by guest blogger Elisha Goldstein, PhD, author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

Here’s what I’m thinking about when starting this next year of 2012:

"May we all recognize in this New Year that the moments of our lives are rare and precious. Open to them, Bask in them, We are alive."

The reality is we often hold things that are rare in our world to be precious. These rare things are held to a high value, whether it’s gold, an unbroken sand dollar on a beach, or the short time that a baby is a baby before growing up.

If you peel the lens back for a moment you can see our lives in this very same way. We’re a blip in time in relation to the life of this planet we stand on and this Universe we live in. All the moments of our lives are rare and precious and it’s incredibly important to bring that awareness back to our lives.

excerpt from Just One Thing by Rick Hanson, PhD

To take any steps toward your own well-being, you have got to be on your own side. Not against others, but for yourself.

For many people, that’s harder than it sounds. Maybe you were raised to think you didn’t count as much as other people. Maybe when you’ve tried to stick up for yourself, you’ve been blocked or knocked down. Maybe deep down you feel you don’t deserve to be happy.

Think about what it’s like to be a good friend to someone. Then ask: Am I that kind of friend to myself?

If not, you could be too hard on yourself, too quick to feel you’re falling short, too dismissive of what you get done each day. Or too half-hearted about protecting yourself from mistreatment or telling others what you really need. Or too resigned to you own pain, or too slow about doing those things—both inside your head and outside it, in the wider world—to make your life better.

Plus, how can you truly help others if you don’t start by helping yourself?

The foundation of all practice is to wish yourself well, to let your own sorrows and needs and dreams matter to you. Then, whatever you do for yourself will have real oomph behind it!

by guest blogger John P. Forsyth, Ph.D., co-author of Your Life on Purpose

Peace of mind is something we all seem to want, and want more of. Few of us get it, and when we do it tends to be fleeting. I think the reason has something to do with how we think of "peace of mind." It is not something we can have and hold, but it is certainly something that we can learn to cultivate and allow to grow.

How do we do that? Here are a few steps:

Quick Tip for Therapists by Sameet Kumar, PhD, author of Grieving Mindfully and The Mindful Path through Worry and Rumination.

Mindfulness meditation is a popular evidence-based approach. Unlike many other interventions, mindfulness requires therapist experience. The best way to teach mindfulness to your clients is to practice it yourself so you have familiarity with its challenges, pitfalls, and benefits.

Mindfulness instruction is best given at the end of the first session, ideally in the context of addressing immediate stressors. You can tell your client earlier in session that you will spend the last ten minutes teaching them a new tool for stress management.

Quick Tip for Therapists by Thomas Bien, Ph.D., author of The Buddha's Way of Happiness .

To facilitate the transition from daily life to therapy, practice a few moments of mindful breathing with your clients as a regular part of the work.

Begin by offering a brief rationale, indicating that this practice eases the transition to and deepens the nature of the work. Then provide these instructions, pausing a few seconds between statements:

Quick Tip for Therapists by Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of Eating the Moment,Present Perfect and The Lotus Effect .

To help with habit modification and problem-solving challenges, encourage your client to cultivate a baseline of choice awareness, which is a habit of noticing available options, through process-mindfulness.

excerpt from The Mindfulness Workbook by Thomas Roberts LCSW, LMFT

With this practice you’ll practice greeting each thought, emotion, and sensation. You’ll watch it, name each with a single word, and then let it go. Some people have told me they find it useful to visualize writing each name on a balloon and then releasing it, or to visualize writing the name on a leaf and letting it float away down a stream. These are just a few ideas. Feel free to come up with your own. Whatever imagery you use, this practice is an effective means of clearing away some of the clutter from the insistent chatter of big deal mind, allowing you to experience more spaciousness.

by guest blogger Melissa Kirk, co-author of Depression 101

I remember the moment I realized my rumination was contributing to my chronic low mood and sense of frustration with life. I lived about a mile away from my job, and in nice weather I would walk to work through neighborhoods of beautiful homes and lush gardens. People in Berkeley love their gardens! On my walk, though, I tended to ruminate - to obsess over what was wrong in my life, to replay difficult incidents and conversations, to worry about what I was missing: the right relationship, the perfect body, the "right" personality. By the time I got to work, I would often feel more tense or distracted than when I had started out, and often I would have missed the beauty of the homes and gardens along the way.

I always thought there was something inherently wrong with me that I got depressed and sad; I figured that somewhere, way back when, I hadn’t learned some vital lesson that others - the ones who didn’t get depressed - had learned. In the back of my mind I always figured I was flawed in a deep, core way that meant that I would never have the things that others had: marriage, successful career, physical beauty, the ability to connect easily with others. This is what I would ruminate over on my walk: why can I never seem to be able to do the things others do? What was wrong with me?

Excerpt from Five Good Minutes®

Setting an intention is a way of pointing yourself in a direction, toward an important value or goal. It is a way to identify a quality you wish to nurture in your life.

A skillful intention is more like a friendly guide. Acknowledge from the beginning that important changes take time. You, like everyone else, must make the effort to return repeatedly to the goal you seek.