Life is hard for everyone. That’s why it helps to have an assortment of tools to navigate life’s inevitable lows.

And that’s exactly what you’ll find in Russ Harris’s book The Reality Slap: Finding Peace and Fulfillment When Life Hurts. Harris is a psychotherapist and renowned expert in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The book is based on ACT’s principles.

The reality slap is a term that Harris uses to refer to life’s various lows, which include everything from losing a loved one to experiencing failure or envy.

According to Harris, after a reality slap strikes, we face another problem: “the reality gap.” The reality gap consists of two sides. One side is the reality we have; the other side is the reality we want.

The bigger the gap between these realities, the more painful our emotions.

Courage is plentiful. In fact, it’s all around us, writes Robert Biswas-Diener, Ph.D, a positive psychology researcher and founder of Positive Acorn, in his latest book The Courage Quotient: How Science Can Make You Braver.

And it doesn’t just happen on the battlefield: It also happens in the boardroom, on a bike ride and at the grocery store, he says. Courage lives in the everyday and helps us lead more fulfilling lives.

According to Biswas-Diener, courage “allows you to pursue the life you want, to overcome obstacles that hold you back from living a full life, and to put your core values into action, and it also helps and elevates others along the way.” It also helps you have better relationships and do better at work, he says.

In his book Biswas-Diener defines courage as “the willingness to act toward a moral or worthwhile goal despite the presence of risk, uncertainty and fear.”

When I completed Elaine Aron’s Highly Sensitive Person Self-Test, I checked 24 statements. Out of 27.

I checked everything from being bothered by bright lights and loud noises to getting startled easily to trying to avoid mistakes to not watching violent movies or TV shows.

Maybe you can relate.

While there are many differences among highly sensitive people (HSPs), we have one thing in common: HSPs have a sensitive nervous system that makes it harder to filter out stimuli and easier to get overwhelmed by our environment.

For instance, the sound of sirens and other loud noises might reverberate like nails on a chalkboard through your head. (They do in mine.)  Crowds might make you especially uncomfortable, while strong smells make you feel sick.

Stressing over checking your email — or texts, which have become even more common — has only increased since I first wrote about how to deal with email stress five years ago. We have become an always-on society, with the expectation for many employees to be available 24/7… Even when most people’s jobs aren’t so important that a person’s life will hang in the balance if we were unavailable.

It’s a shame, really. Technology was supposed to help us have more leisure time and free us up to be able to spend more of our lives with things that really matter — like family, friends, and experiences. Instead, it’s tying us down to our devices in ways their inventors never imagined.

So if you’re feeling stressed out being always connected to your device to check email and texts, here are three more tips for helping to cope.

Self-care doesn’t require hours of free time. In fact, just 10 minutes or less can help to boost your well-being. Below, experts share their tips for lifting your mood, minimizing anxiety and even enhancing your relationships.

1. “Act your shoe size, not your age.”

This according to Deborah Serani, PsyD, psychologist and author of Living with Depression.
In other words, play for the sake of playing. “Find your funny bone, lose yourself in imaginative moments [or] get your air-guitar on — whatever it is, have some unstructured, unfettered fun,” she said.

Psychologist Elisha Goldstein also recently talked about the importance of play in this blog post and offered valuable tips on practicing play.

Coping with panic attacks can be difficult, to say the least.

I’ve had well over… um… well, I’m not exactly counting, but it’s certainly more than 300 or 400. And I mean bona fide panic attacks. Not high anxiety — true panic.

Even after 8 years, I’m still working on coping with it effectively. A series of heart palpitations in the cereal aisle will still send me dashing for the exit of the grocery store. A twinge of nausea on a car ride will send me reaching for Xanax.

And a little unwelcome heat & humidity will make me clammy and lightheaded… just like it did today. Just as I started filming this video, I panicked. My apartment was too warm and I couldn’t get the AC to work. Frustrated, I started feeling woozy and like I needed to sit down, lest I panic. Then, when I finally did sit down, I became worried that I would simply grow hotter and hotter until I finally passed out. So, feeling even woozier, I stood up again to plead with the thermostat, shaking, and extremely fearful of passing out.

It would be hard to open a popular magazine or psychology journal these days without finding some reference to a new advance in positive psychology. 

