How Mindfulness Can Soothe Tension at Family Gatherings

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By Angel Cleare, BS

 

As we prepare our holiday meals, we may reflect on how this family gathering unfolded last year. It may have started well, with many smiles and joyful conversations of family members sharing what was happening in their lives. But, when everyone sat down at the dinner table, one family member couldn’t stop complaining about the food, and another couldn’t resist voicing their antagonizing opinions. Knowing this may happen again, we may ask ourselves, “What can we do differently this year?”

“As we all know, we can’t control what others say or do, but we have some control over how we react, and this is where mindfulness can help,” says Sharon Brock, MS, member of the Stanford Lifestyle Medicine Gratitude & Purpose pillar and UCLA Certified Mindfulness Facilitator. “By centering yourself with meditation before guests arrive, you can set the tone for harmony. And if conflict still arises, you can practice mindfulness in the moment to help you handle the situation with more composure.”

Brock is the bestselling author of The LOVEE Method, a five-step mindfulness tool to help manage emotions in real-time and bring us into a state of clarity and balance. LOVEE is an acronym that stands for label, observe, value, embrace, and equanimity.

“Let’s say you experience a strong emotion, like anger or anxiety. It can be processed by the mindfulness practices of labeling, observing, valuing, and embracing the emotion. When the emotion has settled, a clearing is created for equanimity to arise,” says Brock.

“Equanimity means having an even-keeled, calm, and balanced mind, which can come in handy when spending the day with challenging in-laws,” says Brock.

How to Respond vs. React

So, what can we do when a disagreeable family member starts talking politics and activates a surge of anger within us? Most people either retaliate with a scathing comment or hold back and swallow their rage. Since neither option is a healthy way to process emotions, Brock offers a third option to transform this difficult emotion with the steps of LOVEE.

“If anger gets activated while seated at the dinner table, rather than be overly expressive or repressive, we can take a deep breath and mentally do the label and observe practices,” says Brock.

When doing the label practice, Brock recommends phrasing the label “anger is rising” rather than “I am angry” so that we create some space between ourselves and the emotion.  For the observe practice, Brock advises doing a quick body scan to locate and observe the emotion as a sensation in the body. She shares that observing our emotions allows us to recognize that they are temporary experiences, not permanent states. Knowing that the emotion will eventually pass can help us stay calm in the moment.

“Emotions are energies in motion; they are not personal,” says Brock. “When we don’t identify with our emotions and we simply observe them as fluid sensations in the body, we are acknowledging the emotions for what they actually are—energies in the body that rise and fall, come and go.”

Brock offers these scripts to say to ourselves in the heat of the moment to soothe our emotions:

  • “Anger is rising. I feel the sensation of my heart beating fast. I take a deep breath, observe the sensation, and not react. I may respond after the emotion has passed.”
  • “Anxiety is rising. I feel the sensation of clenching in my stomach. I take a deep breath, observe the sensation, and not react. I may respond after the emotion has passed.”
  • “Sadness is here. I feel the sensation of heaviness in my chest. I take a deep breath, observe the sensation, and not react. I may respond after the emotion has passed.”

Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

Brock says that the label and observe practices are effective mindfulness techniques for calming ourselves during a time of conflict. However, if the anger remains after the challenging moment has passed, she recommends going through the rest of the steps of the LOVEE Method as a formal meditation.

After label and observe, the value and embrace practices bring self-compassion into the meditation, which research shows offers psychological healing. During the value practice, we accept our emotions as natural aspects of the human condition, acknowledging that others would feel the same in the given situation. We also value our emotions because they have something to tell us, such as revealing a desire for harmony within the family.

Self-compassion deepens with the embrace practice. Here, we give our emotion a “hug” and say to ourselves, “I see you. I hear you. What do you need?” When working with anger, the need is often for respect. In this case, Brock recommends putting both hands on the heart and saying to ourselves, “I respect you.”

“Acknowledging that we are not alone and offering ourselves what we need helps soothe our emotions. With these practices, we are offering ourselves compassion and we are learning to take care of ourselves emotionally,” says Brock. “Over time, self-compassion practices help us to meet our own emotional needs, which fosters independence, resilience, and self-confidence.”

Cultivating Equanimity

After we have processed the emotion with the practices of label, observe, value, and embrace, the final step is equanimity. Here, we return our attention to the original person or circumstance that activated the intense emotion.

During this step, Brock invites us to repeat the equanimity phrase: “Things are as they are, may I accept things just as they are.” Or, in the case of the difficult family member: “They are who they are, may I accept them just as they are.”

