127 --- Spend time imagining your future. When we create a vivid image of ourselves in the future, the easier it becomes to make choices in the here and now that will benefit your future (Peters & Buchel, 2010). ^ref-21601 --- While it is helpful to consider the future that we do want, it is also helpful to look at the future we don’t want. ^ref-25662 --- What is the larger overall change that I am trying to make? Why is this change so important to me? What kind of person do I want to be as I face this challenge? How could I approach this challenge in a way that would make me feel proud when I look back on this period of my life, regardless of the outcome? What are those smaller goals that I need to achieve along the way? How would I like to face those days when motivation is low? Am I listening to my body and what it needs? ^ref-54594 --- It is the epicentre of any big life change. You cannot change what you cannot make sense of. ^ref-59158 --- The most effective way to resolve a problem is to understand the problem inside out. ^ref-29765 --- For those who are using a self-help approach, journalling is a great place to start. There is no pressure to write huge amounts or to write in a way that makes sense to anyone else. The aim is to build on your ability to reflect on your experiences and how you responded to them. ^ref-42916 --- Journalling in this way can feel strange if we are used to glossing over things without paying too much attention to the details. ^ref-40966 --- Far from making emotions go away in therapy, you learn to change your relationship with them, to welcome them all, to pay attention to them, to see them for what they are, and to act in ways that will influence them and change the intensity of them. ^ref-9303 --- Emotions are your brain’s attempt to explain and attach meaning to what is going on in your world and your body. ^ref-60676 --- While we cannot directly trigger all emotions, we have much more influence over our emotional state than we were ever taught to believe. This does not mean that you are to blame for feeling emotional discomfort. It means that we get to learn about the many ways we can take responsibility for our own wellbeing and construct new emotional experiences. ^ref-58403 --- Emotions are real and valid, but they are not facts. They are a guess. A perspective that we try on for size. ^ref-38136 --- When we treat our current thoughts and emotions as facts, we allow them to determine our thoughts and actions of the future. Then life becomes a series of emotional reactions rather than informed choices. ^ref-25281 --- Holding curiosity allows us to look at our mistakes and learn, when they might otherwise be too painful to acknowledge. ^ref-19303 --- The idea of welcoming all emotional experience feels almost alarming at first. It is the opposite of what many of us are taught to do with feelings. ^ref-28988 --- The ability to check in on the bigger picture, even for the smallest of moments, can have a powerful impact on the way we live life. ^ref-2941 --- The sensation of an emotion is an experience that moves through you. Each emotion can offer you information, but not necessarily the whole story. ^ref-64016 --- Increasing your emotional vocabulary so that you can distinguish finely between different emotions helps you to regulate those emotions and choose the most helpful responses in social situations (Kashdan et al., 2015). ^ref-30236 --- Trying to change how you think is hard enough when you are feeling fine. Trying to change the thoughts that arrive at the height of distress feels nearly impossible. ^ref-63241 --- Those who are able to distinguish between negative feelings tend to be more flexible in how they respond to problems. ^ref-34434 --- Feeling Wheel (Willcox, 1982) ^ref-31915 --- It’s also important to spend time writing about positive experiences, even small moments that felt positive. ^ref-35502 --- Social support is a powerful tool and it does not need to come with all the answers, just a big dose of compassion. ^ref-50887 --- Endings that feel significant to us can trigger a grief reaction – even if the ending was not caused by death. ^ref-61289 --- Grief is a normal part of human experience. It is a necessary process to go through when we experience the loss of someone or something that we loved, needed, felt connected to and that held meaning in our life. ^ref-28332 --- Relationships are at the core of what it means to be human. ^ref-31580 --- Grief can feel intolerable. It makes absolute sense that our most natural human response to that might be to block it out. ^ref-64735 --- Feeling the grief does not make it disappear. But we build up our strength to know that we can be reminded and yet still return to engage with life as it is today. ^ref-13536 --- Grief comes in waves that we can’t always predict. ^ref-36877 --- When pain is vast, the actions we take to push it down and keep it under the surface can cause damage to both the individual and their relationships. If you disconnect with one emotion, you disconnect from them all. ^ref-15999 --- Over time we learn to engage with life and recognize that does not mean forgetting. The love and connection continues. ^ref-8344 --- Expressing how you feel is not always easy. Some have the urge to talk. Others clam up and can’t find the words. ^ref-59946 --- There is a time to feel and a time to block, a time for turning towards and a time for turning away to rest your mind and body. ^ref-30009 --- You find ways to remember, celebrate and feel your connection to that person, and to keep living. ^ref-60545 --- Now, this chapter is not about to tell you to just