I stopped using mood tracking apps a while back, because I got better at recognizing slight mood shifts and anticipating my own needs in the moment — whether that’s asking for space, taking a screen break, or hugging my dog. But now I’m back on the mood tracking app bandwagon, because How We Feel is more than just a mood tracker — it’s created by scientists, therapists, designers and engineers, so not only does it help you find the right word for your feelings, it helps you understand the science behind emotions and provides strategies to regulate your mood with elegantly produced videos, and the analytics of your mood over time are displayed in beautifully-designed patterns and colors. It’s free and I believe it’s in beta, so it will only get better. — CD

There’s rarely a day that goes by that I don’t listen to my Meditative Mind: Music & Sleep app. There are hundreds and hundreds of soothing and immersive soundscapes, chants, mantras, nature sounds and world music to choose from. I use it when I need to focus, meditate or sleep. The app is free to download and try out, but I happily pay the $38 annual subscription for access to their full library, unlimited downloads and an ad-free experience. There is also a YouTube channel with lots of long-format music tracks added almost daily. — CD

I cut back on the number of newsletters I subscribe too, but one that I am keeping is the weekly Brain Food from Farnam Street. It dispenses pithy — and sound — advice about living. In two minutes I get a refreshing reminder of age old wisdom. Free. — KK

I am very excited about this concept of pivoting from affirmations to iffirmations. Instead of saying to yourself something like “I am confident and strong” you ask yourself “What if I am confident and strong?” And by asking it in the form of a question forces your brain to search for evidence that this might be true. For me, this works because it conjures images and examples of ways I could be confident or strong or have been in the past, which then elicits positive and encouraging emotions. A lot more effective that affirmations. — CD

This 5-minute test asks 15 questions to measure your empathy, open-mindedness, flexibility and intellectual curiosity and visualizes your thinking using floating color blob. Your personality-color blob starts off as white but as you progress through the questions, you see it add and subtract colors and change in brightness and dullness. The test is called “Thinking in colour” and that’s exactly what it inspires me to do. — CD

I remember reading somewhere that customer service desks often times have a mirror mounted behind them so that customers can keep their cool when complaining. I thought of that when I read this quote from by Thich Nhat Hanh from Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions:

Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are angry, you are not very beautiful, you are not presentable. Hundreds of muscles on your face become very tense. Your face looks like a bomb ready to explode.

I don’t really pull out a mirror, but when I begin to feel my face get tense I immediately remind myself to relax my jaw and muscles and it helps to temper the hot emotions. — CD

This article in Greater Good Magazine tells you five ways to clear brain fog. Three things that can cause brain fog are isolation, stress and uncertainty. For me, walking my dog and using my rowing machine help me to clear out my head, but when that doesn’t work, self-compassion always does. — CD

Here is a very simple and effective three-second brain exercise for finding joy — recognize “thin slices of joy” throughout the day.

“Notice the joyful moments in your day, however small, however fleeting. Notice how good it feels to have that first sip of your drink. Or how tasty that first bite of food is. The pleasurable feeling of your skin in warm water when you wash your hands or take a shower. The moment of delight and comfort when you see your friend. These thin slices of joy only last a few seconds but they add up! The more you notice joy, the more you will experience joy in your life.”

That’s advice by an ex-Google engineer who wrote the book Joy on Demand. He shares more short and simple “joy” exercises here. — CD

The Mental Health Update is one of my favorite weekly newsletters in my inbox. There’s always a tool or article that widens my perspective. The most recent issue turned me on to Orai, an AI-powered app to help you improve your public speaking skills. Each issue has actionable strategies to improve your mental health. The newsletter was created by Jordan Brown, a social worker who started blogging because he couldn’t find the kind of mental health content online that he wanted to read. I’m always surprised by his articles and what he covers, so I am grateful. — CD

Just a fun, single purpose website. Click to relax and listen to ethereal sound of water and music. Zone out on the ripples. It is definitely relaxing. — CD

Stanford creativity expert Sarah Stein Greenberg contributed this short write-up on brain exercises to flex your creative muscles. What stood out to me was Seeing where she suggests finding a photograph capturing scenes of life with multiple subjects and lots of details and answer the following questions: What’s going on in the picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What else do you see? What do you see that makes you say that? — and then repeat, over and over again form multiple perspectives. The other 2 exercises are Shadowing and Studying the solution that already exists. Read the full article here. — CD

Here is a tip from the r/Meditation subreddit. To block out your internal monologue practice expanding your peripheral vision. User taemoo further explained this tactic: “The trick is to keep your vision as “open” as possible, not to focus on anything unless it’s necessary for a specific task ….” and shared a YouTube video titled: Meditation - Returning Your Eyes to the Natural State, where Meditation teacher Loch Kelly walks you through this exercise. When I practice this an instant calmness washes over me. I feel like I just discovered a new superpower. — CD