Brock clarifies that accepting is not the same as condoning someone’s behavior or implying that the circumstance is morally right; rather the purpose of repeating these phrases is to bring our nervous system into balance and cultivate equanimity in our psyche.

“Equanimity is not about stepping back and not taking action; rather it allows us to take wise action from a place of calm and reasoning,” says Brock. “With an equanimous state of mind, we release resistance and resentment, and we are better able to navigate challenging circumstances with strength and grace.”

Click here to listen to the LOVEE Method meditation or here to learn more about Brock’s mindfulness offerings.

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Practice of the Month: Cultivating a Habit of Optimism

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By Meagan Matthews, BS

 

Do you tend to have pessimistic thoughts throughout the day? Do you wish you had a more optimistic outlook? Incorporating this one habit might be the key to unlocking a more positive headspace, and it only takes three seconds.

“The Maui Habit” was created by BJ Fogg, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Tiny Habits and founder of Stanford’s Behavior Design Lab. It goes like this: as soon as your feet hit the ground in the morning, you say to yourself, “It’s going to be a great day.” This habit is named after the Hawaiian island of Maui because Dr. Fogg associates this island with positivity and optimism. Though it may sound too simple to make a big impact, Dr. Fogg and those who have implemented the habit can attest to the difference it makes.

“I find this practice helpful, even on my worst days,” says Dr. Fogg. “When I’m worried about the day ahead, this statement–even when I say it with a question in my voice–seems to open the door just a crack to actually having a good day.”

The Neuroscience of Habitual Positive Thinking

A key aspect of our ability to create new habits is neuroplasticity, which describes the brain’s ability to perceive, respond, and adapt to external cues. The adaptation stems from what many researchers refer to as an action-outcome association. If an outcome is negative, you are likely to change your action to promote a positive outcome instead. This positive outcome reinforces the new action, and over time, it becomes almost automated, or a habit.

Researchers have found that our thoughts can alter the relationship between brain physiology and its influence on our well-being. Positive thoughts are accompanied by the release of oxytocin, a “feel good” hormone that functions like a positive outcome. Once positive thinking becomes a habit, it can improve your overall self conception. A 2013 meta analysis of 39 studies found that repeated exposure to a form of positive psychological intervention improved participants’ perception of well-being.

So how effective is “The Maui Habit” on improving your outlook? Dr. Fogg says that the most effective habit is the one which “happens in the morning, is really easy to do, […] and makes you feel good.”

Practice of the Month:

Do “The Maui Habit” Every Morning for 30 Days

Step 1: Identify the cue.

Dr. Fogg recommends this be when your feet first touch the floor. Others prefer it be when they first look in the mirror. What’s important is that it works for you!

Step 2: In your mind, say the phrase: “It’s going to be a great day.”

When the day ahead seems to be particularly difficult, Dr. Fogg recommends saying, “It’s going to be a great day, somehow.”

Step 3: Pause to feel the positive emotions.

Take a moment to let the optimistic feelings resulting from the phrase really sink in, then carry on with the rest of your day!

 

You might be surprised by just how quickly this little phrase becomes automatic (it may only take a few days!) and how it starts to impact your overall approach to life. Dr. Fogg says, “With this morning practice, you are setting an upward trajectory for your day. Rather than spiraling downward, you can continue to lift.”

 

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What Does it Mean to be Spiritual but Not Religious?

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By Sharon Brock, MS, MEd 

More and more people today identify as spiritual but not religious. In this blog, we explore and appreciate what spirituality is as human beings to increase our capacity for more spiritual experiences in our lives.

“Spirituality is an individual experience,” says Bruce Feldstein, MD, BCC, Head of Stanford Lifestyle Medicine’s Gratitude & Purpose pillar. “As a chaplain and professor providing and teaching spiritual care for the past 25 years, I’ve often encountered people who identify as spiritual but not religious. I’m always amazed by the wide variety of ways people experience and express their spirituality.”

What Do We Mean by Spirituality?

Dr. Feldstein draws from these descriptions of spirituality with his patients and students:

  • “Spirituality is the way you find meaning, hope, comfort and inner peace in your life.  Many people find spirituality through religion. Some find it through music, art, or a connection with nature.  Others find it in their values and principles.” – American Academy of Family Physicians
  • “Spirituality is the aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose and the way they experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, and to the significant or sacred.” – Journal of Palliative Medicine
  • Spirituality is a core dimension of our humanity. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Discover What Spirituality Means for You

As a professor, Dr. Feldstein previously taught a course for Stanford medical students entitled “Spirituality and Meaning in Medicine.” With the intention of allowing students to discover and appreciate spirituality in their lives (both personally and professionally as medical students), he led them through this exercise:

First, he shared the descriptions of spirituality listed above and then invited them to explore what spirituality means for them from their personal experience.

