Mindful Choices

Mindful Choices catches the moments you reacted on autopilot and plans a different response for next time. Pick a situation that recurs. The email that makes your jaw tighten, the comment from a particular person, the point in the evening when you pick up your phone without deciding to. Write what actually happened, then what a deliberate response would have looked like, then what you will do differently when it comes round again. The approach draws on Jon Kabat-Zinn's work. He founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979 and built Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, taking Buddhist attention practices and stripping out the religion so they could be tested in a hospital. They have been, extensively, with the strongest evidence in stress, anxiety, and relapse prevention in depression. The core idea is the gap between something happening and you responding. On autopilot, there isn't one. Attention creates one, and that is where a choice becomes possible. You won't catch it in the moment at first. Nobody does. You catch it an hour later, then ten minutes later, then as it happens. That is the progression, and it takes weeks. One situation at a time. Write it up the same day, while you still remember what set it off.