1

We as a culture have a dualistic way of looking at thinking that is residual from older Western societies. This way of thinking is the idea that our minds and our bodies are two separate entities. This is not the case. This way of thinking has caused us to separate psychological and physiological symptoms in our cultures both in the medical and psychological fields. Clarke describes how the mind extends out of the head; that humans use tools like a notebook to extend the mind outwards. We are always entangled with the outside world, using things like hearing aids, phones, and even other people to expand the manner in which we make decisions. Our minds can extend because we have access to other people, and their thoughts expand our worldview (MacFarquhar, 2018). It is impossible to find the root problem when ignoring the whole picture. Our goal should not be to treat the symptoms of an illness but the root cause of it. In many cases, this means using preventative measures that aim to stop the issue before it happens. Stress is a prominent factor in many illnesses and is linked to declining health in many cases (Island 2019). We can use preventative measures to prevent distress, healing our beings, and maybe discover something out about what it means to be human.

Our stress and our continual search for something to help us cope have put us into a downward spiral. Looking back on what we do poorly and ruminating on how we shouldn’t have done something we know this isn’t helpful and will cause distress. The stress in our bodies affects our cognition. This causes us even more stress as our cognition is not able to properly function (Sandi, 2013). If we can change our minds about stress and let ourselves understand stress as a positive thing, we can create a space for motivation. We can be careful not to have periods of prolonged stress while also thriving off shorter spurts of eustress (Tocino-Smith, 2020). We can work to reduce stress psychologically by focusing on positive aspects of life (as cheesy as that sounds) and looking forward. Looking back on what you did poorly and ruminating on how you won’t do that again isn’t helpful (Kleinknecht, 2020).

Wise interventions are a way of creating therapeutic measures that take context into account. It is important to be cognizant of where people are coming from because the truth is that not every therapy works for everyone. We are all different and personal experience changes things. Part of what this experience will be is to help you figure out what is right for you and your body. The workbook will walk you through different practices that are meant to help break your self-defeating cycles of distress in your life, by altering the meaning, then behavior to make a self-enhancing cycle. The exercises in this book are to support this process and hopefully create awareness between how your environments, your mind, and your body interact with each other to make you who you are.

For one person a certain tactic might work well whereas for another it may not, because of cognitive and cultural differences it won’t work at all. Keeping in mind that a person lives within different world contexts is extremely important for these “self-help” authors to keep in mind and for those who consume the literature not to get frustrated when something doesn’t work for them. It’s a journey to find what does. We can help out our stress by being kind to ourselves and understanding that it is not always possible to know what we don’t know. We can have grace for our human state of mind.