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A huge thank you to all of you who showed up and bravely shared your intentions on social media. 

Grateful, shining, patience, forgiving, love, joyful, mindful, authentic, honest, helpful, proactive, consistent, peace, positivity, kindness, calm, vastness. These are just some of the inspiring intentions set by our fellow seekers and the Daily Wisdom tribe. You are awesome :) 

When we set our intentions, they are necessarily broad and abstract. That’s the point. We cannot micromanage how we will bring the intention to action on a daily basis when we are setting it.

However, once we have set the intention, we can dig a little deeper. This is the time to consider what it means to live our intention. 

So let’s reflect on the following questions:
·     If I was living my intention in the various domains of my life (health, work, relationships for example) how would I be behaving? What would I be doing differently?
...

The thing with setting intentions is that they need to be short and simple. If we are writing paragraphs (or pages!) about our intention, it’s a sign that we are over-complicating things. 

So go ahead and set an intention to set an intention! Once you open to the possibility, your one word intention will come to you. And not necessarily when you are trying hard to think of the "perfect" one. 

And once your intention does become clear to you, it can act as a guiding north star for you, directing your actions and behaviours. 

This does not mean that you will always act according to your intention. But it does mean that whenever you do stray away from it, you can recommit in the moment and reconnect with your intention, adjusting your behavior accordingly. 

For example, if my intention is to relate with honesty (or just "honesty" or "authenticity" or "vulnerability") and I am tempted to be less than this, as soon as I become aware of it, I...

Here are the 10 ways to challenge cognitive distortions that we have been exploring over the past few weeks. (and here is the link to catch up on any that you may have missed)

1)    Clear weeds from the garden of your mind [DW#508]
2)    Separate facts from interpretations [DW#509]
3)    Be an observer and develop a practice of thought watching. [DW#510 and DW#517]
4)    Explore what happened and what did you make it mean? [DW#511]
5)    Ask yourself if your interpretations are helpful. [DW#512]
6)    Come up with more helpful interpretations. [DW #513 & DW#514]]
7)    Ask yourself what your wisest friend would advice you in this situation?  [DW#515]
8)    Take the advice that you would give to a dear friend [DW#516]
9)    Develop and use a list of questions to challenge...

People who are successful and happy in this world have as many negative thoughts as you and I do. Really. 

The difference is that they find ways to remind themselves to focus on the narrative that they want to live rather than focusing on the mental chatter in their heads. 

Because if we continue to believe every thought that we have, and if our thoughts continue to be negative, it will be very challenging to live a life of positivity, purpose or peace. 
What we allow to settle in our minds and what we focus on will surely become our reality. 

So how about focusing on the narrative that we want to live? How about becoming aware of where our attention is, and being intentional about directing it where we want it to be? 

This week, continue our conversation on challenging unhelpful, negative or distorted thinking. 

We have talked about how valuable it can be to consult with a friend when our negative thoughts are getting the best of us. 

Sometimes, however, such a friend is not at hand, for whatever reason. What do we do then?

We can access our own inner wisdom by asking ourselves: what would we tell a friend or a younger sibling in this situation? 

Many of us are very good advice-givers. Superb advice-givers, in fact. 

When someone who is emotionally charged or triggered comes to us, we can look at the situation without the emotional triggers and come up with a balanced perspective. We can see the pros and cons of thinking this way and come up with helpful suggestions on how to combat this negative perspective (especially if we have been reading Daily Wisdom regularly ;) ) 

So while we have all inner knowledge, it can be hard to apply it to our own situation – unless...

That’s okay. You’re right. It is probably not.

But then neither are those interpretations that you put in the second circle, are they?

And that is the point: our judgements and interpretations are mostly conclusions that are mind comes up with to make sense of situations when we do not have complete knowledge. We make assumptions and arrive at conclusions with very limited information and perception.

So why not come up with explanations and interpretations that are helpful and empowering rather than distressing and disempowering?

Makes sense?

It is time to draw a third circle on our piece of paper.

This is the most challenging part of the exercise. The automatic negative assumptions that we make are usually automatic and don’t take much thought at all.

Coming up with alternatives to our automatic way of thinking WILL be challenging at first.

But please keep going. I promise you, it is worth the effort.

So write down several possible alternate explanations for the situation that is causing you distress.

You may ask yourself questions such as:

What evidence do I have for believing this?

What are the some of the things that I am ignoring that contradict these interpretations?

What conclusions am I jumping to that are not completely justified by the...

Let’s go back to the interpretations we discovered in our second circle.

When you look at these interpretations, chances are that they are mostly negative.

Ask yourself: how are these interpretations making me feel? Are they helping or hindering me from mental and emotional wellbeing?

Next question: when I am having these negative feelings and interpretations, how is that causing me to behave? Towards myself? Towards others?

If they are, in fact, making me feel upset or causing distress in relationships, am I willing to consider other, more helpful interpretations?

A very effective way to get back to mental and emotional stability is this little exercise:

On a piece of paper, draw two circles. Label the first one: What Happened and the second one: What I made it mean.

Now in the first circle write down a situation when you were upset with someone: someone did not respond to your text, did not return an email or a phone call, they spoke to you in a loud voice, said something, did not greet you on your birthday etc. etc. etc. What you write here should be observable on a video screen by anybody watching.

Next, in the second circle, write down all your interpretations: the labels you have put on them, the judgements you are passing, the meaning...

So instead of reacting to everything that we think, we can become unbiased observers of our thoughts.

When bad thoughts arise, (and they WILL), we can say, "It's interesting that I think that."

When good thoughts arise, we can say, "It's interesting that I think that."

Just watch your thoughts come and go, come and go, come and go.

When we practice observing thoughts rather than treating them as TRUE and then reacting, we can remain in control and not react based on our mental events.

Be like the ocean – underneath the waves, it is still, calm, unmoving.