Blair Ashby 720-789-4000
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V-Z
Blair Ashby 720-789-4000
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V-Z
Blair’s Glossary for Learning
Communication and
Self-Compassion

Blair’s Glossary for Learning
Self-compassion and Communication



Coaching and Training
720-789-4000  
Learn how to minimize your suffering.

Words and concepts to assist you with increasing your knowledge for improving your life.




Here is a glossary I’ve developed to assist you with becoming more self-aware and improving your life with that knowledge. Awareness is the foundation of non-reactive living and limiting the amount of suffering that you experience. Thus, I developed this glossary to aid you in understanding how our minds work and give you some familiarity with the standard terms I use on this website, in my classes, and coaching sessions. Please contact me here if you’d like to offer some comments, improvements, or questions.
A

Acceptance
or Acknowledgement, Allow

  • Recognition of the facts.
  • Allowing thoughts and feelings to exist even with Survival Mind interference.
  • Observing reality, including your thoughts, and allowing all experiences to proceed with minimal automatic Survival Modes interference.
  • Experiencing a trigger, noticing your immediate mental reactions, then resetting back to observing the sensory experience and mental reactions.
  • Observing and possibly interacting with reality while recognizing the triggers to brain activity, the generated Survival Modes and feelings, and the desires to alter the situation that arise after the trigger, and then detaching from those reactions to be fully present as the situation unfolds.
  • The ability to welcome reality as it is.
  • The ability to receive information from our perceptions as only data.

See also: Detachment, Emotion, Letting Go, Present, Programs, Reality, Survival Modes, Trigger.

Acquired Reflex

  • A learned, instantaneous reaction that becomes automatic through repetition. For example, an Acquired Reflex is the classical conditioning of a specific reaction to a particular triggering event.

See also: Autopilot, Classical Conditioning, Habit, Instinctive Reflex, Reaction, Trigger.

Actions

  • Any thought patterns or processes, corresponding emotional patterns, physical movements, behaviors, and speaking that occur automatically from an emotional compulsion generated by thoughts.
  • Anything that utilizes energy in our body.

See also: Behaviors, TFFML, Trigger.

Agenda

or Program

  • Brain activity that distorts or influences all of your thoughts, emotions, or actions with specific people or in particular situations.

See also: Brain Activity, Distortion

 

Attachment


or Anchor, Attach, Bind, Bond, Cling, Clutch, Crave, Desire, Glue, Hook, Latch, Stuck

  • Allowing your mental or emotional well-being to be dependant on or controlled by the perceived or physical properties of a person, place, object, or mental construct.
  • Anything that has emotional meaning to you.
  • A belief that a person, place, thing, or idea will affect you in a positive or negative way.
  • Any emotional reaction you experience that is explainable by an if-then statement.
  • A state where something owns you and your emotional stability.
  • Any Mental or Sensory trigger that affects the thoughts and emotions you experience.
  • The entanglement of self-interest with reality.
  • Normal judgments such as threats or benefits to your Physical Survival or your Sense of Survival that your brain assigns to a person, place, thing, or idea.
  • Basing your emotional well-being on a predetermined outcome.
  • Being stuck to an idea, emotion, or object.

See also: Brain Activity, Attachement, Identification, Judgment, Mental Construct, Personalization, Sense of Survival, Sensory Input, Survival Modes.

Autopilot

or Acquired Reflex, Conditioning, Habitual, Muscle Memory, Programming

  • Automatic thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that arise after a triggering event.

See also: Emotion, Behaviors, Feelings, Programs, Thoughts, Trigger.

Awareness

or Mindfulness, Paying Attention, Recognizing, Being Present, Self-observation

  • The ability to acknowledgy events and acknowledge your mind’s reactions to those events while staying detached to the pressures you feel form those events and reactions.
  • Staying present to all your thoughts triggered by and about your experience and your thoughts about the triggered thoughts.
  • Conscious recognition of the thoughts, emotions, feelings, behaviors, actions, activities, and situations you are experiencing while also noticing the additional layers of thoughts about your initial conscious recognition.
  • Watching events happening to yourself as if you were watching someone else while watching your body’s reactions to the experiences as you watch the events.

