Developing Helpful Thoughts
Helpful Thoughts
The TEACH program is a method, a map to help you develop more control in five critical areas that will strengthen mental and physical Health. The model includes managing Thoughts and Emotions, controlling Attention, creating meaningful Connections, and taking care of your Health. Thoughts, however, set change in motion and set the stage for bringing the other areas into awareness. When these areas come into balance, they help you live with joy, contentment, meaning, and purpose. They also help you develop more control over your responses to stressful situations, boost your immune system, improve physical health, and find more happiness.
Healthy thought patterns are like exercise for the brain, strengthening mental health, just as we exercise our bodies to build physical strength. With practice, healthy mindsets and intentions can become a way of life and change how you think, feel, and behave.
Healthy attitudes improve mood, but they also improve how our brain functions. Positive, comforting, reassuring thoughts help to activate the relaxed side of our nervous system in contrast to less helpful thought practices, which are associated with stress and hyperarousal. Taking care of yourself means finding natural ways to calm the stress centers and activate more pleasure, reward, and motivation pathways. Well-being is about feeling safe, content, satisfied, and at peace with your life. Coming home to a feeling of safety can be difficult after challenging life experiences. Certain “attitudes” can be developed into habits that, with practice, create greater well-being and help you come home to a feeling of safety.
In this section, we will look at four healthy thought patterns, including:
2. Practicing Healthy Thoughts
Attitudes of Mindfulness
**Thich Nhat Hanh**: "Mindfulness is the energy that helps us recognize the conditions of happiness that are already present in our lives."
**Eckhart Tolle**: "Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life."
**Jack Kornfield**: "The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness."
**Jon Kabat-Zinn**: "Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing."
**Marianne Williamson**: "Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are."
**Sharon Salzberg**: "Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is to remember to be mindful."
Dr. Kabat-Zinn is credited with starting the “Mindfulness Movement” in America. He developed an eight-week program called MBSR, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which has been shown to reduce stress and provide many health benefits. The Palouse Mindfulness website (see link below) offers a free online version of this course. The attitudes of mindfulness are summarized below.
Mindfulness is about “Attitudes”, but it is also about being “Present in the Moment”.
The attitudes of mindfulness stand in opposition to distorted thought patterns. They oppose the mindset of unhealthy thought practices such as holding on, non-acceptance, judging, labeling, non-trusting, or always needing more. Unhelpful attitudes filter what we see and prevent us from noticing the beauty around us and what is true or accurate. Cultivating and practicing helpful attitudes leads to healthy values and belief systems.
Specific “attitudes” are at the core of mindful living. The following attitudes are adapted from Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
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Mindfulness is compassionate, openhearted, choice-less awareness. It is cultivated by witnessing your own experience without judgment as the present moment unfolds. Judging separates us from direct experience of the unfolding of our lives in each moment. In practicing mindfulness, it’s essential to recognize the judging quality of the mind and identify judgmental thinking as it arises. It is equally important not to judge the judging! Notice when it is present. Remember – the goal is to notice, not to rid yourself of judging thoughts. That is an unrealistic goal. By seeing that judgment is present, we can learn new ways to relate to it, choosing a response rather than reacting unconsciously.
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Patience is the ability to bear difficulty with calm and self-control. It requires a connection with your core, faith, and courage. It also needs kindness and compassion for yourself as you bear the upset of a situation. Impatience often arises when the ego, the self-centered part of the self, rails against reality, wanting things to be different than they are. In contrast, the wise self recognizes the truth that things have a life cycle of their own, separate from your wants. As you learn to accept this truth, your patience grows. To build patience, you must learn to recognize impatience and the urge to rush through one moment to get to the next.
