Annotated Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
By working the book you can expect to:
• more vividly experience and observe the world through increasing mindfulness
• observe more (take in more information) than previously
• have a better understanding of your emotions (why they happen)
• help positive feelings linger
• have unwanted feelings fade
• have increased confidence that you are taking the right steps toward progress
• have increased personal tool sets to make fewer repetitions of strategies that have not worked for you in the past
• understand the reciprocal relationship between you and others
• have a better understanding of how you are shaped by the environment
• have a better understanding of how you can shape your own environment
• have increased clarity about your true goals in life, for now (they may change)
• make better decisions
• have better relationships
• increase meaning in your life and have a value-based life
• have more strategies than just effort or will power
• ruminate less and have thoughts be more productive
Chapter 2 Emotion Regulation
There is a great deal of theory, research, and literature on the field of emotion regulation. The term “mood management” is simply another way of expressing this concept. This chapter is a review of the literature. Our emotions serve many different functions: we learn from them, they shape what to expect in the future, they help in the emotional bonding process with others, helps us to value things and to develop life goals, define how we see ourselves and our environment, creates behavioral scripts we follow (usefully or uselessly), and can soothe or irritate us.
As Gross—a leader in the field—says “we are both governed by—and governors of—our emotions.”
The critical roles of attention, valuation, biology, and thoughts to both buffer and increase stress are reviewed.
Chapter 3 Mindfulness
Mindfulness is different than paying attention to something. Mindfulness is a set of strategies and techniques to broaden our awareness, take in more information, pause and appreciate what we observe, and to increase our objectivity in experience itself. Mindfulness is thus allowing experience, and is different than simply noticing. It sounds pretty simple but it is exceeding difficult. Eight exercises are offered that only scratch the surface of what mindfulness is, and how to do it.
Chapter 4 Feelings
The Biopsychosocial Model of Emotions is presented, where visceral (body), cognitive (brain), genetic (set point theory), and social factors are explained. Being able to name the various feelings we have, and to evaluate their intensity, frequency, and value leads to greater decision making about how to make feelings we like linger and feelings we would rather avoid not last as long. Exercises and journaling in this chapter provide the basis for mood management.
Another very important aspect of mood management is our assessment of threat. We react to real or perceived dangers around us, and this is frequently ignored in self-help books. Exercises to identify threat (and how they are expressed not just in thoughts, but also in your body, your genetics, your social environment, and the meaning all this has to you, are presented.
Chapter 5: How to Make Wanted Feelings Linger
Good feelings are natural and often occur without effort. So we take them for granted. But good feelings are not granted, necessarily, as if a gift from God. Unwittingly we sometimes denounce the gift of joy through negative thinking, lack of mindfulness, and fear. Sounds strange, but it is true. Sometimes good feelings come naturally. But why wait around for them when there are things you can do to create them? Eight specific exercises are offered to help you do that, plus lots of (hundreds, in fact) ideas to implement the process.
Chapter 6: How to Make Unwanted Feelings Fade
Some people simply deny what they don’t like. This is ineffective. So is minimization, to some extent. Avoidance can be effective and necessary, or harmful, depending on the situation. Exercises to identify denial (this is a hard one), differentiate good from bad avoidance, and evaluating outcomes is provided. Perspective taking and the role of the “reframe” is covered through both text and exercises. What I like to call “The big P” (procrastination) is explained in terms of its role in powering negative emotions is covered, with exercises to reduce it. Other bad feeling processes like rumination, decentering, harm reduction, the ever-present environmental prompting events, critical removal of yourself from dangerous situations (and why this is so difficult for many of us). and positive strategies and techniques of removing yuk feelings are covered.
When all else fails from the above, exercises in tolerance and acceptance are explored through both prose and exercises.
Chapter 7: The Nature of Maps
Since this is a self-help workbook, with so many practical exercises and step-by-step directions about how to modulate your moods (favoring the wanted and disfavoring the unwanted), it would be easy to get lost in the forest because of all the trees. This chapter asks us to take a step back. “What a minute, I’ve been working my tail off trying to get from A to B. Is that where I really want to go?” Self-help books are maps, of sorts, but this chapter demands we asl many questions of ourselves: Am I doing all of this so I can “win” (like it is a competition)? Is the path I’ve been following the one that really optimizes my joy and diminishes my pain? Am I on a meaningful path, or just following the leader?
Chapter 8: Context and Self
To complicate matters further (wow, I already had to differentiate the forest from the trees, now what?), the forest if full of other people, too. And sometimes they are following different maps, going in different directions, and now in this chapter you make me stop and look at me too? Context is a broad topic, defined as a weaving together of the parts from the whole. And your self (the me) is too. There are so many factors to consider, such as family, culture, country and nationality, values, religion, the roles you play in each, job/career, and even going back to the entire notion and importance of the words we use to define all of it.
We explore, both through writing and exercises, all of this and more. We go further, to explicate how all of these things create “life scripts” or “self narratives” through which we abide. Some of these scripts or narratives are helpful and some are harmful. Lots of journaling and reframing is asked of you here.
Finally, this chapter goes in depth to the role of bonding: how the weaving (both consciously and unconsciously) is both necessary but can be harmful. It explains why many times we don’t flee from destructive situations and environments (and why we tolerate many situations, even when they are prickly, for good reasons).
Chapter 9: The Path of Wisdom
Wisdom is more than knowledge. Wisdom is knowing when to speak and when to keep your mouth shut. It is about judgment. One author I quoted called it “the fundamental pragmatics of life.” Weww! Wisdom is about uncertainty and ambiguity. And how do you navigate that in a self-help book? So wisdom is one of those things that is difficult to define, but we sure know it when we see in others (or even more clearly know it when we see it lacking in others).
One of the most inhibiting factors to wise decision making is high emotional arousal. The ole’ proverbial is saying that “It is hard to remember that you're task is to drain the swamp when your up to your ass in alligators.”
(By the way, my book does not include such vivid language. Publishes would not publish it. So rest assured I’m kind and gentle in the book— and I hope in person too!)
So we review the inhibiting factor of feeling too much when making wise decisions, and a “Meaning Decision-Making Flowchart” is offered as a template. Because wisdom and meaning go hand in hand.