See also: Actions, Detachment, Emotions, Judgement, Mindfulness, Reaction, Thoughts, Trigger.

B

Behaviors

or Actions, Reactions

  • The physical actions one takes automatically or intentionally after a triggering event.

See also: Actions, Autopilot, Trigger.

Being Present

or In the Moment, Presence

  • The deliberate practice of keeping one’s focus on the current moment.
  • The intentional act of bringing your mind back to now after it drifts off to predictions, analysis, or memories.

See also: Awareness, Meditation.

Beliefs

or Brain Activity, Thoughts

  • Mental concepts or thoughts your brain holds as real, true, or factual.

See also: Attachment, Brain Activity, Mental Consctruction, Thoughts.

Bias

or Evaluation, Judgment

  • The determination of where a sensory input, situation, or thought resides on a scale between good or bad, right or wrong, or help me hurt me.
  • The Automatic determination your mind generates on every stimulus that you experience.

Commentary: Judgments can often be recognized by the emotions they generate.

See also: Emotions, Sensory Input, Thoughts.

Binary Thinking

or Survival Thinking

  • The human brain’s tendency to think in dead or not dead opposites.
  • The human brain’s tendency to think in polar opposite terms such as Good/Bad, Right/Wrong, Help Me/Hurt Me, Win/Lose, Black/White, Zero/One.

See also: Brain.

Boundaries

  • Self-compassionate detachment from unnecessary suffering generated by thoughts that have been triggered.
  • Healthy restrictions or reinforcements your brain puts around thoughts and actions to help you maintain your desired mental equilibrium.

See also: Actions, Detachment, Self-compassion, Thoughts, Trigger.

Brain Activity

  • Any neurochemical activity in the brain.

See also: Brain, Thoughts.

 

Click here to read a partial list of various names for thoughts or brain activity. If you have a suggestion of names for this list, please write to me here, and if it fits this list, I’ll include it.

Brain

  • An organ inside of your skull that is comprised of numerous specialized sections for processing the thoughts triggered by sensory experiences and other thoughts to aid in your survival.

See also: Brain Wires, Sensory Experience, Thoughts, Trigger.

Brain Wires

or Brain Pathways

  • The biological connections between sections of your brain for transferring information.
  • The biological connections between committees, subcommittees, and their members for transferring information.
C

Centered

or Balanced, Detached, Equanimous, Grounded, Present, Settled, Still

  • The ability to stay detached from your brain’s mental reactions and corresponding feelings about internal or external stimuli you experience.
  • You can think and perceive reality, breathe regularly, and offer compassionate responses to events in your life.
  • Survival modes do not control your action. (fight, flight, freeze, grab, hold).

See also: Actions, Compassion, Detachment, Reaction, Reality, Survival Modes.

Chunking

  • Dividing significant thoughts and physical actions into smaller pieces to manage solutions in parts.

See also: Actions, Thoughts.

Classical Conditioning

or Acquired Reflex, Instinctive Reflex, Pavlovian Reaction

  • The process of learning specific reactions to triggers.
  • The intentional process to teach yourself desired reactions to specific triggers.

See also: Acquired Reflex, Instinctive Reflex,  Reaction, Trigger.

Below are examples of the process.

Here is are examples of Classical Conditioning:

  • A happens + B happens = C reaction.
  • Eventually, A & B become correlated so tightly in the brain that just A happening will cause reaction C without even needing B.
  • For example, Pavlov rings a bell (A) and immediately presents food to his dog (B). The dog’s reaction is to begin salivating (C). After enough repetitions, when Pavlov rings the bell (A), the dog starts salivating (C) even without food being presented (B). or
  • Your boss looks angry (A) and yells at you (B); your reaction is to worry that you will lose your job (C).
  • After seeing this happen several times, if you see your boss looking angry (A), you feel worried he will fire you (C) even if your boss is not looking at you.

