Chris Loper has been writing about self-improvement and helping busy adults with habit formation since 2017. He also writes an education blog for parents and students for Northwest Educational Services. Along with Greg Smith, Chris is the cocreator of Parenting for Academic Success, a series of transformative classes that create empowered parents, confident students, and harmonious families. His most recent endeavor combines his academic and habit-formation expertise to help students thrive in college. Visit SmartCollegeHabits.com to learn more. In 2021, Chris published a humorous memoir titled Wood Floats and Other Brilliant Observations, a book that blends crazy stories with practical life lessons. He lives in Issaquah, WA where he is the owner of South Cove Tutoring.
Our Interpretation System Cognitive therapy is built on the following model of human emotions: We perceive an event or situation with our senses; we encounter We evaluate that event or situation; we interpret Our emotions align with that interpretation; we experience life as we’ve interpreted it. Let’s call this our event-interpretation-emotion system. Here are some examples of how it can play out: Your boss sends you an email saying they… Read More »Interpreting Reality
Have you ever had a friend text you that they were running late and felt a wave of relief wash over you? Or had someone cancel an appointment at the last minute and you thought, “Thank God. Now I have time for (insert task).”? That was you enjoying an unexpected dose of something glorious: slack. But slack doesn’t have to happen by accident. You can build slack into your schedule… Read More »Three Big Benefits of Slack
When tomorrow comes, your attention will go somewhere. It has to. And, as Chris Bailey put it in his book, Hyperfocus, “Attention without intention is wasted energy.”1 So you’d be wise to choose where your attention will go. If you don’t, other people will choose for you. (App designers and advertisers, mostly.) And if you’re anything like me, you make far better choices when you decide what to do in… Read More »Decide Tomorrow Tonight
I’ve just finished reading Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy – a superb fantasy series. To my surprise, as I was enjoying this epic saga, I discovered a powerful lesson about procrastination. WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD (I’ve tried not to give away much of the plot.) In the world of these books, the dead don’t always stay dead. They try desperately to return to life, often with the help of evil necromancers. But… Read More »The Book of the Dead