The research is pouring in from all over the globe indicating that sustainable ways to shift our thinking and perception toward a more optimistic perspective of life has amazing health and well-being benefits — not the least of which include a longer, healthier, and more productive life.

Here are six questions about some of the findings that may intrigue you and test your knowledge. The good news?  You can’t fail a positive psychology quiz!  Use this as a guide to learn more about the developing field. Or, if you got them all right, you know how good it is to be kind — so get out there and help someone!

I am one of those few 20-somethings who would prefer a simple Samsung model over an iPhone or Blackberry when shopping at AT&T. And yes, I do get the odd stare from the sales associate who isn’t sure why I wouldn’t pine for that touchscreen. I typically shrug and convey how I prefer to keep it simple, and will gladly purchase a phone that has an ideal keyboard for texting.

Texting has become an everyday facet of our lives. The feature serves as a platform that absolutely allows us to stay connected to others with instant communication. However, there is something to be said about the ways in which it has the potential to diminish our social skills, if we choose to allow it to do so.

Texting has the ability to reinforce ineffective communication. Individuals can ‘hide behind a screen’ to escape confrontation in friendships or romantic relationships.

Sometimes, it can feel like your emotions are doing all the talking. Like a particularly powerful emotion is the driver and you’re sitting bewildered in the backseat.

But you can learn to cope with your emotions in a healthy way. In fact, there are many methods to effectively manage your emotions.

Journaling is one of them.

“Journals are like a checkpoint between your emotions and the world,” writes clinical psychologist Beth Jacobs, Ph.D, in her valuable workbook Writing for Emotional Balance: A Guided Journal to Help You Manage Overwhelming Emotions.

Journaling helps you make sense of your emotions, pinpoint patterns and gain relief. Research has shown that it also helps you reduce stress, solve problems more effectively and even improve your health.

In Writing for Emotional Balance, Jacobs lays out seven skills of emotion management: distancing yourself from your emotions; defining what emotions mean for you; releasing stuck emotions; learning to focus while experiencing overwhelming emotions; using organization to clarify emotions; regrouping after you’ve had an emotional setback; and maintaining your new skills.

Today, I’d like to share her tips for distancing yourself from your emotions and defining them.

Everyone feels frustrated and frazzled with their jobs from time to time. But burnout goes beyond the occasional bad day — or bad week.

“Burnout is a ‘silent condition’ induced by chronic stress that is characterized by emotional [or] physical exhaustion, cynicism and a lack of professional efficacy,” according to Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World.

Psychoanalyst Herbert J. Freudenberger coined the term “burnout” in 1974.¹ He defined burnout as ”the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.”

In his book, Freudenberger compared job burnout to a burned-out building.

1. He also coauthored, with Geraldine Richelson, the first book on burnout, called Burn-Out: The High Cost of High Achievement. [↩]

This past Easter Sunday I was heading back from the grocery store, enjoying a song on the radio and looking forward to the day. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a dog and a cat bolted into the street in front of me, the dog chasing the cat. I ended up hitting and killing the cat.

At first I wasn’t sure if I had hit both animals… I stopped the car in the middle of the street, got out and realized the cat was not going to survive.

It was devastating. I am fortunate because the dog’s owner came running out after the dog and acknowledged this was all his fault, although it sounds like it was all just an accident and no negligence on his or my behalf.

“Too much stress is a creativity choker,” writes Gail McMeekin in her book, 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women: A Portable Life Coach for Creative Women. But some days, doesn’t it seem like stress comes with the package of living? Like it stalks you as you walk from room to room, out the door to run your errands and back into the car again?

Some days, maybe even most days, the overwhelm sets in like a sweat-soaked stranger sitting oppressively close to you on the subway — suddenly, there’s not enough air, and it quickly gets unbearable. And that kind of state doesn’t exactly support your creativity.

While you can’t completely eliminate stress from your days, there are ways you can create a tranquil environment so you can focus on your craft — whatever that might be.

According to McMeekin, creativity thrives in tranquility. She writes, “Your inner peace and connection with your internal whims and spontaneity allow you to recreate the landscape of your mind and invent the new.”

Here are five ways from McMeekin’s book to promote inner peace and make creativity a priority.