Committee

or Parts, Sections, Voices

  • The brain is not a single organ; instead, it has at least 250 separate and individual sections, each with a specialty and instructions on how to use its specialty to favor the physical survival of the body or the sense of survival of the mental construct.

See also: Mental Construction, Sense of Survival, Subcommittees.

Committee Block

or Brain Fart, Ego Block, Mental Block

  • Momentarily forgetting what you were going to say or what you were thinking.

See also: Committee.

Compassion

  • Concern for the well-being of others.

See also: Self-compassion.

Compassionate Communication

  • Thinking, feeling, acting, and communicating with understanding, wisdom, and grace.

See also: Communication, Compassion.

Communication

  • Information that is transmitted and received via any manner—words, voice inflection, facial expressions, body language, breathing noise, our internal thoughts, etc.

See also: Thoughts.

Contemplation

or Hobby, Daily Ritual

  • The intentional act of performing a ritual for enjoyment while consciously or subconsciously thinking, such as a hobby, exercising, or watching a sunset.

See also: Meditation.

D

Detachment

or Letting Go, Release

  • The process of allowing a sensory experience or a thought to occur without believing, personalizing, or identifying with it.
  • The conscious awareness that one is experiencing thoughts, feelings, or behaviors and observing those stimuli without forming an attachment to them.
  • Knowing you are okay no matter what changes or experiences happen to you.
  • Experiencing mental, emotional, and physical stimuli, noticing the automatic judgments your brain forms about them, and letting go of any influence from the various stimuli.

See also: Attachment, Identification, Judgment, Letting Go, Personalization, Sensory Experience, Thoughts.

Delusion

  • A false belief or judgment about external reality.

See also: Reality, Thoughts.

Discernment

  • The discipline of judging an experience or situation so that you, and hopefully others,  suffer the least.

See also: Judgement, Suffering.

Discipline

  • The discipline of noticing your mind’s reactions to triggers and then navigating situations so that you suffer the least.
  • The practice of maintaining your survival needs while simultaneously keeping yourself centered so you experience a maximum amount of Joy, Peace, and Contentment.
  • Mentally creating and experiencing each situation to minimize suffering and maximize your experience of Enlightenment.
  • A word created by Blair Ashby to describe thriving while also surviving.

See also: Awareness, Discipline, Enlightenment, Mind, Reaction, Suffering, Trigger.

Distortion

or Blur, Cloud, Deform, Obscure, Twist, Warp

  • An inaccurate perception of reality which influences your thinking, thought patterns, feelings, and behaviors.
  • Thoughts that are biased to benefit yourself or your sense of survival.
  • An explanation of an experience or a situation our brain builds from incomplete information.

See also: Actions, Emotion, Reality, Sense of Survival, Thoughts.

Dual/Nonduel

  • The brain’s tendency to react in survival thinking binaries such as Dead/Not Dead, Good/Bad, Right/Wrong, Help/Hurt, Win/Lose.

See also: Brain, Reaction, Survival Thinking.

E

Emotions

  • Mental reactions in your brain that generate physical sensations or feelings in the body, such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear, etc.
  • Sensations that generate psychological and behavioral changes in the body.

See also: Brain Activity, Emotional Pressure, Feelings, Thoughts, Trigger.

Emotionally Blind

or Blinded by Emotions

  • The inability to think logically or reasonably when you are experiencing emotions.
  • The inability of the mind to recognize possibilities when under pressure from intense feelings.
  • The focus of your Survival Mind for relieving the pressures generated by advantages or disadvantages to your Physical Survival or Sense of Survival.

See also: Mind, Sense of Survival, Survival, Survival Mind.

Emotional Meaning

  • The experience of our thoughts about a situation combined with our emotions generated by those thoughts.

See also: Emotion, The Formula for My Life, Thoughts.

Emotional Pressure

or Emotional Bias, Emotional Charge, Emotional Weight

  • The positive or negative sensations and feelings that emotions generate in your body.
  • Positive Feelings - Shifts your mind into Grab, Hold mode; also referred to as Clinging or Grasping.
  • Negative Feelings - Shifts your mind into Fight, Flight, or Freeze mode, also referred to as Defensive or Protective.