Then, he said to the class: “Recall a time in your life you would call spiritual or deeply meaningful, whatever that means for you.” After this reflection, Dr. Feldstein gave the students these journal prompts:

  • What was the situation? Were you alone or with others?
  • What thoughts or emotions occurred during this time?
  • What about this memory caused you to recognize it as spiritual or deeply meaningful?

“Every student had a story, and every story was unique,” says Dr. Feldstein. “Some were moments of awe or deep peace; others were stories of the kindness of strangers where they didn’t feel alone; others were ‘a-ha’ moments of guidance and realization. These spiritual experiences were all moments of spontaneous happening–it wasn’t on the calendar. Often, they took place outside of their everyday routines.”

Dr. Feldstein observed that this reflection exercise increased all the student’s capacity to recognize and cultivate spirituality in their lives.

“We all have this capacity for spiritual experiences, but many of us don’t recognize it,” says Dr. Feldstein. “Most of us are living in black and white, but recognition of these experiences can move us into technicolor.”

Activities that Can Allow for Spiritual Experience

Although we can’t control, predict, or anticipate these spiritual experiences, we can put ourselves in situations and states of mind that make them more likely.

In his class, Dr. Feldstein asked his students to share the situations or activities where they had spiritual or deeply meaningful experiences.

Here are some examples of what the students shared:

  • Life-cycle moments, including births, deaths, weddings, or graduation days.
  • While listening to music that brought a deep feeling of peace.
  • While volunteering for a cause that was meaningful to them.
  • While taking a walk in nature and pausing to admire the beauty of the trees.
  • While offering or receiving kindness and compassion while in conversation.
  • While connecting with others in book groups or reading meaningful books on their own.
  • While singing, dancing, and/or praying.
  • While visiting a loved one at the hospital.
  • While cooking with friends and mindfully eating the food.
  • While taking a yoga class and connecting to their breath.
  • During a morning meditation when focusing on gratitude.

In pursuit of well-being, Dr. Feldstein invites us to choose a few daily activities that are spiritual and meaningful for us. This will help us to be more attuned to spiritual experiences when they spontaneously occur. And when they do, he invites us to pause and acknowledge them, savor them, and feel gratitude afterward.

“As human beings, we have the capacity for spiritual experiences because we are spiritual by nature,” says Dr. Feldstein. “Being spiritual is not something we need to ‘do’, it’s what we already are, so we just need to allow for it.”

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Mature couple sitting in a park with their dog

Practice of the Month: Create and Maintain Your New Healthy Habit

By Sharon Brock, MS, MEd

At the start of the year, thinking about all the changes you want to make in your life can be overwhelming. You might think, “I have to start walking every day, eat more vegetables, get more sleep, and start a gratitude journal.”  With so many things on this list, it’s no wonder we end up feeling stressed and flopped on the couch eating potato chips and watching Netflix into the night by February.

Don’t worry, we see you. And we’re here to help. Rather than rely on willpower, Stanford behavior change expert, BJ Fogg, PhD, suggests the following steps to create and maintain a new healthy habit:

  • Choose something you already want to do and enjoy doing (e.g., walking as exercise).
  • Set the bar low to promote consistency (e.g., commit to walking to the end of your driveway and back every day).
  • Anchor the new habit to something you already do every day (e.g., walk right after you drink your morning coffee).
  • Redesign your environment to make the healthy habit more convenient (e.g., put your walking shoes by the front door).
  • Set up a visual prompt (e.g., put a Post-it note on your computer to remind you to take a lunchtime walk).
  • Allow yourself to feel good about any positive action you take, no matter how tiny.

Journal Prompt: What is ONE habit you’d like to create and maintain this year, and which of the above strategies will you employ to set yourself up for success?

A Different Twist on New Year’s Resolutions

At the start of the year, rather than answer the question, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?”,  Dr. Fogg invites us to contemplate the following:

Journal Prompt: What is ONE thing you can change in your home environment today that will have the BIGGEST positive impact on your health for the rest of the year?

