(continued)…
Your thought patterns: Negative thought patterns, particularly self-critical and repetitive ones, can cause low moods. Smith recommends cultivating self-compassion to help reduce and change negative thought patterns. To tap into self-compassion, ask yourself how you would respond to someone you love who was going through the same things and then respond to yourself in the same way. You can also cut negative thought patterns off by adjusting your physical state—for example, by changing your environment or body position or even raising your hand and telling yourself, “Stop.”
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(Shortform note: Tara Brach teaches a practice called RAIN, which uses your thoughts and body position to tap into self-compassion when you’re having negative thoughts and painful emotions. An acronym that outlines each step of the process, RAIN can and should be practiced whenever you find yourself stuck in a negative thought pattern. Brach recommends pausing, closing your eyes, placing a hand on your heart, and doing the following: Recognize and name the painful thought you’re having. Allow and accept the thought’s presence without judgment. Investigate what this thought may be trying to tell you or what might be causing it. Nurture yourself with an alternative, kind thought like, “I’m doing my best, and it’s good enough.”)
Your actions: Our actions feed our body and brain information about how to feel. When we experience low moods, we often avoid activities that could improve how we feel, and we tend to make short-term choices that ultimately worsen our long-term emotional state. Smith writes that to change your habits and behavior, you should change just a few things at a time. Low moods can make even small, familiar tasks overwhelming, so don’t push yourself to improve too many things at once.
(Shortform note: Aside from taking it slowly, Smith doesn’t go into detail about strategies for changing your behavior and habits for the better when you’re feeling low. In The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal outlines numerous strategies for pointing yourself away from unhelpful behaviors when you’re feeling bad, including creating a system of reminders about making different choices. For example, if you often binge-watch TV when you feel low, but you know going outside will make you feel better, you could leave a sticky note on your remote saying, “Can you go outside instead?” Such reminders would be consistent with Smith’s advice to start small, as they can help you change your behavior in trivial, easy-to-approach ways.)
Connection with others: Having positive connections with other people can have a huge positive impact on our mental well-being. Unfortunately, having low moods can make us feel like isolating ourselves from others until we feel better. Isolation can then perpetuate and exacerbate feelings of low mood and depression. Thus, Smith advises that instead of waiting until you feel like socializing, try to make time to be around others even when you don’t feel like it.
(Shortform note: In Lost Connections, Johann Hari argues that a feeling of disconnection from others is caused by social isolation, as Smith writes, but it can also happen when you’ve lost positive social status in your life—when circumstances make you feel less than other people around you. To reconnect with others socially, Hari recommends helping others, perhaps by volunteering, because caring for others eases depression. To combat the negative effects of having low social status, he suggests working to let go of your ego. One way to do so is to practice what he calls sympathetic joy—intentionally cultivating happiness for other people’s happiness.)
Anxiety
Smith explains that anxiety is a physical response we’ve evolved to help us respond to danger—it’s the brain’s alarm signal. Because it works at lightning speed, it doesn’t allow us to evaluate threats calmly. As a result, it frequently triggers fear responses in modern life to situations that aren’t true threats to our survival. We can’t eliminate this survival alarm system nor would we want to—but if we can better understand its workings and identify its triggers, we can learn to differentiate between false alarms and genuine threats.
(Shortform note: While Smith says anxiety begins in our bodies when our flight-or-flight survival system is triggered, Daniel Goleman offers a different definition in Emotional Intelligence. He says anxiety begins with our thoughts as persistent and excessive worrying, which then can impact how our bodies feel. While the purpose of worry is to help us anticipate problems, in cases of anxiety, this concern becomes uncontrollable, leading to a cycle of worrying about everything. Goleman explains that anxiety typically falls into two categories: cognitive, which primarily involves worrying thoughts, or somatic, which mainly manifests as bodily symptoms like tension, digestive problems, and headaches.)
How to Calm Anxiety
Smith reviews two techniques that can help you calm your anxiety.