See also: Emotion, Feelings, Mind, Sensory Experience, Survival Modes.

Emotional Shifting

  • Directing one’s emotions toward a different trigger or target than originally instigated the emotions.

See also: Emotion, Emotional Target, Trigger.

Emotional Stacking

  • Feeling an emotion, then feeling another emotion in reaction to the initial feeling.
  • Behavior Stacking - A subconscious action that generates another subconscious action in reaction to the initial action.
  • Thought Stacking - The process of having an initial thought and then allowing that thought to take over the subsequent thoughts, etc.

See also: Actions, Emotion, Reaction, Thoughts.

Emotional Target

  • The object, person, or situation that you feel caused your reactions.
  • The object, person, or situation upon which you release your emotional reaction.

See also: Mental Construction, Reaction, Trigger.

Emotional Turbulence

  • The numerous feelings we experience when processing several incongruous thoughts.

See also: Brain Activity, Emotions, Feelings.

Enlightenment

or Conscious Living, Living in Reality

  • The ability to stay present mentally, emotionally, and physically to reality as it is.
  • Navigating each experience in your life with a minimal or neutral amount of survival mode reactions.
  • The ability to see beyond your brain activity and feelings while intentionally staying present, keeping your mind open to possibilities, and choosing to act in ways that navigate the situation so that you (and others) suffer the least.
  • Intentional nondualistic presence.

See also: Awareness, Duelism, Emotion, Feelings, Being Present, Reality, Survival Modes.

Expectation

  • A type of thought.
  • An attachment to a particular outcome.

See also: Attachment, Thoughts.

F

Faith

  • The absolute acceptance of the powerlessness we experience and the firm confidence that we are okay anyway.

See also: Acceptance.

Feeding the Emotion

or Feeding the Monster, Fueling the Fire, Mental Gossip, Spiraling, Storytelling

  • Subconsciously giving your energy to a distorted thought, emotion, or behavior by allowing it to take control of your subsequent thoughts, emotions, and actions.
  • Repeating a thinking process, emotional reaction, or physical action to increase or maintain the emotional weight of a situation.

See also: Actions, Distortion, Emotion, Emotional Pressure, Thoughts.

Feelings

  • The physical sensations you experience when a subconscious or conscious thought you have is favored or threatened.

See also: Emotion, Thoughts.

G

Grounded

or Tethered, Centered

  • An internal space of joy, peace, and contentment you can experience even in the most disruptive mental, emotional, or physical reactions.
  • An area of acceptance within oneself that can be brought about by cultivating it in meditation or contemplation.
  • A mental state of solidity you can create to weather the constant changes of life.

See also: Acceptance, Contemplation, Emotion, Joy, Peace, and Contentment, Meditation, Reaction.

H

Habit

or Autopilot, Habitual, Normal, Usual

A consistent or regular thought pattern or behavioral action that you perform after specific triggers you experience.

See also: Actions, Autopilot, Thoughts, Thought Patterns, Trigger

I

Identification

  • The way you think of yourself.
  • A sense of self.
  • Who you believe you are.

See also: Attachment, Personalization.

Implied Meaning

  • The emotional weight of a message which hints at more profound information not in the message directly.

See also: Emotional Pressure.

Instinctive Reflex

  • Instantaneous, unlearned reactions to a survival-related trigger.

See also: Acquired Reflex, Instinctive Reflex,  Reaction, Trigger.

J

Joy, Peace, and Contentment or JPC

or Bliss, Equanimity, JCP, Nirvana, Peace of Mind

  • A mental state unchanged by emotional disturbance.
  • The state of subtle pleasure that fills your daily life when you train yourself to have an open mind that lets go of attachments to autopilot thoughts, emotions, and actions that arise with every experience.

See also: Attachment, Autopilot, Emotion, Enlightenment, Thoughts.

Judgement

or Bias, Evaluation

  • The determination of where a sensory input, situation, or thought resides on a scale between good or bad or right or wrong, or help me hurt me.
  • The Automatic determination your mind generates on every stimulus you experience.

Commentary: Judgments can often be recognized by the emotions they generate.