To help spur inspiration, here are sample answers from each of the seven Lifestyle Medicine pillars:

  • Movement & Exercise – Get a dog!
  • Restorative Sleep – Move the television out of the bedroom.
  • Stress Management – Move your cell phone out of arm’s reach from your bed to prevent late-night scrolling.
  • Healthful Nutrition – Keep fruit in a bowl on the dining table for convenient healthy snacking.
  • Gratitude & Purpose – Frame a photograph of someone who makes you smile and place it next to your work computer.
  • Cognitive Enhancement – Place a good reading lamp beside a comfortable chair to promote nightly reading.
  • Social Engagement – Schedule a weekly walk with a friend (two-for-one!).

“It’s important to remember that habit formation is a practice-and-revise process,” says Dr. Fogg.  “You probably need to try out various new habits to find the ones that work for you. Think of it like trying on new shoes. If the first selection doesn’t fit you, that’s okay. Just keep going and try others. Find what works best for you.”

 

 

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Father and two children arranging fruit in a bowl on kitchen counter

How to Redesign Your Home to Achieve Your Health Goals

By Sophia Fay, BS

Forget relying on willpower—your environment can do the heavy lifting when it comes to building healthier habits. By making good behaviors easy and convenient, and bad behaviors difficult and less accessible, you can set yourself up for success without constantly battling self-control. Instead of focusing on which habits are good or bad, this approach focuses on methods and new ways of thinking to simplify healthy choices.

Think about it: Is your phone right next to your bed, tempting you to scroll at night? Is junk food or fruit sitting on your kitchen table? Are your running shoes by the door, reminding you to go for a morning jog? These small changes can make a big difference.

BJ Fogg, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Tiny Habits and founder of Stanford’s Behavior Design Lab, explains, “People often think, ‘I’ll just use willpower to change my bad habits,’ but that rarely works.”

“Instead of relying on willpower, we take a different approach. We redesign our environment to make healthy behaviors easy and natural, and in doing so, we transform our habits—and our lives,” says Dr. Fogg.

It’s important to recognize that our environment drives our behavior. For instance, seeing an apple on the kitchen table prompts a healthy snack, placing running shoes by the door encourages morning runs, and putting a photo of your family by the phone reminds you to call your mom.

Rather than relying on fleeting willpower to create healthy habits in 2025, invest some effort upfront to make changes in your physical surroundings. Walk into each room of your house and identify something that is prompting an unhealthy habit, such as having junk food on the kitchen table, making it easily accessible for a snack. Also, identify what you can add to that room to make a healthy habit more convenient, such as placing fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table instead.

So, how do you make good behaviors easy? Here are some examples from our expert team for things they’ve taken OUT and added IN to prompt healthy choices in each room of the house.

Make Healthy Habits Easier in the Following Rooms:

Kitchen

OUT: Throw away junk food (or put it in the back of the cupboard).

IN: Place fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table for a quick snack.

IN: Redesign fridge and cupboards to make healthy options more visible.

Living Room

OUT: Remove the TV remote from the coffee table.

IN: Add a stationary bicycle or rebounder to use while watching TV.

IN: Create a cozy reading nook with books and good lighting.

Bedroom

OUT: Take out the TV.

OUT: Charge your phone outside the bedroom.

IN: Place a glass of water on your nightstand to stay hydrated first thing in the morning.

IN: Optimize for quality sleep with blackout curtains, cool temperatures, and comfortable bedding.

Bathroom

OUT: Remove clutter from counters. Store products you don’t use daily out of sight to create a clean space.

IN: Place floss next to your toothbrush to create a visual cue for dental hygiene habits.

Office

OUT: Remove snacks that encourage mindless eating.

IN: Set a timer every hour and keep weights or resistance bands within sight to prompt quick exercise breaks.

IN: Consider adding a standing desk or treadmill to encourage movement.

 

Making these small changes to your environment in January sets you up for success to lead a healthier lifestyle all year!

 

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Diverse group of five women standing arm in arm as they hike a nature trail

5 Ways to Make Healthy Habits Stick—No Willpower Required 

By Sharon Brock, MS, MEd

If you’ve already given up on your New Year’s resolutions, you’re not alone. Studies show that 88 percent of resolutions are broken within the first two weeks of January, and 95 percent are abandoned by the end of the month. Many people start a protocol on January 1st, stick with it for a couple of weeks, but then drop off and feel like a failure.

Stanford behavior change expert BJ Fogg, PhD, shows us a different way. “Research shows that relying on willpower is not how behavior change works,” says Dr. Fogg, founder of the Stanford Behavior Design Lab. Rather than give up on your health goals after you (inevitably) get off track, Dr. Fogg recommends trying a few of the following strategies to help make your new healthy habits last.