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When you begin to observe the present moment, the thinking mind tends to believe it knows all about what is happening or tries to “control” by desperately seeking more information. The activity of thinking forms a filter or barrier between you and the direct experience of life – it is in the unfolding of life moment by moment that holds the full richness of life. To practice a beginner’s mind means to be open to the experience of each moment as if meeting it for the first time. Remember and imagine your childhood experience – the first smell of a flower, the first drop of rain, the first taste of an orange. In truth, each moment in life is unique. You may have experienced the sunset a thousand times, but this particular sunset is different from the rest and will never be again. In practicing mindfulness, you are asked to cultivate this quality of direct experience, receiving whatever arises as a unique and precious experience. Practicing a beginner’s mind cultivates our ability to experience life this way.
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An essential part of meditating is learning to trust yourself and your feelings. You learn to trust that you can see clearly what is happening to you. Practicing mindfulness deepens your awareness of, sensitivity to, and accuracy in discerning what is here now, what is happening in your own body, and what is happening around you. You learn to trust your knowledge and authority and don’t need someone else to tell you what you feel and need. In this process, you discover what it means to be your person and live authentically.
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Most human activity is spent “doing” and trying to change things. This “habit” frequently shows up in meditation. The ego mind wants more of what it likes and wants to get rid of what it doesn’t like, and when it decides that you aren’t the way you “should” be, it even pressures you to change yourself! This pressure is felt as striving or straining to be different, go somewhere else, or do something else.
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Acceptance begins with the willingness to see things exactly as they are rather than how you think they should be. You must see things as they are and yourself as you are in this moment if you wish to change, heal, or transform yourself or your life. Often, to accept what comes into awareness, you must pass through periods of intense feelings such as anger, fear, or grief. These feelings themselves require acceptance. Acceptance does not mean you must like everything or take a passive attitude. It does not mean you have to be satisfied with things as they are or that you have to stop trying to change things for the better. Instead, acceptance means a willingness to see things as they are, sincerely, truthfully, and completely. This attitude sets the stage for acting in the moment, most potently and healthily, no matter what is happening. You are more likely to know what to do when you have a clear picture of what is happening than when your vision is clouded by your mind’s self-serving judgments, desires, fears, and prejudices.
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Letting go, or attachment is another critical attitude of mindfulness. We often practice the opposite attitude, clinging to how we want things without knowing it. Usually, what you cling to most strongly are ideas and views about yourself, others, and situations. These ideas that we cling to often shape our moment-to-moment experience in profound ways. When we start paying attention to our knowledge through meditation, we can discover which thoughts, feelings, and sensations we are trying to hold onto. We will also notice other things we desperately want to get rid of. Our likes and dislikes and our judgments drive clinging. It is essential to let your experience be what it is, moment by moment. This letting be is a way of letting go. By not interfering and letting things be, you have a better chance to let go.
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Robert Emmons is well known for his work in this area. His studies and others demonstrate expressing gratitude more often and with more emotion or intensity brings about meaningful and lasting changes in happiness and well-being.
The more you practice counting your blessings, the more aware you become of them, and the more you notice the good things you experience.
Gratitude encourages optimism, helps us focus on the present moment, focuses attention on the good or bright side of life, and protects us from taking goodness and wonder for granted.
Gratitude balances against negativity by savoring or increasing positive life experiences.
Gratitude helps us cope with stress through improved mood.
Gratitude builds social relationships.
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Thinking about others and noticing when you can help someone has been shown to boost happiness. Being generous and willing to share or help someone will make you and the other person happy. Generosity shows that you care about someone other than yourself. It is a way of reaching out, letting others know they are important, and helping you form more positive connections that strengthen meaning and purpose in life.
Mindfulness is about noticing small things, like how the shower feels in the morning. You can start your day by getting caught up in the day's thoughts, or you can tune into how the water feels against your skin. If you are mindfully tuned in, you might notice how it feels to be clean, dry off, comb your hair, put on fresh, clean clothes, enjoy a fresh pair of socks, brush your teeth, and enjoy the freshness. You can top this off by noticing how much you enjoy a fresh cup of coffee or your cereal, or you might be thankful for a new day, for your family, your pets, that you are not in pain today or not having to struggle as much as you start your day, or that you are alive and have a day full of opportunities. This can be contrasted by not noticing and taking all of these things for granted, waking up and spending the first hour of your day thinking about everything you need to accomplish, or trying to get ahead on all the thoughts you think are important. It’s up to you to decide how to start your day.