Breathe slowly. Anxiety naturally makes us breathe more shallowly and quickly to get more oxygen to our muscles for a quick escape from danger. Slowing your breathing and lengthening your exhales gives your body and brain the signal that everything is OK. Smith recommends doing what she calls “square breathing,” where you inhale for four seconds, hold for four, exhale for four seconds, hold for four, etc. This method helps you make your breathing slower and more even.
(Shortform note: While breathing exercises like “square breathing” may work for many, they can make some people’s anxiety symptoms worse. When you focus too much on controlling your breath, especially taking deep breaths, it can trigger hyperventilation. Paying too much attention to breathing can also make you hyper-aware of the physical sensations of anxiety, like a racing heart, which worsens these symptoms. If you find that breathing techniques, especially deep breathing, make your anxiety worse, it’s important to find other ways to manage your symptoms.)
Shift your attention away from your anxious thoughts. When you allow your attention to be consumed by anxious thoughts, you communicate to your body and brain that things are not OK, which creates more distress. To interrupt this feedback loop, focus on positive, calm thoughts that can quiet your alarm response—for example, you can say to yourself, “You’re safe, it’s OK. I’m right here with you, and we’ll get through this.” Give yourself kindness and compassion like you would a scared child.
(Shortform note: Shifting anxious thoughts toward positive, calming thoughts, called positive self-talk in psychology, can work to decrease anxiety, but what Smith doesn’t explain is that this method takes consistent practice over time to work. Positive self-talk works with repetition because of the brain’s plasticity, or ability to change. When we repeatedly think positive thoughts, we create new neural pathways in the brain that make it easier to think those thoughts in the future. This means that the more we engage in positive self-talk, the more likely we are to have positive thoughts and feelings, even when we’re dealing with anxiety.)
Grief
Grief is a complex and human response to loss, significant change, or endings in our lives, which our bodies and brains perceive as profound threats. It’s a process that encompasses many emotional experiences and moods, including sadness, anger, depression, stress, and even joy. Smith emphasizes that grief is natural, healthy, and essential—it doesn’t signify personal failure or inadequacy. While the intensity of grief can be overwhelming, if we try to numb or escape it, we risk dulling all of our emotions, which could leave us feeling adrift and disconnected from our lives.
(Shortform note: While grief is a normal and healthy response to loss and change in our lives, it can sometimes be so intense and go on for so long that it becomes a condition called prolonged grief disorder (PGD). A person who’s developed PGD in response to, for example, the death of a loved one, may feel a deep longing for the deceased person, constantly think about the death, avoid reminders of the person, and have physical symptoms like fatigue or changes in appetite. Therapy, medication, and support groups can be helpful for people with PGD, and if you’re dealing with PGD symptoms, it’s important to seek professional help.)
How to Navigate Mourning
Smith explains that grieving people tend to fall into two camps: those who dive into the painful feelings of mourning and those who focus on distracting themselves and moving forward. She argues that neither way is the correct way to grieve, but that instead, you should find a balance of both strategies.
To make grief feel less overwhelming and frightening, Smith explains that you can build a tolerance for the feelings of grief by experiencing them in small doses and recognizing your strength in enduring it. You can choose to dive into the painful feelings by thinking about your loss or looking at photos, for example. Or you can wait for the feelings to come up spontaneously and allow yourself time and space to feel them. Then, give yourself a break by focusing on other things and doing activities that soothe the body and mind, like taking a bath, exercising, and listening to uplifting or calming music.
Culture Influences Grief and Mourning
As Smith explains, navigating grief and mourning are deeply personal processes that each of us must navigate according to our nature and unique needs. However, the way we grieve and mourn is also greatly influenced by the culture we grew up in. Some cultures, like modern Western society, have a strong death taboo, meaning that people don’t openly discuss death or think about it often because it’s seen as something to be feared and avoided. This may contribute to anxiety and confusion about the feelings of grief and can make it difficult for people in the West to cope or to help others who are grieving.