stop caring what anyone else thinks of you. In fact, we are built to care about how we are being perceived by those around us. ^ref-8411 --- We develop our sense of self and identity, not only from our own experience and how we interact with others, but also through what we imagine those other people really think of us, the ideas and perceptions they might have of us. ^ref-39183 --- But people-pleasing is a pattern of behaviour in which you consistently put all others before yourself even to the detriment of your own health and wellbeing. ^ref-64047 --- Living a life of people-pleasing is further complicated by the fact that other people don’t always voice their disapproval with criticism. ^ref-64853 --- The spotlight effect is a term originally coined by Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky (2000) to describe the tendency of humans to overestimate how much others are focused on us. ^ref-8251 --- by the same values and obey the same rules that ^ref-23592 --- As humans we also have a tendency towards egocentric thinking, which can play out in our insistence that other people live by the same values and obey the same rules that we have set for ourselves. ^ref-56446 --- Context is everything, but we don’t always have access to it. When we don’t have that context, it is much harder to see the criticism for what it is – one person’s idea that is wrapped up in their own experiences. ^ref-49873 --- But shame is not easy to ignore. So we go for the most absorbing, addictive behaviours that offer instant relief. ^ref-30822 --- Reality-checking the criticism and all the judgements that follow. Whether it comes from someone else or inside your own head, judgements and opinions are not facts. ^ref-10553 --- Time spent thinking over a helpful criticism that we can put to good use and that adds to the work we are doing in the world is time well spent. ^ref-56369 --- The key to using all criticism to your advantage is having your own back, having so much self-compassion that you are able to listen to criticism and decide which of that criticism you will take on board and use to your advantage as a learning experience, and which voices offer you nothing but dents in your self-esteem and crushed confidence. ^ref-59741 --- It is also worth pointing out that acknowledging who matters does not mean it is your responsibility to please them. It just means you are willing to listen to their feedback, even when it is not praise, because you know it is likely to be honest and in your best interests, therefore most likely to be helpful. ^ref-19077 --- When the way we are living is out of line with our values and what matters most, life stops feeling meaningful or satisfying. ^ref-42017 --- Confidence is like a home that you build for yourself. When you go somewhere new, you must build a new one. ^ref-31686 --- Confident is not the same as comfortable. One of the biggest misconceptions about becoming self-confident is that it means living fearlessly. The key to building confidence is quite the opposite. It means we are willing to let fear be present as we do the things that matter to us. ^ref-11791 --- But the only way confidence can grow is when we are willing to be without it. ^ref-20986 --- Every time you step into the stretch zone, you are doing the work of building your confidence by flexing your courage. ^ref-56787 --- We link it to the idea of wealth, winning, standing out and being acknowledged by others. So how do you know if you’re winning? You compare yourself to others. ^ref-20140 --- Associating a measure of ‘success’ to worthiness would inevitably make it difficult to truly connect with the people you are comparing yourself to. ^ref-64995 --- But some studies have shown that for people with low self-esteem, repeating affirmations and statements that they don’t believe, for example, ‘I am strong, I am lovable,’ or being asked to focus on all the reasons that statement is true, tended to make them feel worse (Wood et al., 2009). ^ref-61551 --- While affirmations may not be the best strategy for those with low self-esteem, words still matter. ^ref-64753 --- It is not only our relationship with our own failure that needs to change, but also how we respond to the failure of others. ^ref-45703 --- Those who are highly self-critical are more likely to be critical of others. ^ref-5613 --- Recognize the sensations in your body and signs in your urges and actions that indicate to you how you are feeling. If you find yourself using all of your favourite numbing activities – hours of TV, alcohol or social media. The sting of failure drives us to block. So even if you don’t initially notice the feeling, you can notice the blocking behaviour. ^ref-29265 --- The brick wall that most people hit on their way to self-acceptance is the misconception that it will cause laziness and complacency. They think that self-acceptance means believing you are OK just as you are, therefore you will have no motivation for improvement, work, achievement or change. In reality, the research shows us that those who develop self-acceptance and learn to be self-compassionate are less likely to fear failure, more likely to persevere and try again when they do fail and generally have more self-confidence (Neff et al., 2005). ^ref-31582 --- The difference is that when you strive, you do so from a place of love and contentment rather than striving from a place of fear and scarcity. ^ref-21940 --- As with most changes, the action comes first and the feeling comes later. So living a life in which you feel a sense of self-worth means making it a life practice. The work is never done. You never arrive. You