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Salaams and Good Morning !

Here is your daily dose of Wisdom for Living Your Best Self!

A very useful concept to start recognizing and dealing with unhelpful and negative thoughts is the concept of the "two darts" from Buddhism.

All of us experience pain in our lives. Pain is what happens when an event or situation outside our control causes us distress. For example, we get a headache, our car breaks down, someone betrays our trust, we lose our job. All of these are events that cause pain.

Events such as these are the first darts that life throws at us.

The second darts are how we respond to these events, what we think about them and what we tell ourselves.

If our car breaks down for example, this would be the first dart.

Some examples of second darts are if we tell ourselves:
Why does this always happen to me.
I am so unlucky.
I hate my life.
Now my whole week is ruined.
I will get fired because there is no way I can get to work on time.
I am going to go broke because of the repairs.

The reality of the situation is this: we cannot do anything about the fact our car broke down. Life will always throw first darts at us.

How we think about the situation and what we tell ourselves will greatly determine how much suffering we endure in the face of the first dart.

Each time we buy into the thoughts above about the car, we make the experience of the car breakdown even worse. We add fuel to the fire. Now, it’s not just the pain from the first dart we are experiencing; we are also hitting ourselves with a bunch of second darts that are causing us to suffer.

It is a REALLY valuable exercise to start distinguishing between first and second darts in life.

As it is said, "Pain is Inevitable. Suffering is Optional."

Wishing you a day full of positivity, purpose and peace.
Warm blessings

Marzia  

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Please scroll down for a list of recommended books on building your emotional intelligence
 
 
 
 
 
Lots more resources on living your best self www.marziahassan.com

Have you listened to the podcast yet?
Family Connections Podcast

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D Burns, MD
The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other "black holes" of depression can be cured without drugs. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life.

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Dr. Daniel Goleman.
Touching on psychology and neuroscience, the expert on brain and behavioral sciences, Dr. Goleman explains the crucial skills for success offered by emotional intelligence that can determine your success in relationships and work and may impact your overall health.



Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry, Jean Greaves, and Patrick M. Lencioni.

One of the most famous on this topic, this book is focused more on ways to use EQ to improve your life. You’ll find a step-by-step program for increasing your emotional intelligence that focuses on four core skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management, along with activities that will help you boost each of these areas.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.
The classic on self-growth, this book remains a top seller and go-to for millions around the world. Taking a less conventional approach to the subject, he isn’t focused on emotional intelligence per se, but rather presents a guide for anyone looking to better understand and control their emotions. The seven habits described in his book all require an awareness and control of emotional intelligence while teaching people how to become more proactive, a big-picture thinker, manage various interaction while building more effective communication.


The Language of Emotional Intelligence: The Five Essential Tools for Building Powerful and Effective Relationshipsby Jeanne Segal.
A great
resource for finding information on using emotional intelligence to build better relationships with just about everyone in your life. Segal lays out a simple step-by-step program on how to use five basic tools of emotional intelligence to enhance your relationships through better communication, reading non-verbal cues, and gaining skills at diffusing arguments and conflicts before they get out of hand.


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