Researchers at UC San Diego created a 7-question survey that can determine your level of wisdom called the Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index. You can take the 5-minute test here. The questions relate to 7 components of wisdom: Acceptance of Divergent Perspectives, Decisiveness, Emotional Regulation, Pro-Social Behaviors, Self-Reflection, Social Advising and Spirituality. Wisdom scores range from 1-5 with a score of 3 being considered neutral. My highest score was a 5 in Spirituality and my lowest score was 3.75 in Social Advising, which is kind of ironic because this is a recommendation. I posted my scores here. — CD

Here is a case for talking to yourself more often. Ethan Kross, experimental psychologist and neuroscientist, suggests that a key strategy for controlling negative thought loops and ruminating is “distanced self-talk” — talking to youself as if you were another person. This involves calling yourself by name and using non-first pronouns like “you”. This interview on Nauti.lus goes further into the technique. I like to talk to myself out loud while I’m driving alone. It’s a sacred time when I get to ask myself questions, spew out my fragmented thinking and work problems out. I feel confident and safe doing this in the car, because no one can hear me and if anyone sees me they’ll just assume I’m on the phone. — CD

The Cognitive Bias Codex is a radial diagram of 188 cognitive biases listed on Wikipedia. They are grouped into categories and each bias links to it’s own Wikipedia page where you can learn more. I discovered this through one of my favorite newsletters Sloww Sunday— which is always insightful. — CD

I’ve been using this Divergent Association Task to measure my verbal creativity. It takes less than 2 minutes and involves thinking of 10 words that are as different from each other as possible. The test was designed by a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, and according to the study — which involved 9,000 participants all over the world — people who are more creative generate words that have greater distances between them. You can choose to participate in the study anonymously or not. I’ve been taking the test everyday to try to beat my own score. — CD

Here is some great advice on how to find the right therapist. One of the first steps is to figure out what kind of therapeutic framework you need. When I first started therapy I had anxiety that sometimes resulted in panic attacks. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy taught me how to redirect a thought so that it doesn’t create overwhelming feelings that would affect my behavior. Now, 8 years later, I have a person-centered therapist that I talk to about all aspects of my life. Each session feels like I’m catching up with my very insightful and intelligent friend who I can vent to and ask for advice. I always tell my friends that you are allowed to break up with your therapist if the fit isn’t right. I saw three therapists before I found my most recent one, who I’ve been seeing for three years now. Finding the “right therapist” feels like you’ve acquired a super power. — CD

I love this concept of the 2-way-door rule in Inc.com’s article “Why Emotionally Intelligent People Embrace the 2-Way-Door Rule to Make Better and Faster Decisions” (possibly behind a paywall). We avoid making decisions because we tend to think most are one-way door decisions, meaning irreversible because the door swings only one way, like quitting your job. In reality, most decisions are two-way door decisions where the door swings both ways, so if you step through and don’t like what you see, you can always turn around and go back through. Once you recognize this difference, you’ll find you actually seek out opportunities to make more decisions! — CD

Grief Deck is a free visual resource for grief support. All the cards were made by artists or caregivers or someone who has lost someone. Anyone can contribute if you have something to say about processing loss. You scroll seemingly endlessly for an image card that resonates with you, when you click on it, it flips to deliver a prompt or meditation to focus on and let your feelings arise. Grief has never been something I expect to go away, but it is something I learned to coexist with. The best advice I ever received regarding grief was to schedule it — daily if you need to. For a month, I would hold in my tears until I was alone and then I would cry until I was exhausted. After a month, it became less and less, but I never stop making space for it. Here is the card I contributed to Grief Deck, inspired by my father-in-law who we lost last year. — CD

The After Life Experience is an interactive website that will walk you through the process of figuring out which memory from your life to date you would choose to spend eternity reliving. The “Facilitation” process will ask you a series of questions like, “When was a moment you felt your most authentic self?” or “on a brilliant adventure?” or “in awe of something so much bigger than you?” or “knew you were in love?” and on and on until you’ve decided on your forever memory. You can then choose to record it and share it on the website. I spent thirty minutes listening to a stream of stranger’s share the moments in which they chose to spend eternity. I cried a lot. There was a woman who lost her son seconds after giving birth and spent the night holding him in a hospital bed. She said it was her event horizon and in that moment there was no past or future. This was the moment she realized that the question of “Where do we go to when we die?” is actually the same question as “Where were we before we came into being?” — CD