To practice mindfulness, it is essential to stay with the present moment even as it is constantly changing and to be aware that perceptions about what is happening now can be trusted more than previous thoughts or memories about the past or future. The present moment is generally pleasant if you can be present without narrating or judging the present or re-living past events, re-experiencing their pain, or pre-living future events and pre-feeling their impact. Being present means appreciating time, the essence of our life, and not wasting time on thoughts or emotions like bitterness, anger, and resentfulness. No one knows how much time they will have, so being mindful means making the best daily use of time. We suffer when we overthink past adverse events, develop a negative mindset, or spend too much time thinking about or anticipating future problems.
Mindfulness involves simply paying attention, without judgment, to whatever is happening. It is different from the more typical activity of doing. In the words of Dr. Kabat-Zinn, it is about “non-doing” and learning to “be” instead of always doing. Mindfulness involves truly relaxing into your experience, allowing whatever is happening to unfold, and bringing clear, compassionate awareness to it as it occurs. To become more mindful is to let go of striving and focus carefully on seeing and accepting things as they are, moment to moment.
This way of being in the world helps develop and reinforce a “consciousness of attention.” By paying attention to the present moment, you increase your awareness of attention, when and how you are being attentive, and the content of your attention. You become more aware of your mindsets, attitudes, and belief systems. This naturally carries over into your Connectedness with other beings, your Health, and your Connections to the earth and higher powers.
How we look at and experience the little things in life does not change the things; it changes the nature of the person doing the looking. This way of looking changes the experience so that “little” things become “better” things to the person looking at life from a mindful perspective. We craft how we experience our world with our thoughts and attitudes.
2. Practicing Healthy Thoughts
What You Practice Grows Stronger. If you practice joy, you become more joyful; if you practice positivity, you become more positive; if you practice complaining and negativity, you become more negative; practice gratitude, and you become more grateful. This is a foundational principle of how the brain works. This is why noticing, awareness, and being conscious of thoughts are so important. We see so that we can remind or TEACH ourselves to practice the skills that will help us grow.
Practicing Gratitude, Empathy, Generosity, Positivity, Being Less Judgmental, More Forgiving, More Growth-Oriented, Non-Striving, Not Resting, Accepting, and Letting Go will strengthen networks in the brain associated with these feelings. Practice makes these attitudes grow stronger and occur more naturally. Remembering and practicing these skills can be challenging. This is where the TEACH model becomes helpful. The strategies section of each area has a list of specific practices that you can gradually build into your routine. The handbook in our store provides forms and templates to help you establish a plan, select skills to develop, identify effective strategies (Daily Practices), and record your progress.
Helpful patterns of thought are like exercises for the brain that develop mental strength in the same way we exercise our bodies to build physical strength. Healthy mindsets and intentions can become a way of life, changing how you think, feel, and behave. Daily Practices help you develop and strengthen brain states that are peaceful and open to the experience of the present moment, the way things can be if we are at peace with ourselves and others. As these brain states are strengthened through practice over time, they create lasting changes in your brain. You become more resilient, respond in healthier ways to stress, and find more enjoyment regardless of your situation in life.
These attitudes improve mood and brain function. These more positive, comforting, reassuring practices activate the relaxed side of our nervous system. Taking care of yourself involves finding natural ways to calm the brain's stress center and activate pathways that promote pleasure, reward, and motivation. These attitudes can be developed into habits that, with practice, create greater well-being and a less stressed brain.
What you seek, you will find. If you focus on problems, you will discover problems. If you focus on solutions, you will find solutions. You will find what you are looking for!
3. Developing a Growth Mindset
A mindset is a belief system or a viewpoint that we adopt.
