Would you mind giving an example or two of how you’ve done deliberate practice? I always have trouble finding ways to exercise mental skills when I’m not being forced to use them.
At first I set a 2 minute timer, chose one particular type of frame and just noted each mental event that matched. So Mental imagery was just noting “image” each time I caught a mental image. Sometimes they are much too fast or changing as you try to catch them, that’s fine. There was no sense of rushing to keep up or worry if one didn’t arise for awhile (though that sometimes seemed to warrant noting as “blank image”). I increased slowly to 5 minutes and did the other types of frames. After some comfort was built I tried multiple types at once, “image”, “talk”, “image”, “feeling” etc. just noting as they arose. I did this for 1 month.
I used various habit type loading things to maintain the habit for a month, then practiced it more sporadically since then. The benefits seem to be permanent.
As in you set the intention to catch this sort of thing, and then that ended up happening a few minutes each day?
Or you spent several minutes each day deliberately practising it somehow?
Deliberate practice. Though there were some free flow through spontaneous ones after the first week or two.
Would you mind giving an example or two of how you’ve done deliberate practice? I always have trouble finding ways to exercise mental skills when I’m not being forced to use them.
At first I set a 2 minute timer, chose one particular type of frame and just noted each mental event that matched. So Mental imagery was just noting “image” each time I caught a mental image. Sometimes they are much too fast or changing as you try to catch them, that’s fine. There was no sense of rushing to keep up or worry if one didn’t arise for awhile (though that sometimes seemed to warrant noting as “blank image”). I increased slowly to 5 minutes and did the other types of frames. After some comfort was built I tried multiple types at once, “image”, “talk”, “image”, “feeling” etc. just noting as they arose. I did this for 1 month.
I used various habit type loading things to maintain the habit for a month, then practiced it more sporadically since then. The benefits seem to be permanent.