A Distracted Life

"Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form but hard to live with." 

If you immediately check your email or social media accounts when you wake up in the morning, you’re starting your day off in reactive mode instead of proactive. It means spending the best part of the day on other people's priorities.

Most therapists are equipped with multiple approaches and can tailor them based on one's specific needs. The two common types of therapy are:

• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy(CBT): Identifies and monitors and corrects unhealthy behavioral patterns. It is effective in treating general anxiety.
• Psychodynamic Therapy: Goes deep into one's past, family, and relationships. It is considered effective in treating certain disorders and depression.

• In looking for the right therapist, it is best to locate one through a referral, if your friends are comfortable providing one.
• You can also search the internet, looking for licensed practitioners in your area. 
• Take a look at your insurance plans database and see if you find a good one that can also be covered by insurance.
• A good therapist may not have a big online footprint. Shortlist about five therapists and get in touch with them personally.

If we have to do something even if we don't want to do it, it is not freedom, whatever the reason for doing it may be.

Doing something should be your conscious decision and choice.

You need to make certain sacrifices and get out of your comfort zone to experience real freedom.

We can be imprisoned by certainty, by the lies we tell ourselves, even stuck with incompatible people. We can be caged with the fear of losing money, or expectations, or even debt. We can be caged by our need to help people or to please people, or hope that they like our ideas. We can be imprisoned by our idea of happiness the endless entertainment options we have. as well.

The most effective way to turn your goal into a habit is to plan ahead. 

You can't hope that your goals will happen to fit into your current schedule, or that by nature you will prioritize it. You have to plan your schedule and block out time. 

An accountability buddy can work really well when you're doing everything else right.

The key is finding someone reliable and truly committed. If you can't find someone to be an accountability buddy, ask your family for support.

• Counterfactual thinking makes us look at the events from multiple angles, making us mentally experience it from a different spectrum.
• Thinking with a counterfactual bend of mind boosts creativity in solving future challenges.
• It helps the thinker store important information that could impact the analysis and solutions of future events.
• A non-linear, non-mainstream way of thinking avoids the usual pitfalls of anger, anxiety, fear and grief when things go wrong. This sort of action-oriented approach comes with a positive bend of mind and a desire to do something, instead of getting stuck in an endless loop of worry and anxiety.

1. Intense concentration on the task at hand.
2. A merging of action and awareness - “being and doing become one”.
3. A loss of reflective self-consciousness.
4. A sense of personal control over the situation.
5. A distortion of the perception of time.
6. Autotelic experience: the activity itself is intrinsically rewarding, rather than the expected outcome.

• It’s not easy. Flow is not just a state where we love the work so much it just pours out. Flow is a state where hard work meets joy and meaning. 
• It’s not for beginners. The act of learning how to do something won’t always allow us to get into the flow. Getting into the zone in a specific discipline is something that needs to be learned and practiced.