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Not all cultures have death taboos. Therefore, not everyone struggles with balancing the process of grief and mourning. For example, the Torajan people of Indonesia openly acknowledge and integrate death into their daily lives, with families keeping the deceased in their homes for an extended period. The Torajan’s lack of a death taboo allows for a more open and honest discussion of death and dying and a more gradual and comfortable process of grief and mourning.
Quieting Your Inner Critic
Smith writes that your mental health will significantly improve when you quiet your inner critic and cultivate self-acceptance. To do so, Smith recommends you learn to tolerate negative feedback, build your confidence, become comfortable with failure, and strive to accept and love yourself unconditionally.
Being OK With Negative Feedback
Everyone experiences criticism and disapproval from others, so it’s important to build the skills to tolerate it. This doesn’t mean we should force ourselves not to care what others think. That would be an unrealistic goal, as we evolved as social animals—rejection threatened our survival for most of human history, so criticism can still bring up strong feelings.
(Shortform note: Rejection threatened our survival for most of human history because our ancient ancestors lived in small, nomadic groups that relied on cooperation and social acceptance for survival. Being rejected from the group meant losing access to food, shelter, and protection, and it could even lead to death. That’s why when we’re rejected, our brains release hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, which trigger the survival mechanisms of our nervous systems.)
When other people’s criticism focuses on something we did, we may feel guilt, prompting us to reflect and change our behavior. When criticism focuses on who we are, we feel shame.
(Shortform note: In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown explores the differences between shame and guilt, as well as embarrassment and humiliation. She writes that shame impacts our sense of worthiness for love and belonging—it tells you that you’ve done a bad thing and you are a bad person. Guilt says you’ve done a bad thing, but it doesn’t feel like you’re a bad person for it. Humiliation happens when you’re treated badly for something but feel you don’t deserve it. And you feel embarrassed when you’ve done something that makes you feel bad, but you know it wasn’t truly terrible and that others have experienced something similar.)
Shame is a painful experience, and Smith explains that the key to staying calm in the face of negative feedback is to build shame resilience. Shame resilience helps us stay calm, assess feedback, incorporate it if it aligns with our values, and move on without it harming our sense of worthiness.
To build shame resilience, Smith first recommends reflecting on what causes you shame the most—your appearance or intelligence, for example. If someone’s negative feedback hits you hard and you find yourself ruminating about it, try to interrupt the repetitive thoughts by redirecting your attention.
(Shortform note: In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown explains that being shame resilient means having a strong sense of worthiness. She recommends the following additional strategies for developing shame resilience after you identify what triggers your shame: Assess why those particular things trigger your shame—are you trying to meet unrealistic standards set by others? Talk to trusted loved ones about your experience of shame, as airing those feelings can stop them from festering and growing. Lastly, try to avoid unhealthy coping strategies for shame like isolating yourself or trying too hard to please others, because these behaviors will not help you believe in your inherent worth.)
If you can stay calm after receiving negative feedback, you may see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. To take criticism productively and use it to your advantage, Smith encourages you to stay on your own side and not kick yourself when you’re down. It’s also essential to assess whether the feedback is relevant to you—does the opinion of the person who criticized you matter to you? If not, try to let it roll off your back.
(Shortform note: In How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie agrees with Smith that the most effective way of grappling with negative feedback is to view it as a learning opportunity, but he refutes her claim that being more receptive to criticism requires that you stay on your own side. Instead, he argues that being critical of yourself and your work helps you prepare for criticism from others and learn from your mistakes privately. However, Carnegie does concur that assessing whether negative feedback is legitimate and justified will help you stay grounded emotionally and use criticism constructively.)
Building Confidence in Yourself
Having confidence doesn’t mean feeling completely fearless in new situations—it means trusting yourself and pushing beyond your comfort zone. To do this, you need to be courageous but avoid overwhelming yourself.
