Follow Your Wise Mind Into the New Year: Learn the DBT Three States of Mind and Use Them to Clarify Your 2023 Goals

We made it! This week is our final episode for 2022. As absolute beginners in this podcast game, the past six months have been filled with dialectics, frustrating and rewarding, absolutely draining and incredibly exciting. As we reflect on this past year, we realize that our venture is not unlike beginning a new chapter at college in the way we bounced between the three states of mind:

• wanting to give up when we got stuck (emotion mind when we couldn’t figure out new software)

• diving into problem solving mode (heavy on reasonable mind when spent 5 hours YouTubing “how to sound edit”)

• returning to that “gut feeling” we had about giving free and accessible coping skills to college students (wise mind)

 Man did we have to practice what we preach, using mindfulness to recognize our “hot” thoughts and our urges to quit or do things the easy way *while also* staying true to our value of helping others. 

 Getting better at accessing our “gut feeling” helped us through some podcasting decisions, too. For instance, let’s go ahead and pay for that sound editor. (Thank you Alex and Tori!)

This time of year is ripe for reflection. Don’t let regrets from this past year or the pressure of New Year’s Resolutions get you off track. Use the skills from this episode as a roadmap. 

 In this episode you’ll learn:

• a core Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) mindfulness skill of the Three States of Mind (emotion mind, reasonable mind, and wise mind)

• the pros and cons of each state

• how to recognize which state you’re in

• the definition of “towards” and “away” moves

• how to use wise mind as your anchor when making life choices

We hope you leave this episode with tools to recognize where your mind is at any given time, and feel more capable of making purposeful, intentional choices. Have a wonderful, wise-minded New Year. See you in 2023!

RESOURCES:

 DBT- Rutgers University- a short video on wise mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uOGRaTaVv4

 A video describing Choice Point:

https://youtu.be/OV15x8LvwAQ

 Choice Point Worksheet showing away and towards moves

https://www.actmindfully.com.au/upimages/Choice_Point.pdf