See also: Emotion, Sensory Input, Thoughts.

Justification

or Rationalization, Excuses

  • A tool our brain uses to make ourselves feel better.

See also: Brain Activity, Thoughts.

L

Letting Go

or Detaching, Releasing

  • Allowing the emotions you experience from your mental reactions to weaken so that you suffer the least.
  • Releasing the pressure you experience to control something.
  • Freeing yourself from the internal drive you feel to change reality or something which you dislike.
  • The process of releasing your desire to change that which you can not change.
  • Separating your true self from the thoughts and emotions your survival mind experiences after a trigger.

See also: Attachment, Emotion, Suffering, Survival Mind, Trigger, True Self.

Limbic System

or Survival Mind

  • A foundational part of the Survival Mind for generating rewards and punishments to perceived triggers.
  • A set of brain structures above the spinal cord that supports functions like long-term memory, emotions, reactions.
  • A foundational part of the physical brain that aids in survival.

See also: Brain, Reaction, Survival Mind, Thoughts, Trigger.

M

Magic Pill

or Magic Switch, Quick Fix

  • A desired fix or problem solution with minimal effort from you.

Meditation

or Windshield Time

  • Meditation is a brain-based exercise of learning and practicing methods for managing your mind during mental distractions and disruptions, optimally, without the use of Survival Modes.
  • Mental practice of cultivating your mind’s responses to triggers.
  • A discipline of practicing awareness, acceptance, and letting go while being present with your reality in a controlled environment.
  • Noticing your mind’s thoughts, thought processes and patterns, automatic mental reactions, emotional experiences, and your body’s experiences.
  • Seeing our mind’s reactions to thoughts and emotions.
  • A mental exercise to become familiar with your mind and how it reacts to triggers, processes information, and responds to thoughts.
  • Learning to discern and then manage the difference between Survival Mind activities such as autopilot, automatic reactions, or thinking and being present or consciously aware of your mind’s activities.
  • Practicing being present.
  • Practicing being alone with your mind.
  • Guiding your mind’s activities with Self-discipline and Self-compassion.
  • Learning to be truthful with yourself.

See also: Awareness, Present, Reactions, Reality, Self-discipline, Survival Modes, Trigger.

 

Some Types of Meditation:

  • Focused Awareness Meditation – Concentrating on a sensory experience, a sacred word, or a mantra. The process of intentionally concentrating on a sensory experience such as your breath, a thought process, or a state of mind while simultaneously noticing when you lose your concentration and then gently bringing your attention back to your point of focus.

 

  • Open Awareness Meditation – Keeping your mind open to all sensory inputs and thoughts without concentrating on any specific information; Instead, you are just watching the information pass through your mind. Open Awareness Meditation is similar to a birdseye view of a city; it is watching an entire city from above without focusing on one person or car.

 

  • Centering Prayer – A hybrid type of Focused Awareness and Open Awareness Meditations’ where you focus on a sensory experience until your mind settles into open awareness, then you stop concentrating on the sensory experience and experience open awareness until you notice your mind begins thinking again. Once you see that thoughts have replaced your open awareness, you refocus on your sensory experience until you are grounded and can switch to open awareness.

 

  • Compassionate or Loving Kindness Meditation – Concentrating one’s mind on broadcasting love, compassion, and positive thoughts to all or a specific group of people. 

 

Mental Construct

or Mental Concepts, Mental Object

  • The formation of thoughts into models of reality that seem and feel real.
  • The thoughts and emotions our brains experience after a trigger.

See also: Emotion, Reality, Thoughts, Trigger.

Mental Turbulence

  • Numerous incongruent thoughts that happen as a result of triggers.

See also: Brain Activity, Trigger, Thoughts.

Mind

  • The sense of consciousnesses you experience as a result of your brain’s committees working together.
  • The sense of you that you experience.

See also: Brain.

Mindfulness

or Awareness, Presence

  • The practice of conscious awareness while being present with your thoughts, emotions, and physical experiences.

See also: Awareness.

