What are you reading?

From a young age I have been soothed by reading, so it's natural in this time of isolation that I have been hitting the books. Some have been deep and meaningful, while others have been quick, fun reads, and of course a daily dose of news. Though I've been more cautious with my newspaper reading after this warning from Loretta LaRoche "By reading the news in the morning you start your day by catastrophising and awfulising". Apparently real terms developed by Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotional Therapy.

Dr. Edith Eger's book The Choice has been instructional for these COVID times. She is an eminent psychologist and holocaust survivor who uses examples from her life and those of her clients to illustrate the choice we have over the outcome of our life:

"Our automatic responses are to fight or to flee - but in Aushwitz, where we endured more than stress, where we lived in DISstress, the stakes life and death, never knowing what would happen next, the options to fight or flee did not exist. I would have been shot if I'd fought back, electrocuted if I tried to run away. So I learned to flow, I learned to stay in the situation, to develop the only thing that I had left, to look within for the part of me that no Nazi could ever murder. To find and hold onto my truest self."

"Our painful experiences aren't a liability - they're a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and strength."

Reading is the most brilliant way to expand your horizons. You don’t even have to leave your bed. It allows you to find other people who feel exactly the way you do and those who are absolutely opposite to you. Reading will open your thinking, help you consider myriad points of view. You can explore other territories and spiritual mysteries. It's a way to receive the collective wisdom of our shared experience.

But if you're looking for the immersive distraction of video that can increase calm and wellbeing then we can help at Mindsettle.