To build trust and confidence in yourself, Smith recommends you get familiar with what kinds of things are in your safe zone, your danger zone, and your growth zone (where you’re challenged but not overwhelmed). Then, commit to doing things in your growth zone. Try to embrace discomfort and have faith in your improvement over time. Be kind to yourself, even when mistakes or anxiety arise, and take breaks to recharge when facing daunting tasks.
(Shortform note: Smith recommends a gentle and gradual approach to building confidence by taking actions in your growth zone, but in The Confidence Code, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman recommend a different approach: Take risks and expect to fail. They call this approach “failing fast” and argue that it will help you release perfectionism and even cultivate kindness and compassion for yourself because when you fail often, you can acknowledge that no one is perfect and failure happens to everyone.)
Changing Your Relationship to Failure
When we fear failure and believe we shouldn’t make mistakes, our inner critics can get loud and harsh. This is because failing can seem like evidence that we aren’t good enough, so we berate ourselves, thinking this will motivate us to improve. In reality, being harsh with ourselves isn’t motivating, and failing is a part of growing and learning. However, it’s not easy to simply decide to feel OK with failure. Smith recommends we instead commit to being kind and compassionate to ourselves as we take risks and do things we aren’t familiar or comfortable with yet.
You can start changing your relationship to failure by noticing and shifting how you view other people, their efforts, and their mistakes. Do you make other people feel bad about themselves when they fail? If so, how can you be kind to yourself when you inevitably fail at something?
Perfectionism and the Fear of Failure
The belief that, in order to be good enough, we can never make mistakes or fail is one of the core characteristics of perfectionism. In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown explains that we adopt a perfectionist attitude because we think it will protect us from being blamed, judged, and ashamed. Brown says that perfectionism isn’t healthy because it’s based on unrealistic expectations that you’ll never live up to.
Perfectionism can negatively impact your life in many ways, including inducing what she calls “life-paralysis,” where the fear of doing things imperfectly becomes so overwhelming that you avoid taking risks altogether. Life-paralysis will inevitably cause you to miss many opportunities and experiences.
In addition to cultivating kindness and compassion for yourself, as Smith recommends, Brown says you can also combat perfectionism by developing shame resilience.
Cultivating Self-Acceptance
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Self-acceptance can seem like a form of complacency—if you believe you have nothing left to learn or improve about yourself, you’ll stop setting goals or striving to accomplish them. But research suggests that those with high levels of self-acceptance and self-compassion have less fear of failure and, therefore, are more willing to take risks to achieve their goals.
(Shortform note: Psychology experts explain that many people fear self-acceptance will lead to laziness and self-indulgence because they have received messages from society and caregivers their whole lives that they must be tough on themselves to succeed. However, these experts explain that harsh criticism triggers our threat defense system, leading to fight-flight-freeze responses in our nervous systems. When we feel attacked, we don’t feel more motivated. Instead, we become stuck, shut down, or turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms like food or alcohol to numb the pain.)
How do you begin to accept yourself? Smith explains that the first step is to get to know yourself by doing things like journaling, going to therapy, and talking to loved ones. As you develop self-awareness, you’ll encounter parts of yourself you’re not proud of and want to change. You must try to embrace all the parts of yourself with kindness, even the ones that frighten, confuse, and embarrass you.
Once you have cultivated self-awareness, you can work on turning down the volume on your inner critic’s voice. Start by getting to know what your inner critic sounds like—what words it uses and what it focuses on. Next, imagine what that inner voice would be like if it were a separate person. What would they look like? What’s their intention? Is this person trying to protect you from something?
Getting to Know the Different Parts of Yourself
Thinking about our minds as being made of different “parts”—some parts that are critical of us, some parts that we aren’t proud of, and some parts that we like—is the foundation of the psychology approach called Internal Family Systems (IFS). In IFS, we pay attention to our sometimes contradictory feelings and thoughts and identify the parts of us that feel or think in those ways. We can visualize these parts as different versions of ourselves—separate elements that create an internal system.