N

Negativity Bias

  • The Survival Mind’s tendency to give more importance to stimuli that harm your physical survival and sense of survival.
  • The Survival Mind’s inclination to dwell on negative stimuli.

See also: Sense of Survival, Survival Mind.

Nonattachment

or Acceptance without Attachment, Nonattached

  • The ability to notice triggers without forming an attachment, identifications, or personalizations to the mental and emotional reactions your brain experiences.
  • The skill of accepting the meaning our brain puts on an experience without believing it to be accurate or untrue.
  • The practice of not being fixated or stuck to an idea, emotion, or object.

See also: Acceptance, Attachment, Identification, Personalization. Trigger.

P

Pain

  • Physically generated discomfort.
  • Physical affliction or discomfort caused by bodily injury or illness.

See also: Suffering.

Perception

  • The thoughts and beliefs your mind forms around a sensory experience to explain and interpret the sensory input.

See also: Mind, Sensory Experience, Sensory Input, Thoughts.

Percolate

or sleep on it, simmer on it, rest in it, allow things to settle, allow it to soak in, process it

  • Allowing your mind to process thoughts or situations over some extended time.
  • Having the patience to allow your mind to search through the data it has collected and bring forth the best solution for a situation or thought.

See also: Unfold.

Personal Reality

or Your Truth, Your Experience, Your Perceptions

  • Your interpretation of a situation or experience.
  • The differences between your sensory experience of a situation and the situation as it genuinely happened.

See also: Perception, Reality.

Personalization

  • The experience of mentally believing an event or object is a reflection of oneself or identity.
  • The process of identifying with an emotion, object, or situation as an expression of yourself.

See also: Attachment, Emotion, Identification.

Predictive Suffering

or Future Suffering

  • The tendency of our brain to imagine outcomes of situations that cause us to feel negative feelings.

See also: Brain, Feelings.

Programs

or Programming

  • The beliefs, perceptions, rules, and thoughts you learned from your experiences, especially from your upbringing.
  • Thoughts and brain activity that distort your perception of reality.

See also: Brain Activity. Classical Conditioning, Distortion, Perception, Reality, Thoughts.

R

Reaction

  • A series of thoughts (mainly memories of previous similar events) that generate feelings that compel us to actions usually based on fight, flight, freeze, grab & hold.
  • An automatic action, behavior, speech pattern, or thought process triggered by a sensory experience or thought.
  • An autopilot response to a trigger.

See also: Actions, Autopilot, Emotion, Sensory Experience, Survival Modes, Thoughts, Trigger.

Reality

  • A situation as it is without interpretation or perspective.
  • The world, situations, or experiences agreed upon by all participants involved.
  • The laws of nature.
  • The rules governing a situation.
  • Your thoughts, feelings, and actions as you experience them and without distortions by your mind’s mental reactions and judgments.

See also: Actions, Distortion, Emotion, Feelings, Reaction, Thoughts.

 

Below are three types of reality to which I frequently refer.

  • Objective Reality - Reality as it is irrespective of interpretations.
  • Shared Reality - Interpretations of data agreed upon by all parties involved.
  • Personal Reality - Interpretations of data that one individual believes.

Resignation

  • The reluctant acceptance of a stimulus.
  • Any resistance to a stimulus.

See also: Sense of Survival.

Reframing

  • Choosing to experience a situation focused on the advantages you’ll receive from it instead of the suffering you will endure during it.

Right Action

  • Expending energy to accomplish your goals after all emotional compulsions are released.
  • Movement toward a desired outcome that represents your authentic self and wants despite your thoughts or feelings.

See also: Action, Emotion, Reaction, Survival Mode, True Self.

S

Self-Awareness

  • The ability to consciously notice the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors you are experiencing while also recognizing the automatic stories and judgments of right or wrong or good or bad or win or lose that your mind puts on that which you notice.

See also: Actions, Awareness, Behaviors, Emotion, Thoughts.

Self-Communication

or Internal Dialogue, Internal Monologue, Voice in your head

  • Your internal thoughts and autopilot reactions or conscious responses to your thoughts.

See also: Autopilot, Reaction, Thoughts.

