Thoughtful Thursday

Our society has a way of teaching us that we’re never good enough, or smart enough, or successful enough, or –whatever enough to be accepted. 

Part of our job is to learn how to accept and love ourselves, not because we believe we’re perfect, because none of us are, but because we recognize that we have good qualities and the potential to do good things for people.

 One way to start is by making a list of your own good qualities and then write some evidence from your life, that supports the fact that you exhibit these good qualities. If you are unable to list anything take that as a sign that you need a partner to do it and get a close friend or a cognitive therapist to help you.

If you’re working with a friend, you can make a similar list for them. If you feel uncertain at all about the qualities on your own list, then you can try visualizing yourself in front of one or more persons (the more, the better) telling them what’s on your list and why. You can try to imagine your voice as you say each word to them in a very convincing tone and repeat your list and the evidence for it until all doubts have been erased.

Tranquil Tuesday

When you’re under a lot of stress, it’s easy to lose perspective and think that “Nothing is worse than what’s happening to me,” but I found a simple experiment helped me regain my perspective:

I asked myself which situation could I handle for a longer time period, bearing my stressful problem or holding my breath. I quickly found the lack of oxygen infinitely more difficult to handle. I couldn’t hold my breath for more than a minute, but I had been bearing with my stressful problems for days. This little experiment, as silly as it sounds, caused a shift in my thinking that made it easier to with my personal life stressors.

Motivational Monday

Feelings of gratitude have been found to increase feelings of happiness in scientific studies (Emmons and McCullough 2003).

Soulful Sunday

Know it or not, the world communes with us. To commune is to share and in every drop of water we drink, breath we take, or morsel of food we eat, the world communes with us. The need for communion; to be in contact with nature and to express and share thoughts and feelings with empathic people, can supply a kind of energy and inspiration that sustains you in the new week. 

Nature is as close as the nearest tree or bird or blade of grass, or the picture in your mind of peaceful nature in a park, field, or forest. If supportive friends or family are not available, empathic people are as close as the local crisis line, community center, ethical society, or religious center.

Satisfying Saturday

Ask yourself, “What can I do today that I can look back on years from now and feel real satisfaction that I helped someone else?  You may need to write or type a short list of ideas. If one that looks manageable in the time you have today, why not go ahead? 

If all your ideas look impossible, instead of making a NEGATIVE PREDICTION, try listing the individual things that need to be done to make your idea for helping someone else become a reality. Break them into smaller and smaller actions until they only take 5 or 10 minutes  each.  Now, do the first one! Tomorrow you can do the second one, and so on each day.  This is how the continuous dripping of a substance as insubstantial as water will wear down the hardest rock. As the great Bruce Lee said “Be like water my friend,” and achieve real satisfaction.

Friendly Friday

It’s Friday, you’ve made it through the week! Do you feel successful? 

Well, when you examine the facts you’ll see that you deserve to feel that way. Just remember that millions and millions of micro-cellular events had to occur successfully in order for you to be born! The truth is, you were already successful when you were born! So reassure yourself over and over. Use the power of your mind and remember - Repetition works….. Repetition works… Repetition works….Repetition works…..  Repetition works…..Repetition works……

Thoughtful Thursday

Does your mind know where you are? Behind on a deadline? Beside yourself? Over a barrel?  Unemployed? Underemployed? 

Is your mind asking questions like “What am I learning to make my life easier (or at least more bearable)? Is it coming up with answers or at least making a date with you for later that day to look for answers on the web, in libraries, and from people with more experience? 

Answers are out there. From Hi Tech: A wristwatch (google ‘personal management wristwatches’) that will download your schedule from your personal computer, display it on your watch, and help you manage your time with alarms, to Low Tech: Advice on innovative strategies for finding jobs by asking priests, ministers, or Rabbis, etc. There are more out there than you could ever use, so set your mind out after them!

What Does COPOW Mean?

"COPOW" is just a short way of saying Cognitive Power. In my practice as a psychiatrist, my patients who use COPOW/ Mental Self Defense (or Cognitive Therapy) feel better much faster, are more likely to stay healthy with less medication, fewer therapy sessions, and are more likely to stay out of the hospital. They're also more likely to stay free from clinical depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders. Those very few who have needed hospitalization, have shorter hospital stays than the predicted average. This translates to faster relief for my patients, and lower health care costs which is a central goal of healthcare reform.

Cognitive refers to your thoughts or your mind. Power has been defined as a thing having control or command, as well as speed in doing work.

Together, "COPOW" really stands for your mind's power to quickly control your health, both emotional and physical.
How much Power?

Think about this: Your mind can process 24-40 bits of information per second. What does that mean? Picture any busy place where peole or objects are moving around like downtown of a big city at rush hour or a popular beach on a sunny weekend. What did your mind just do?

Computer users know that when you create or store a picture of a moving image, it takes a tremendous amount of memory space. That's only a small fraction of what your mind can do. In one second, if you entered that scene you pictured, your mind would process and recognize all kinds of colors, shapes, textures, symbols, sounds, smells, and that's not even using all the senses we have, like feeling a breeze in the air. All that in just one second! So your mind is really incredibly powerful and fast. We just don't normally think of our minds as being powerful, but when we recognize that power we can use it to help us feel better, stronger, and happier. That's what cognitive therapy is all about and I feel lucky that I was taught how to use it when I was trained as a young psychiatrist.

Mental Self Defense is a system of techniques designed to allow all of us to tap into that cognitive or mind power.  The power is vastly magnified by repeating the technique of detecting, and identifying any thoughts and images in your own mind that are destructive or unhealthy, and using the systematic techniques to shift your focus of attention to more constructive, uplifting ways of seeing yourself and the world around you.

When you have COPOW under your belt, you can systemically focus on healthy, common sense ideas, and images to improve your emotional and physical health, and feel better.

Dale J. Anderson, M.D.