Once we adopt a mindset, we no longer question or examine the belief. Many beliefs are formed during childhood and are based on unhealthy experiences. These beliefs do not always work to our advantage—take a fixed mindset vs. a growth mindset, for example.
Growth Mindset Video
Dr. Carol Dweck has researched how mindsets increase willingness to take risks or try new things. She describes a fixed mindset as “attaching one’s sense of worth to fixed accomplishments such as academic scores, trophies, or accomplishments.”
With a fixed mindset, people believe their abilities and intelligence are innate traits and, therefore, cannot change. They think that talent alone leads to success and that effort is not required.
Alternatively, people with a growth mindset believe that abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication and hard work. The growth mindset thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of being less talented or intelligent but as a springboard for growth and stretching existing abilities. These two mindsets will manifest from a very early age.
A great deal of our behavior, relationship with success and failure, and ultimately, our capacity for happiness seems to grow out of these mindsets. They are vastly different and have profound implications for people's lives.
Kids develop a growth or a fixed mindset early in life based on their education. For example, when your child achieves an accomplishment, is it better to stress that they did well because they are clever, naturally talented, or worked hard?
Dr. Dweck conducted studies to help answer this question. She found that students who said they did well on a test because they worked hard were likelier to volunteer to take a more challenging test. In contrast, students who were told they did well because they were smart were much less willing to chance to lose their “smart” status by taking a more difficult test.
One takeaway from this research is that praise is essential, but praise should not focus on personality attributes or abilities as much as on efforts, strategies, persistence, and accomplishments.
It does not hurt to tell a child they are smart, but overly stressing how smart, talented, or athletic they are sets the child up to expect high levels of success. When they fail—as they inevitably will—they don't feel competent, naturally talented, or gifted. They must then adopt coping strategies like blaming others or finding excuses.
Helping kids learn the value of hard work, developing strategies or finding ways to work around problems, and learning to accept failure as a part of life helps prepare kids for the struggles they will have.
Kids develop attitudes about how good they are at sports, how well they can do math, and whether they are artistic or creative based on what we say and how we teach. Most of these skills require a lot of practice and effort to perform well. A growth-oriented mindset will help the child (and adults) work harder and achieve higher levels of mastery, more confidence, and greater self-worth.
The fixed mindset sets up an assumption that you will do well or not for the category you fit in, and these stereotypes and expectations can impact the outcome. You can either do poorly on a test because the stereotype says you will do poorly, or you can do poorly on a test because the stereotype suggests you are smart and should do excellent. Still, that assumption puts pressure on you either way and will impact your performance.
These messages are profound but subtle, and they say to a person: I will judge and punish you, or I will help you think and learn. Having high standards is essential, but it's also important to teach children the skills they need to reach them.
Being Growth Oriented Means Never Giving Up
Being Growth-Oriented Is Being Process-Oriented
Working hard to create a particular outcome or to gain some reward is natural; we’re all motivated by rewards or accomplishments, and we all want to achieve the advantages in life that come from hard work. This seems normal, and frequently, we may feel that the outcome justifies and supports the hard work. But what happens when we fail?
If too much emphasis is placed on achieving a particular outcome, we miss out on enjoying the process of achieving our goals.
People with a fixed mindset are more accomplishment-oriented, black and white, win or lose, talented or not, whereas growth-oriented people focus more on the process of achieving the goal. Both mindsets might result in accomplishments, but how you think you got there impacts your motivation in the future.
If we are more growth-oriented—process-oriented—we can enjoy every step along the way and savor the small wins that may or may not lead to attaining every goal. So, even if you don’t always get the desired outcome, you will be much more likely to enjoy the journey and keep trying.
And… if the studies on happiness are correct, you will be more likely to achieve your goals because happier people are generally more successful!
Practical strategies for developing a growth mindset:
1. Embrace Challenges
View obstacles as opportunities to learn.
Take on tasks that push you out of your comfort zone.
2. Learn from Criticism
Seek constructive feedback from others.
Reflect on criticism to identify areas for improvement.