do the work every day to live in line with unconditional self-acceptance. ^ref-54093 --- Those strong urges to get to safety are not a fault, but the brain working at its best to keep us safe. Crucially, my actions did not make me any safer but just helped me to feel safer. ^ref-58462 --- I did everything I could to make the fear go away as soon as possible. But all the things that give us that instant relief tend to keep us stuck in the long term. ^ref-1353 --- Fear is a part of our survival response. It is supposed to be intensely uncomfortable, and the urges to escape and then avoid the feared situation are supposed to be strong. ^ref-1966 --- But if you interpret that as fear and make your excuses to leave the room, then avoid those meetings in the future, you never get to experience talking in meetings and having it go well. ^ref-43774 --- The things that give us immediate relief from our fear tend to feed that fear in the long term. Every time we say no to something because of fear, we reconfirm our belief that it wasn’t safe or that we couldn’t handle it. Every time we cut something out of our lives because of fear, life shrinks a little. So our efforts to get rid of fear today mean that fear gets to take over our life choices in the long term. ^ref-58759 --- Your brain learns like a scientist. Each time it has an experience, positive or negative, it clocks that as evidence for its beliefs. ^ref-49516 --- Exercise is one of the best anxiety management tools because it follows the natural course of your threat response. Your body is geared up to move. Allow it to do that and your body can use up the energy and stress hormones it has produced and rebalance. ^ref-53587 --- When a worrying thought pops into your head, it’s like driving past a car accident: you can’t not look at it. Thoughts of danger demand your attention for a reason. Your brain is offering up a story for what might be happening and if there is a chance of the worst-case scenario happening, then you had better be prepared. ^ref-26694 --- A smoke alarm is made to go off when there is a fire. A necessary tool for survival. Just like the smoke alarm, anxiety can be triggered even when we are not truly at risk. But when you burn the toast and the smoke alarm sounds, you don’t remove the smoke alarm. If you understand why it is there and how it works, you can start to work with it, make adjustments, open a window. You get the idea. ^ref-2044 --- It means the power of that thought, and any other thought, is in how much we buy into it. How much we believe that thought to be a true reflection of reality. The best way to break down the power that thoughts have over our emotional state is to first get some distance from them. ^ref-49096 --- Any time that you want to get some distance and a new perspective on your emotional state or situation, write down everything you are thinking and feeling. ^ref-32184 --- There are a few thought biases that commonly occur when we are feeling anxious: ^ref-32326 --- Catastrophizing is when your mind jumps to the worst possible scenario and offers it to you as a prediction of what might happen now. ^ref-42130 --- Personalizing Personalizing is when we have some limited or ambiguous information about the world and make it about us. ^ref-29910 --- The mental filter is that tendency for us to hold on to all the information that makes us feel worse, and neglect all the information that could help us feel differently. ^ref-13148 --- Overgeneralizing is when we take one experience and apply it to all experiences. ^ref-25324 --- Labelling is similar to overgeneralizing but involves taking one event or period of time and using that to make global judgements about who you are as a person. ^ref-3685 --- It’s much harder to change an identity as an anxious person than it is to simply reduce anxiety. ^ref-4867 --- If a thought is causing you distress, it makes sense to work out whether it is fake news or worth feeling so anxious about. ^ref-30511 --- Our attention is like a spotlight. We have control of that spotlight, but we cannot control the actors who come on stage. ^ref-36480 --- Where you direct the spotlight of your attention helps to construct your experience. So learning to take control of that spotlight is truly an investment in your future emotional experience of the world. ^ref-39125 --- Remember, compassion is not always the easy thing. It is not saying there is nothing to be scared of. It is the coach in your ear with a calm and firm voice that is encouraging you, supporting you, reminding you that you can and will move through this moment. ^ref-2099 --- Reframing does not mean that you deny the inherent risks in a given situation. ^ref-25851 --- Reframing is when you allow yourself to consider reinterpreting the situation in a way that is going to help you move through it. ^ref-40273 --- If your life is at risk, that is when those thoughts are most valuable to us. But life becomes more rich and full when we make our decisions based on our values and what matters most. ^ref-57971 --- In this sense, our very human anxiety around death is not just a discomfort to be eliminated. Confronting our awareness of death can also become a profound tool for finding new meaning and purpose in how we live. ^ref-16886 --- What we are looking for is the need for deep acceptance of the certainty of death as a part of life and the uncertainty of how it will come about. ^ref-12911 --- Ultimately, if we want to live fully without day-to-day life being disrupted by our fear of death, finding our own way towards acceptance about death as a part of life is something we must do. ^ref-43762 --- Neutral acceptance – This is when death is perceived as neither desirable nor a means of escape from suffering, but as a natural part of life that we have no control over. ^ref-63410 --- Stress and anxiety are both associated with states of alertness. But for the purposes of this book, anxiety is associated with the feeling of fear and the excessive worry thoughts that come along with that experience. In contrast, the stress that you feel in the line at the post office would have a different meaning to that of anxiety. ^ref-58698 --- We feel stress when our brain is preparing us to do something. ^ref-54500 --- But when you perceive a stressful situation that is not such an immediate threat, you may experience more of a challenge response which allows you to rise to the challenge in much the same way, but the sensations feel less like intense fear and more like agitation to move. ^ref-6784 --- Too little stress and life is boring. Just enough and life is engaging, fun and challenging. Too much and all of those benefits can be lost (Sapolsky, 2017). ^ref-52063 --- We humans have a love-hate relationship with stress. ^ref-19077 --- We are led to believe by the popular view that stress is an outdated survival mechanism that is no longer necessary. ^ref-260 --- Learning how to turn the dial down on that stress when we don’t need it and turn it up when we do need it is the foundation of healthy stress management. ^ref-37470 --- We cannot untangle stress from a meaningful life. Whatever your unique personal values, anything that you strive towards and work for is going to require your stress response to get you there. ^ref-11844 --- The stress response works at its best when it is short term and limited. When our circumstances cause continued stress that we cannot change, or we don’t know how to bring that stress back down, our body is not replenished for its effort. ^ref-47734 --- Burnout is a term used to describe the response to excessive and prolonged stress at work, although paid employment is not the only environment in which we can experience burnout. Anyone in a caring role, parenting role or volunteering role may also experience burnout. ^ref-3208 --- Burnout happens when that short-term stress response that we have is repeatedly triggered over a prolonged period, without enough chance to rest and restore in between. ^ref-7738 --- There is often a chronic mismatch between the individual and one of the following: 1. Control – Living in a situation in which you do not have the resources needed to meet the demands you are faced with. 2. Reward – This might be financial in an employment scenario. But equally, it can be a sense of social recognition or acknowledgement of value, either in a work environment or any other. 3. Community – A lack of positive human interaction and the sense that one has social support or a sense of belonging. 4. Fairness – When there is perceived inequality in any of the other factors in this list. When some people have their needs met more than others or demands fall on some more than others. 5. Values – When the demands you face are in direct conflict with your personal values. ^ref-46158 --- Connecting with others helps us recover from stress. ^ref-53484 --- We are led to believe that happiness is somewhere beyond becoming exceptional. ^ref-54075 --- Whereas ^ref-57841 --- Those who build their life on self-focused goals are more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and loneliness. Whereas those who structure their goals on something bigger than the self tend to feel more hopeful, grateful, inspired, excited and experience better wellbeing and life satisfaction (Crocker et al., 2009). ^ref-64501 --- Meditation is not a cure-all. Just like exercise, it is another potentially powerful tool in the box. ^ref-38963 --- Being mindful is about the practice of paying attention to the present moment and observing sensations as they come and go, without getting caught up in those sensations or struggling against them. ^ref-8906 --- Awe is the feeling of being faced with something vast and beyond our current understanding of things. ^ref-35201 --- but we see awe used by people to detach from the messy details of everyday life and to widen the focus from the small stuff to the wider world and something that feels vastly bigger. ^ref-46231 --- So, when dealing with stress, why not explore what triggers a sense of awe for you, whether it is time with animals or nature, watching extraordinary performances or looking up at the stars. ^ref-5430 --- When we focus our efforts purely on reducing stress in the build-up to a big event, whatever it may be, we are reinforcing the misconception that stress is a problem to be solved. ^ref-45178 --- Alred (2016) suggests starting with a ‘how to’ statement, then vividly describing what happens when the process is right, and thirdly conjuring up the emotional state that matches your intention. ^ref-47673 --- Huberman (2021) describes how this is a powerful technique for getting more comfortable with higher levels of activation. We don’t want the stress response to stop because we often need it in high-pressure situations. We just want our mind to be more OK with it, raising our stress threshold. ^ref-5588 --- When we believe that mistakes and setbacks are linked to who we are as a person and our self-worth, then even the smallest of failures will trigger shame and the urge to give up, withdraw, hide away and block out the excruciating feelings. ^ref-11267 --- But when we respond to failure without these global attacks on our personality and instead focus on the specifics of the moment, holding our