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James Fitzgerald Therapy, PLLC
James Fitzgerald, MS, NCC, Psychotherapist
Strengthening Your Conscious Self © 2022
March 3rd
Daily Self Care Inspiration
Please accept this self-care resource from James Fitzgerald Therapy and Strengthening Your Conscious Self Health & Wellness Program. You are invited to consume as much or as little of the content as you feel comfortable with. You don’t have to do all of the activities every day. This feature of the website is a tool in your toolbox, to be used as you need. Thank you for using this feature, I appreciate your support.
Recommended Reading Article:
Clarifying What Matters: What we care about can help us enhance our lives with values-based decisions.
Lizabeth Roemer, PhD
Book Recommendation:
Extraordinary Relationships: A New Way of Thinking about Human Interactions
Roberta Gilbert
Thinking Errors & Logic
Why do we rely on our current emotions when making quick decisions?
Atlas of Emotion & Emotional Intelligence
Anxiety (Fear, Worry, Panic, Dread) @ Good Therapy
Inspirational Quote
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. ~ Thomas Merton
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/relationship-quotes
Character Strength:
Open-mindedness [clarity, good judgement, critical thinking]
Open-mindedness is the willingness to search actively for evidence against one’s favored beliefs, plans, or goals, and to weigh such evidence fairly when it is available. Its opposite has been called the confirmation “myside” bias, which refers to the pervasive tendency to think in ways that favor one’s current views. Someone blended with or taken over by a part that is coming from a place of this myside cognitive dissonance has not accessed self-energy of open-mindedness. This strength correlates with the characteristic self-energy of clarity.
This character strength helps individuals build knowledge about specific issues or points of view – and provide sound recommendations and advice. Open-minded people do not jump to conclusions. Instead, they seek out and examine all of the available evidence before forming an opinion.
Individuals with the character strength of open-mindedness are more likely to make accurate decisions – and decisions that they won’t regret. This is because they think through all sides of a problem and actively fight “myside bias,” which happens when people generate evidence, evaluate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior opinions and attitudes.
Open-minded individuals are often good listeners and called upon to provide a balanced viewpoint. Both listening and the ability to deliver reasonable and practical advice are marks of good friends and confidantes. This strength helps individuals form meaningful and lasting relationships. On a group level, open-mindedness is crucial in counteracting groupthink. Individuals with this strength help their group identify the correct goals, evidence, possible alternatives, and final decisions to a given problem
Self Care Practice Suggestion:
If you are in an intimate/romantic relationship, complete the Gottman Love Maps questions exercise, and reflect on your answers and your partner’s answers, to measure how accurate your love map is.
If you are not in a serious relationship, perhaps you could reflect on some Icebreaker Questions, and memorize some to try the next time you talk to someone you already know, or someone new, to get to know them better.
Reflection & Journal Prompts:
What’s the best piece of advice you have ever been given?
If you had to teach a class on one thing, what would you teach?
If you could eliminate one thing from your daily routine, what would it be and why?
Would you rather be the funniest or smartest person in the room?