Self-compassion

  • Being present to reality and using emotions as keys to unlock areas of reality your mind is distorting for survival or sense of survival reasons.
  • Unconditional acceptance of yourself.
  • Concern for the well-being of your mental, emotional, and physical self.
  • Loving yourself the way you genuinely want to be loved, treating yourself the way you genuinely want to be treated, and caring for yourself in the way you wish to experience care.
  • Allowing your core values to guide your life.
  • Being truthful with yourself even in the midst of uncomfortable thoughts and emotions.
  • Allowing yourself time to process, space to breathe, and room to ground yourself so you feel stable and solid.
  • Caring for yourself even when you feel it is inconvenient.
  • Accepting reality as it is.
  • The Self-Discipline to practice Awareness, Acceptance, and Letting Go.
  • Detaching who you are from how you feel.
  • Experiencing your mental, emotional, and physical sensations without personalizing them.
  • Non-interference with your conditioned thoughts and emotions.

See also: Acceptance, Awareness, Brain, Emotion, Letting Go, Self-discipline, Sense of Survival, Survival, Thoughts.

Self-compassionate Activity

or Contemplation, Event, Managing, Ritual

  • A daily delight to bring meaning to your life.
  • An exercise, hobby, or action that you do to slow your brain or body reactions down to give yourself time to process and navigate the experience with the least amount of suffering.
  • A discipline, event, or ritual that you repeat for dedicating space and time that create meaning and contentment in your life.
  • The skill of using physical movement or brain concentration to accomplish one or more of your core values while also expending physical energy that would be otherwise used for autopilot reaction.

See also: Autopilot, Reaction.

Self-compassionate Living

  • The philosophy about how the mind reacts to stimuli and how to train it to minimize suffering and live easier and happier.
  • A name invented for the practice developed by Blair Ashby for caring for your mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

See also: Suffering.

Self-compassionate Preparation

  • The skill of mentally preparing yourself for challenging situations by focusing on your core values and how you want to navigate a situation.

Self-discipline

The practice of keeping one’s mind and activities focused on your primary goal in a situation.

Sense of Self

or Committee, Ego, Survival Brain

  • The mental construct a person creates to define themselves mentally.
  • The thoughts and beliefs a person holds as the definition of themselves.

See also: Committee, Sense of Self, Survival Mind.

Sense of Survival

or: Emotional Programs for Happiness

See: Survival.

Sensory Experience

  • Your brain’s interpretation of the sensory input your sensory organs have received.

See also: Sensory Input.

Sensory Input

  • Any information you gather from your five senses: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin, or your physical body senses, such as hunger, and experienced as sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, or feelings.

Spiritual

  • The thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and behaviors you hold closest to your core values or authentic self.
  • Who you really, Really, REALLY are and what you really, Really, REALLY want in and for your life.

See also: True Self.

Subcommittees

  • Multiple individual brain sections formed into groups with similar survival goals.

See also: Brain, Committee.

Subtext

or Body Language

  • Messages that we broadcast from our physical behaviors, facial expressions, gestures, micro-gestures, and voice inflections.

Suffering

  • Mentally generated discomfort.
  • Anytime that you emotionally feel negative.
  • Resistance to reality.
  • Resistance to the present moment.
  • Resistance to situations that don’t meet your expectations.
  • Resistance to thoughts and events happening now in the present moment.
  • Physical affliction caused by mental or emotional injury or illness.
  • Any physical sensations from emotions that you experience as unpleasant, uncomfortable, or negative.
  • Mental and Emotional Pain.

See also: Attachment, Distortion, Emotion, Letting Go, Perception, Reality, Sense of Survival, Thoughts.

Suffering has three forms:

  • Necessary or Required Suffering
    • Unpleasant thoughts and feelings that your brain generates from a given situation, such as grieving the loss of a loved one.
  • Unnecessary, Optional, Programmed Suffering
    • Unpleasant-feeling thoughts and feelings that your brain generates by reactions to distorted perceptions of your Sense of Survival.
  • Intentional, Unnecessary Suffering or Purposeful Suffering
    • Unpleasant-feeling thoughts and emotions that your brain generates, and you consciously recognize, and you choose to endure these discomforts to achieve your desired outcome.