awareness that imperfection is an intrinsic part of our common humanity, the emotional result is different. ^ref-25052 --- It focuses on the specific behaviour rather than attacking us as a person. ^ref-54882 --- We think we are the only ones and so we hide how we feel. But as it turns out, among the 7 billion people on this earth, these sorts of core beliefs are part of a list of just fifteen or twenty common negative core beliefs that are seen across the world. Essentially this means that we are the opposite of alone. ^ref-2956 --- When we are going out into the world and taking risks, making ourselves vulnerable to shame, we need the skills to manage that shame and move through it. We all need a safe place to return to that allows us to learn from failure without our worthiness as a human being coming into question. That place has to be our own mind. ^ref-51024 --- But the idea of happiness has been hijacked over the years by an elusive fairytale of constant pleasure and satisfaction with life. ^ref-44934 --- But humans are not built to be in a constant happy state. We are built to respond to the challenges of survival. Emotions are a reflection of our physical state, our actions, beliefs and what is going on around us. All of those things are constantly changing. Therefore, a normal state is one that constantly changes too. ^ref-16712 --- Things that bring us the most happiness in our lives bring much more than happy feelings. ^ref-46098 --- It’s not so much that they are struggling to achieve their goals. They are not sure which goals to set in the first place, and whether any of them feel worth it. ^ref-11746 --- Values are not the same as goals. A goal is a concrete, finite thing that you can work towards. Once you achieve it, that is the end point. Then you have to look for the next goal. ^ref-6403 --- Values are not a set of actions that can be completed. Values are a set of ideas about how you want to live your life, the kind of person you want to be and the principles you want to stand for. ^ref-50094 --- Values are the things you do, the attitude you do them with and why you choose to do them. They are not who you are and who you are not. They are not something you have or become or achieve or complete. ^ref-46795 --- When we don’t have clarity on our values, we can set goals based on what we think we should be doing, others’ expectations, or a guess that once we achieve that goal, we will finally be enough, we can finally relax and be happy with who we are. ^ref-6828 --- Rather than hoping things are better in the future, what if life could be meaningful and purposeful now, by living in line with what matters most to you? ^ref-2876 --- But simply having goals is not going to ensure that your life changes and stays changed. What does that is the everyday details of your repeated behaviours that keep you moving forward in that direction. ^ref-63590 --- Setting a goal can help to give you that initial push in the right direction. But it is important to remember that the end point of the goal, its completion, is actually a limitation. ^ref-58544 --- Change is hard, so having a solid anchor in your clarity about why, and a permanent sense of identity, ‘because this is who I am now’, helps you to persist when that change inevitably meets resistance from your own mind or the people around you. ^ref-25016 --- When it comes to living a happy life, relationships trump money, fame, social class, genes and all the things we are told to strive for first and foremost. ^ref-11358 --- How to get better at relationships When we look after ourselves we are looking after our relationships, and when we work on our relationships we are looking after ourselves. ^ref-35545 --- Anxious attachments can show up in people-pleasing behaviours; struggles in expressing personal needs or avoidance of confrontation and conflict, a focus on meeting the needs of the partner to the detriment of one’s own personal needs. ^ref-13725 --- This does not mean parenting was perfect, but it was reliable enough to generate that secure base and was repaired when mistakes were made so that trust continued. ^ref-59974 --- Creating anything that is long-lasting is not about one big grand gesture that will make everything OK. It is about making those seemingly small everyday choices conscious and intentional. ^ref-9059 --- It is much easier to ride the waves of life’s ups and downs if we are well-practised at pulling together and have built up deep respect and gratitude for each other. ^ref-8108 --- are all inherently woven with emotion. When humans interact, we make each other feel things. ^ref-13552 --- Yet we are surrounded by things that tempt us with escape from the vulnerable moments. ^ref-15167 --- Healthy relationships are not free of conflict. They require work on carefully repairing ruptures in the connection. ^ref-13054 --- Focusing use of language on concrete behaviours rather than global attacks on personality helps to keep everyone cool. ^ref-48264 --- Reconnection also demands the ingredients that created the connection in the first place: acceptance, compassion, love and gratitude for each other. ^ref-23828 --- Finding where our personal values fit together and overlap with our partner’s and having respect for where they differ is key for a relationship that can withstand life’s challenges. ^ref-29556 --- People who once felt alone in their struggles are beginning to understand that fluctuations in mental health, just like physical health, are a normal part of being human. ^ref-65495 --- Human connection and education can help us to make big changes in our mental health. ^ref-27575 ---