Changing Your Mood

Methods For Changing Your Mood
Moods are emotions, and emotions are feeling states affecting mind and body, thought and behavior, and yet distinct from those things. They are a fundamental part of human nature, much older in evolutionary terms than your ability to think. Before thought existed as such, emotions evolved as the most primary way for animals to make decisions about events in the world. The word "emotion" contains the root "motion". This is because emotions are motivating; they exist to push or lure us to move towards things we feel good about, and to want to avoid or escape from things we feel badly about. Emotions motivate us to behave in particular ways, sometimes with such intensity that thoughts and other rational considerations are pushed aside and we end up behaving in ways we know are bad for us.
People are capable of having all sorts of moods and emotions. The basic complement of emotions people are capable of includes anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise, according to researcher Paul Ekman, but other emotions, including anxiety, shame and guilt, become available as we mature and become a part of families and society.

Few people view positively toned emotions like joy as a problem. Instead, it is the negatively toned emotions and moods such as anger, anxiety, fear, and depression/sadness which people seek to change. The more chronically people experience these states, the more urgently they generally wish to be rid of them.

A variety of techniques are useful to know about for managing moods. We've already covered a very large and important technique, Cognitive Restructuring, in our discussion above concerning how thought habits may be changed. Cognitive restructuring is a method for changing thoughts. Because thoughts heavily influence and determine moods and emotion, changing the way that you think about things (the way you appraise and make sense of events) changes your moods. When you stop thinking in ways that make you sad, you end up feeling sad less often, in essence.

Cognitive restructuring is a method for fundamentally undermining and altering the causes of your chronic negative moods and emotions. Practiced regularly and accurately, it enables people to experience their problem moods less frequently, and less intensely. The method is best suited for preventing negative moods from occurring in the first place, or preventing negative moods from getting worse, however. In order for it to work, you need to be capable of thinking logically and rationally. It is very difficult to do that when you are emotional. You must turn to other techniques for calming yourself down when you are feeling upset.
Self-Soothing Techniques: Venting and Journaling
Use self-soothing techniques to calm yourself down when upset. Self-soothing techniques are methods for calming and relaxing the body and the mind and soothing jangled nerves:
 Venting and Journaling. People are social creatures. Most find comfort in talking about problems with others when they become upset. First, because the experience of being listened to and hopefully understood helps people to feel less alone in their pain. Second, because talking about a problem, taking the time to put it into words, helps people to get a grip on that problem and to see possibilities that weren't obvious before. There is a certain internal pressure that some emotions create inside people that requires expression. Talking about that pressured emotion, or the issues creating it helps to diffuse or vent the pressure and let off steam that might otherwise result in destructive behavior.

Venting generally requires an audience. You may be able to vent to trusted confidants (e.g., trusted friends, family, mentors, therapists, or clergy), but when you do this, keep in mind that your confidant is giving a gift to you of their time and attention each time they listen to you rant. If you continually vent to others without finding ways to give them back "gifts" of similar value (for instance, your taking time to listen to them vent and rant), you will likely burn out your friendship.

Journaling can provide a good outlet for times when you need to vent but don't have anyone to vent to. Journaling couldn't be simpler. You simply write about your experience and emotion. Whatever you might say to a confidant, you can simply write down in a journal entry. In effect, the journal itself becomes your confidant.

Though not offering the comforts of a human listener, journaling has some advantages of its own. Journaling can occur any time of day or night, and can go on for a long as you have pen and paper to spare. Unlike spoken venting which is lost forever once it leaves your mouth, you can look at your journal as a sort of self-monitoring tool. A review of your old journal entries reveals what problems you have succeeded in solving and what problems remain to work on.

The availability of online internet communities makes possible a new journaling format. You can join an online community, and vent your emotions to the small audience of members. You can do this any time of day or night, and, although other people get to read what you write, they are also able to comment on what you have written and provide valuable support or criticism.
Self-Soothing Techniques: Relaxation Methods, Progressive Muscle Relaxation, and Massage
Relaxation Methods. Negative emotion of any sort takes its toll on the body. Short, sharp emotions like anxiety and anger cause the body to tense up in preparation for action. Longer acting emotions like depression are associated with either tensions or fatigue. These muscular states are not mere products of the negative emotion, but rather are part and parcel of it. If you succeed in interrupting the muscular tension, you begin the process of defusing the negative emotion itself.