IFS posits that all our parts are essentially good and are trying to support and protect us, but some of them can be harsh and critical because that’s the only way they know how to help. IFS-trained therapists can guide you in getting to know your different parts, communicate with them, and transform your inner criticism into self-acceptance.
Motivation
Smith notes that many people struggle with a lack of motivation that prevents them from working toward their goals. This is because motivation—the feeling that you want to do something—is a fluctuating emotion, and when people wait until they feel motivated to start a task or project, they may never start it because that feeling might never return. However, you can train yourself to start projects or tasks even when you don’t feel the urge, and in doing so, you can accomplish more and spark the feeling of motivation you initially lacked.
(Shortform note: In Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhigg agrees that you can increase motivation by taking action instead of waiting to feel motivated, and he explains that this works because making the choice to act helps you feel in control, which increases your confidence and drive. He argues that some kinds of choices make you feel more in control than others, particularly rebellious actions that break unspoken rules or challenge the status quo—for example, sitting in a different seat in class, or wearing something unusual and fun to the office.)
Smith offers several techniques to overcome a lack of motivation.
Start small: Facing a large task can feel overwhelming, which can make you put off getting started. Instead of trying to accomplish something big all at once, focus on achieving smaller goals along the way.
(Shortform note: People who live with depression often experience profound overwhelm facing normal, everyday tasks and a debilitating lack of interest in the activities and goals they normally feel pleasure and passion for. This condition is called anhedonia in psychology, and starting with small tasks and activities may be particularly important for people who suffer from it.)
Pace yourself: To keep motivated on long-term projects, be consistent in your efforts. If you aim to do too much too quickly, you’ll burn out. Work on your goal in manageable chunks and take breaks as needed so that you stay rested and refreshed.
One benefit of keeping your efforts consistent is that they’ll turn into habits, which will remove the need for you to feel motivated to do them. Just as you don’t have to feel motivated to do things like put on your shoes before going outside, you won’t need to feel motivated to do things like sit down and work on your project if it’s become an automatic part of your daily routine.
Visualize your future: Keep your goals in mind and visualize the person you want to become. This can encourage you to keep moving forward even when you’ve lost energy. Also, anticipate obstacles you may encounter so you can plan how to meet them. This can help you stay on track when you face setbacks that might otherwise push you off-course.
(Shortform note: In Learn Like a Pro, Barbara Oakley and Olav Schewe suggest setting three types of goals to help you pace yourself and stay connected to your vision of a better future: big-picture goals (like transitioning to a new career) that keep you inspired for the future; intermediate goals (like gaining new skills) that contribute to your broader goal; and daily tasks (like updating your resume) that build toward your intermediate goal. Oakley and Schewe also acknowledge the power of habits in cultivating motivation but focus instead on the importance of changing unhelpful habits that get in your way of taking action.)
Acknowledge your progress: Pat yourself on the back with kind, encouraging thoughts when you’ve met a small goal or milestone as you work toward your larger goal. These kinds of “rewards” give you a hit of dopamine, which can encourage you to keep going.
(Shortform note: Although acknowledging your progress is a private and internal experience, psychology experts would still define this type of reward as “external,” which creates extrinsic motivation. External rewards include things like money, treats, and praise—even praise coming from yourself. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation is the drive to do something for the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself. People are intrinsically motivated when they can act independently, feel that their efforts matter, and gain satisfaction from learning and gaining skills.)
A Note on When to Seek Professional Help
Smith says that, in general, you should seek the guidance of a mental health professional when you feel concerned about your mental health. Don’t wait until you’re desperate or at a breaking point. It’s better to seek support before things get very bad. If you can’t access professional help, or if it feels like too big a leap for you, start with online educational resources for mental health and reach out to the people you trust in your life.
(Shortform note: If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis and urgent help is needed, you can dial the national mental health crisis line at 988 to reach free and confidential support 24/7. The hotline is staffed by trained crisis counselors who can help people talk about their feelings and experiences, develop coping mechanisms, and connect to local resources.)
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