Survival

  • Physical Survival
    • The state of being not dead.
    • The process of keeping your physical body unharmed and not dead.
  • Sense of Survival
    • Thoughts about yourself, which you automatically perceive as needed to survive, be comfortable, and be happy.
    • The process of keeping your sense of self unharmed.

Survival Mind

or Ego, Emotional Brain, Reactionary Brain, Sense of Self

  • Your sense of self.
  • Your brain’s conscious and subconscious parts that generate your reactions or try to influence your conscious responses to real or perceived threats and advantages by shifting the brain into Survival Mode.

See also: Limbic System, Perception, Sense of Survival, Survival Modes.

Facts about the Survival Mind:

  • Has no capacity for logical, rational, or reasoning thought.
    • The closest it gets to logical thought is recognizing patterns or similarities.
  • Has complete and virtually instant access to every memory or experience you have formed from your Sensory Input and thoughts.
  • Activates all your emotions.

Survival Modes

  • The autopilot and usually subconscious reactionary process the Survival Mind uses for adapting to a physical advantage or threat or perceived mental advantage or threat.
  • The Survival Mind has three reactions:
  • Positive Feeling - Shifts our minds into Grab, Hold mode, also called Clinging or Grasping.
  • Negative Feeling - Shifts our minds into Fight, Flight, or Freeze mode, also called Defensive or Protective.
  • Indifference – The mind perceives no advantage or threat from a trigger and thus generates no thoughts and corresponding emotional reactions.

See also: Autopilot, Perception, Survival Mind, Thoughts, Trigger.

Survival Thinking

  • The processing of thoughts triggered by the physical threat/benefit or the sense of survival threat/benefit ratio analysis.

See also: Sense of Survival, Survival, Thoughts, Trigger.

Survival Want

  • The desire to own and control something with the thought that it will make oneself happy.

See also: Survival Mind.

T

The Formula for My Life

or TFFML

  • A straightforward way to describe how we create our lives from our thoughts.
  • The formula to explain the process our brains use to form our lives from initial thought to concluding action.

See also: Action, Emotion, Thoughts.

The formula is:

My thoughts generate my feelings.

My feelings compel my actions.

My actions create my life.

Thoughts

  • Any brain activity.
  • Any communication between committee members.

See also: Brain, Brain Activity, Committee.

 

Click here to read a partial list of various names for thoughts or brain activity. If you have a suggestion of names for this list, please write to me here, and if it fits this list, I’ll include it.

Thought Patterns

  • The way your brain thinks.
  • The mental pathways or brain wires that your brain grew from experiences, especially from your upbringing.
  • A mental action that follows brain pathways built on experiences.

See also: Action, Brain, Brain Wires.

Thrivival

  • The discipline of noticing your mind’s reactions to triggers and then navigating situations so that you suffer the least.
  • The practice of maintaining your survival needs while simultaneously keeping yourself centered so you experience a maximum amount of Joy, Peace, and Contentment.
  • Mentally creating and experiencing each situation to minimize suffering and maximize your experience of Enlightenment.
  • A word created by Blair Ashby to describe thriving while also surviving.

See also: Awareness, Discipline, Enlightenment, Mind, Reaction, Suffering.

Trigger

or Event, Goad You, Input, Push Your Button, Sensory Experience, Wind You Up

  • Sensory Inputs and thoughts that start new thoughts and pull your attention away from the present.
  • Anything that shifts your mind into exclusive focus on your survival or your sense of survival’s desired outcome.

See also: Brain Activity, Being Present, Sensory Input, Thoughts.

True Self

or Authentic Wants, Authenticity, Core Values, Native to You

  • The traits or qualities that represent you personally.
  • The aspects of yourself that you deem as most important and hold the highest value for your personal meaning.
U

Unfold

  • Allowing a situation or a series of events to arrange itself by releasing your sense of control over the outcome.

See also: Letting Go, Percolate, Sense of Survival.