1. Help Yourself Do What You Already Want to Do

Everyone has a part of them that wants to eat healthy and exercise and another part that wants to eat junk food and sit on the couch. We have conflicting motivations. So how can we help the part of ourselves that wants to eat healthy and exercise? Dr. Fogg recommends choosing a healthy habit that you already enjoy doing.

“If you don’t like running, don’t have ‘go for a run every morning’ as your new year’s resolution. There are a hundred other ways to be active, so pick something you already enjoy,” says Dr. Fogg.

It may be helpful to reflect on which healthy habits would work for you in a sustainable way and write down behaviors you already enjoy doing. For example, if walking on a treadmill doesn’t work for you, try walking in nature. Or if you’re not a morning person, don’t set your alarm for 5 a.m. to workout; instead plan to exercise at the end of your workday.

“Most protocols, such as strict diets, don’t work long term because they are too prescriptive,” says Dr. Fogg. “When it comes to behavior change, one size does not fit all. A new habit only sticks when it makes sense at the individual level.”

2. Set the Bar Low

The best way to create a lasting habit is to set the bar low so that you can be consistent with it every day. For example, if you want to start jogging, commit to putting on your running shoes and walking to the end of your driveway and back. If you feel overwhelmed about cleaning your house, commit to tidying up just one piece of furniture every night before bed. If you’re not motivated to floss your teeth, commit to flossing just one tooth. It might sound silly, but making the habit small lowers the amount of motivation required to complete the behavior. With consistency, the behavior becomes a habit that eventually becomes part of your automatic daily routine.

“The key is making the habit so small that you can do it even when you’re sick, busy, preoccupied, or just low motivation,” says Dr. Fogg, explaining the habit-forming technique from his bestselling book, Tiny Habits. “Let’s say the new habit is flossing. You don’t have to stop at one tooth; you can always do more if you feel like it, but it’s not necessary to feel successful. Simply put, you have a minimal habit that you do every day, and when you want to do more, then you do more.”

3. Positive Emotions Create the Habit

It’s important to recognize that habits are created when we feel successful, so the key is to make the feeling of success easier to attain (see Tip #2).  As we are on our habit-forming journey, Dr. Fogg encourages us to feel proud of ourselves even for the tiniest of successes because when we feel good about a new habit, we will become more motivated to keep doing it—and eventually, willpower is out of the picture entirely.

“Most people are so hard on themselves, and they use guilt and shame to establish new habits, but that doesn’t work,” says Dr. Fogg. “They think that identifying their short comings rather than their successes will help motivate them. What works better is finding every excuse to seeing you’re doing a good job so that you continue doing the new habit.”

Also, many of us have heard that it takes 28 days to establish a new habit, however, this theory has been debunked. Dr. Fogg says that if we feel successful at a deep and authentic level, even for the tiny version of the behavior, the habit can form at a much faster rate.

4. Anchor Your New Habit to an Existing Habit

If there’s a habit that you already do every day (I see you, coffee drinkers), you can anchor your new habit to the original one. Dr. Fogg calls this “anchoring” because you’re tying a new habit to something already stable in your life. This technique has also been referred to as “habit stacking”.

Regardless of what you call it, this is what you do. Identify something you already do automatically and then perform the new habit afterward. Here are some examples:

After I make my coffee, I meditate

After I turn on the faucet for my nightly bath, I floss my teeth

After I press “start” on the microwave to heat my lunch, I do 20 jumping jacks and 20 squats

After I turn on the television when I’m done with work, I hop on a stationary bike

Write down a few of the habits you already do automatically and see if you can anchor a new habit after them. The anchoring technique provides a great way to incorporate many new habits simultaneously into your daily routine.

5. Try to Change Together, Not Alone

We’ve all heard of the concept of “accountability buddies,” but Dr. Fogg says this strategy actually works. So, if you have a friend with the same health goals as you, it would be wise to sync up your efforts. For example, if you want to walk for 30 minutes daily, finding a friend to walk with can help you both become consistent. Also, since we now know that positive emotions help establish new habits, try and find a walking companion who adds laughter or interesting conversations to the experience so that you associate walking with feeling good.

Also, Dr. Fogg explains that changing together is especially important in certain domains, such as sleep (i.e., going to bed and waking up at the same time as your bed partner), nutrition (i.e., eating similar meals with other members of your household), and media use (i.e., how much television you and your family watches every night).

 “We can change alone, with a friend or partner, or even with a group,” says Dr. Fogg. “If you want to change as a household, I invite you to hold a family meeting to discuss one behavior change the entire family can agree on for the entire year. Changing with others can make establishing new habits easier and potentially even fun.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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