3. Celebrate Effort, Not Just Results
Acknowledge the hard work you put into tasks, regardless of the outcome.
Reward yourself for persistence and dedication.
4. Cultivate Curiosity
Ask questions and seek to understand new concepts deeply.
Engage in lifelong learning through books, courses, or workshops.
5. Practice Self-Reflection
Regularly assess your thoughts and beliefs about your abilities.
Identify fixed mindset thoughts and reframe them into growth-oriented perspectives.
6. Surround Yourself with Growth-Minded Individuals
Connect with people who inspire and motivate you to grow.
Share experiences and learn from each other’s journeys.
7. Set Learning Goals
Focus on goals that emphasize skill development rather than purely performance.
Break larger goals into smaller, achievable steps.
8. Persevere Through Setbacks
View failure as a stepping stone to success.
Analyze what went wrong and adjust your approach accordingly.
9. Use Positive Language
Replace negative self-talk with affirmations that encourage growth.
Remind yourself that abilities can be developed through effort.
10. Visualize Success
Imagine achieving your goals and the process it takes.
Use visualization to enhance motivation and commitment.
By implementing these strategies, you can gradually shift your mindset from a fixed perspective to one that embraces growth and resilience.
4. Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is covered in several sections on this site, but we feel it's essential to remember it at the end of the Helpful Thoughts section. In the words of Dr. Kristen Neff, “There is almost no one we treat as badly as ourselves,” and our thoughts play a significant role in that. We seem to think that self-criticism will motivate us, but research suggests that self-criticism discourages and diminishes our motivation.
Practicing self-compassion means being warm and supportive towards ourselves and actively soothing ourselves. This helps, especially when we fall short of our goals or intentions. It calms anxiety and depression and gives us greater peace of mind—and, importantly, it makes us feel more motivated to make the improvements we need. Dr. Neff makes a compelling argument that self-compassion is more important than self-esteem.
According to Dr. Neff, self-compassion has three main parts:
Being Kind to Ourselves: Say kind words to yourself, like you would a friend, or do something nice for yourself. It may feel awkward, but it’s great to be kind to yourself, and it’s good to do nice things for yourself occasionally.
Accepting our Common Humanity: This is the understanding that when you are having difficulties or going through something hard, YOU ARE NOT ALONE! Every human is flawed and imperfect. Accepting our common humanity helps us feel more connected to others because we realize we are all connected and alike in our imperfect nature.
Mindfulness is being present at the moment, intentionally and without judgment. It is developing the ability to notice how things are without excessive emotional reactivity. Mindfulness allows us to acknowledge or ‘note’ thoughts or feelings and know that these feelings, judgments, and self-criticisms will pass.
Dr. Neff has studied the differences between self-compassion and self-esteem or self-confidence. She has pointed out that to enhance self-esteem, we tend to compare or judge ourselves and others. We like to build ourselves up by thinking we are more intelligent, better, more talented, or more capable in some way than others. Self-compassion has many advantages over self-esteem. When we practice self-compassion, we don’t have to feel better than anyone else to feel good about ourselves. We can feel compassion for ourselves because every human deserves compassion and understanding. When we develop self-compassion, we can love ourselves and not react defensively when we make a mistake, are challenged, or aren’t feeling love from others. Self-compassion is about remembering: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT TO BE WORTHY. You’re allowed to be imperfect and to love yourself anyway. Some of the benefits of practicing self-compassion are:
Benefits of Self-Compassion:
• More willing to be vulnerable and to own up to mistakes
• More straightforward, accept criticism and work on weaknesses
• Better able to empathize with others
• Be more caring and supportive of partners
Self-compassion doesn't pressure us to be superhuman. It allows us to better respond to feedback and criticism. We’re also much more likely to take a chance and risk being wrong if we believe that mistakes are part of being human.
Video The Art Of Self Compassion
Material Taken From
Dr. Kristen Neff, Self Compassion
Dr. Carol Dweck, Growth Mindset
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living;Whever you Go; There you Are