The Stanalytical Guide

Principles & Practices for Conscious Living in the Modern Era of Fear, Distraction, and Burnout

“Ask not what therapy can do for you—ask what you can do for therapy.”

— JF...... Stanly?? 🤷🏻

Being in therapy ≠ Working in therapy

I get it: although we technically live in the safest and most advanced era of human history, it sure doesn’t feel like it a lot of the time. With a historically unprecedented amount of access to food, medicine, information, and entertainment, you’d think we’d be thriving… But instead, we’re more overwhelmed, anxious, dissatisfied, and stuck than ever! So why do we feel so bad all the time? Well… Society and technology have outpaced what our minds were built to handle. Our attention has been hijacked, our emotions are overloaded, and the wiring that once kept us alive now keeps us reactive, avoidant, and exhausted. And while we now have endless access to quick and potent ways to numb this—that usually just contributes to our suffering overall!

Naturally, many turn to therapy but “just attending therapy” does nothing meaningful without outside integration and practice. There’s limited benefit to just venting and talking about things: we must personally experience “the work” of regularly applying different perspectives and strategies into our daily life. If we keep waiting to feel motivated or for things to get bad enough to start doing the work, we will remain the same or get worse. Sometimes we just need to start with more information while we become more aware of certain things. This guide is a distillation of my perspective on psychological wellness and resilience. These concepts and tools are here to help you slow down, understand why your mind does what it does, and ultimately shift the way you respond to your inner and outer world.

UNDERSTANDING PATTERNS

(Self-Examination Model)
How thinking (and the way we view, notice, or engage with our thinking) influences how we feel and act in life.

MISMATCH OF MODERN LIFE

(Evolutionary Mismatch & Lifestyle Alignment)
How the modern world and life clashes with our ancient biology and psychology—leading to stress, disconnection, and burnout—and what we can do to realign our habits, environments, and mindsets with how humans are actually built to thrive.

GROUNDING ANCHORS

(Mindfulness/Grounding)
How to stay grounded, anchored, and centered during tough moments (rather than letting our thoughts, feelings, and urges get the best of us).

OUR MIND: THE CO-PILOT

(Cognitive Defusion/Distancing, “Observing Self”)
How to understand “thoughts and thinking” in a different, more functional and flexible way instead of continually struggling with or getting caught up in everything our mind is telling us.

MANAGING THE MIND

(Reframing/Reappraisal of Thoughts)
How to modify and adjust thoughts to be more realistic and helpful, transforming how you feel and how you respond.

COMMITTED ACTION PLAN

(Goal Setting and Mindset for Behavioral Activation & Exposure, Pacing)
How to stop procrastinating and avoiding by setting better goals, working at them efficiently, and positioning yourself and environment to be less distracted to get more done.