The skills you have learned in this book will grow stronger each day that you practice them. Conversely, if your skills aren’t used, they’ll slip further from your grasp. They’ll cease to be real choices, real ways to change. Instead, they’ll become mere ideas, vaguely recalled, with no power to help you.
Keeping and strengthening your skills will take sustained effort. There’s an old saying that victory belongs to the most persevering, which is exactly what’s needed now: a commitment to practice your skills daily—over time.
You may wonder—legitimately—where you’ll find the motivation to keep doing something so challenging. And all this talk of perseverance may sound very nineteenth century and preachy. But there is a way to practice daily what you’ve learned, and it doesn’t take a huge amount of willpower. What it requires is getting in the habit of spending about fifteen minutes a day practicing your skills.
Daily Practices for Emotional Health
The daily practices are, in essence, an exercise regimen to maintain your emotional and psychological health. The practices have five parts:
1. Mindfulness
2. Deep relaxation
3. Self-observation
4. Affirmation
5. Committed action
The daily practices take a total of about fifteen minutes. They should be done, ideally, at the same time each day—so they can become a healthy habit. Choose a period in your day when you can be alone and have a little quiet. It could be just after your morning coffee or in your workspace just before going to lunch. It could be how you de-stress when you come home at night or part of your bedtime routine. Whatever time you choose, stick to it. Don’t let other events or commitments interfere. Consider the time spent in daily practices as an appointment with yourself—no less important than all the other commitments that you keep.
Your daily practices will be assembled from a menu of choices. Here’s how that works:
1. Mindfulness. Three to five minutes. Choose to do one of the following:
§ Mindful breathing (see chapter 3)
§ Wise-mind meditation (see chapter 4)
2. Deep relaxation. Three minutes. Choose to do one of the following:
§ Cue-controlled relaxation (see chapter 2)
§ Band of light (see chapter 3)
§ Safe-place visualization (see chapter 2)
3. Self-observation. Three minutes. Choose to do one of the following:
§ Thought defusion (see chapter 3)
§ Be mindful of your emotions without judgment (see chapter 7)
4. Affirmation. See chapter 2 for a list of self-affirmations or create a self-affirmation yourself. Repeat the affirmation five times while taking slow, long breaths. You can choose a different affirmation each day—or keep working on the same one.
5. Committed action. Three minutes. Choose to do one of the following:
§ Plan to implement today’s (or tomorrow’s) committed action (see chapter 2).
§ Plan for what you can do today (or tomorrow) to connect to your higher power (see chapter 2).
Each component of your daily practices is designed to strengthen one or more core skills. First and foremost are mindfulness skills because all of the others depend, to some degree, on mindful awareness. Deep relaxation is a key to distress tolerance, while self-observation and affirmation will help with emotion regulation. Finally, a plan for committed action will strengthen emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness skills.
The concept of committed action deserves special note. Your daily practices should include a plan for something you’ll do—that day or the next—to solve a problem, deal effectively with a difficult situation or person, or strengthen awareness of your higher power. You can connect to your higher power through prayer, an act of kindness, or some giving of yourself to others. What you choose is up to you, but committed action—in some form—is necessary to make any real change in your life.
Right now, choose the five daily practices you will use tomorrow. Then, write them here as part of your commitment to really do them.
MY DAILY PRACTICES
Mindfulness: ___________
Deep relaxation: ___________
Self-observation: ___________
Affirmation: ___________
___________
Committed action plan: ___________
___________
___________
What time each day will you do your practices? Please write that here: ___________
___________
So far, so good—you know what you’ll do for your daily practices and when you’ll do them. But now comes the most important part: persevering—spending those fifteen minutes every day strengthening your skills.
How do you persevere? The answer is one day at a time—making sure that on this day, at the appointed time, you do your practices. And the next day you do the same thing … and the next. A commitment isn’t something you make once, and you’re set for life. It’s something you keep making, every day.
The daily practices will change your life because they will help you shape new responses to old struggles. Life isn’t about hopes or intentions. It’s about doing. It’s about being effective. Now, as we close the book, we’re asking you to live what you’ve learned. You can do this, maybe not perfectly, but enough to make real changes.
The poet and author Samuel Johnson once said: “The future is purchased by the present.” Similarly, by investing in your dialectical behavior therapy skills and practices today, you can create a happier and healthier tomorrow.