A Tale of a Needed Time Out

A friend recently told me a story about needing a Time Out when driving with his wife to meet another couple for dinner. He thought he knew where the restaurant was but found he was mistaken. He asked his wife to call the restaurant but she hadn’t brought her cell phone. Let me interrupt the

12 Jan, 2015
Posted by Steve Fogel
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Pause Your Machinery: Giving Yourself Time Outs

Stop and take a moment to “pause your machinery.” The concepts and techniques I present throughout my latest book, Your Mind Is What Your Brain Does for a Living, require mindfulness to learn and master, and this brief written exercise will give you the opportunity to rest, step outside the pattern of passive reading, and

8 Jan, 2015
Posted by Steve Fogel
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Hot Button Issues

Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. refers to acting mindlessly in this hyperactivated way as reacting to a “hot-button issue” and “flipping our lid.” He emphasizes that by mindfully using the adult version of the Time Out technique during the incident, if possible, and by mindfully reflecting on the incident afterward, you can take responsibility for your

5 Jan, 2015
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Parenting Yourself by Giving Yourself a “Time Out”

Research on how the brain works also explains what happens when we encounter something that sets off our machinery and gets us activated so that we go into full battle alert, defending ourselves and/or attacking others. This research explains why, even after we’ve started becoming more mindful, we’re bound to become activated from time to

1 Jan, 2015
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Parenting Yourself to Heal from Painful Memories

We can use mindfulness to help overcome pain associated with memories of past traumas. Most of us believe that our memories are similar to films or videotapes of events we’ve experienced and that when we recall them, they play accurately in our heads and are always exactly the same. But research shows that this isn’t

29 Dec, 2014
Posted by Steve Fogel
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