change

Often, our first tactic for making change is information. To improve diets, we tell kids about the links between donuts, soda, obesity, and diabetes. To improve efficiency, we inform staff about new procedures or values. These educational interventions draw upon the power of authoritative information to change minds and behavior. While this tactic

this is the point where people self-destruct. At the first taste of success, they stop working on themselves. But reality hasn’t changed. They need the tools even more than before.”

To summarize, the story-editing approach tries to change people’s personal interpretations of themselves and the social world in ways that make them happier and lead to more desirable behaviors. It is a family of approaches developed by social psychologists that includes writing exercises, such as the one developed by James Pennebaker; the

Have you ever noticed that there is no running away from anything? That, sooner or later, the things that you don’t want to deal with and try to escape from, or paper over and pretend aren’t there, catch up with you— especially if they have to do with old patterns and fears? The romantic notion is that if it’s no good over here, you have only to go

ADHD can make the future seem hopelessly distant. A goal that requires a significant investment of time, incorporates waiting periods, or has to be done in a sequence of steps can prove so elusive that you feel overwhelmed. When that happens, many adults with ADHD yield to the temptation to find an escape route.

It’s simply that it’s scary to take even one step forward; also, that you don’t want to make realistic efforts. You don’t want to change so much that you’d be willing to sacrifice the pleasures you enjoy now—for instance, the time you spend playing and engaged in hobbies. In other words, you’re not equipped with the courage to change your

At the same time, do not expect the mind to change simply because you are identifying less with it. You are not trying to change your mind! That's not possible. You can, however, change your relationship to the thinking mind, and this is great news. Your life will change and the mind will keep running its inflexible, predictable computer program.

A typical culprit, for example, was technology restriction rules that were either too vague or too strict. Another mistake was not planning what to replace these technologies with during the declutter period—leading to anxiety and boredom. Those who treated this experiment purely as a detox, where the goal was to simply take a break from their

The fundamental change we need is a shift from a feeling- centered approach to decisions to a purpose- centered approach. The question isn’t “What do I feel like doing?” but, rather, “what needs to be done?” All the time management systems in the world won’t really help us very much until we’ve developed the capacity to make decisions based on