Several relaxation techniques have been developed which people can use to actively create a state of muscular and mental relaxation, even when they are wound up and tense. Many of these techniques work to create their relaxing effect by interrupting existing muscular tension states. Practice of these various relaxation strategies can help break down tension and promote a relaxed feeling state. Regular practice of these relaxation exercises can do something better, which is to help keep tension from returning.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation or PMR is a technique for creating muscular relaxation. It is safe and easy to do, costs nothing, and requires only a few minutes of privacy to make happen. PMR is based on two observations: 1) that muscles can be actively tensed, but not actively relaxed (relaxation depends on a "letting go" process, not a tension-producing one), and 2) that it is easier to relax and "let go" a muscle after it has just been tensed up, than it is to relax a muscle which has not been tensed up. A person practicing PMR first tenses and then lets go different muscle groups in sequence until they have tensed and then relaxed every muscle group in the body. By the end of the tension-relaxation cycle the body has entered into a deeper state of relaxation than would otherwise have been possible.

To perform PMR, lie down on the floor, or sit in a comfortable chair that supports your weight. Tense the muscles in your feet and hold them in tensions for about 10 seconds, being careful to not tense so tightly that cramps or pain occurs. At the end of the 10 seconds, release the tension and drop your feet, allowing them to come to rest as they will. Thereafter, do not try to occupy your feet, but rather leave them resting. When your feet have been tensed and then released, go on to the next muscle group, in this case, your thighs. Work through your entire body: feet, thighs, buttocks, stomach, chest, arms, neck, and then finally, facial muscles. When you have tensed and then released all the muscles in your body, take a survey of your body from the inside, using your attention to determine whether any new tension has crept into your feet, thighs, etc. while you were working the other parts. If you find tension during your survey, let it go as best you can. Lay there for a while enjoying the relaxation. Then, when you are ready, slowly start moving your muscles around again, reclaiming them. Get up when you are ready and go about your business. (think about doing an MP3 of PRM instruction). http://www.guidetopsychology.com/pmr.htm
Massage. The same principles that inform PMR also inform the practice of massage. Muscles are designed to create tension; they are not designed to efficiently relax. Muscular tension accumulates in the body in the form of chronically tensed muscles (often in the jaw, neck, shoulders, back, calves and feet). Some muscles may even develop spasms which are painful knots of contraction. Chronic muscular tension leads to a host of mental and physical problems, and can create negative mood states all by itself. Without intervention of some sort, there is little hope that this sort of chronic muscular tension will resolve on its own.

Therapeutic massage intervention involves having a trained masseuse exert pressure on the body to loosen up knotted muscles. There are several styles of therapeutic massage commonly practiced today. The most popular are Swedish and Shiatsu styles. Swedish massage style involves deep muscular manipulation (kneading and rubbing motions), while Shiatsu style involves manipulation of muscular pressure points. Both styles are effective so preference for one or the other tends to be a personal choice.

Massage is not a pure self-help method, simply because it cannot be easily performed on one's self. It is also a moderately expensive to expensive procedure (depending on where you go for massage). It is nevertheless a very effective and pleasant relaxation promoting technique and not one that most people think to partake of when they are upset. If you have the means to partake of massage when you are stressed or upset, consider doing so.

Self-Soothing Techniques: Autogenic Training and Yoga
Autogenic Training. Autogenic Training is a method for promoting a profoundly relaxed state of consciousness. The technique is very close to self-hypnosis; it is probably best considered a variation on the theme of self-hypnosis. It does not involve muscular contractions or other physical manipulation of the body as does PMR.

As is the case with self-hypnosis, autogenic training requires the practitioner to find a quiet and private spot where he or she can be alone for 20 or so minutes a day. Basically, the practitioner sits or lies down quietly and focused on inner experiences to the exclusion of outer ones. Practice starts with a breathing exercise probably adapted from yogic pranayama practice; while breathing deeply, breaths are exhaled slowly so that it takes twice as long to exhale as it does to breath in. This breathing exercise provides a centering feeling of peace and calm. Once the breathing portion of the program is done, the practitioner imagines inner sensations of heaviness and warmth in a guided fashion, and repeats suggestive phrases to this effect, "My right arm is feeling heavy". There is an entire recommended sequence of things to imaging and suggest to yourself which takes about two months to complete. The more you practice this technique, the better you become at entering into the calm and relaxed autogenic state.

A complete list of step by step instructions for autogenic training are available here

Biofeedback and Neurofeedback, discussed above, has a long history of use as a relaxation aide. (link to previous discussion of Biofeedback and Neurofeedback)
Yoga and Pranayama. To someone living in the developed world, yoga seems like a relatively new sort of exercise program that has a lot to do with stretching. In fact, yoga is part of a very old "self-help" sort of tradition going back literally thousands of years, which was (and still is) a means of spiritual practice in parts of India. The name yoga derives from the Sanskrit roots for "yoke" (as in the sort of wooden frame that might be placed onto horses to keep them walking in a straight line) as well as for "union". The various exercises and practices making up yoga were designed to tame the various forces inside the mind and body that want to walk in different directions and bring them together with a single purpose of becoming more holy. The system of physical yoga, known as Hatha Yoga, that has recently become popular is the most basic form of yoga designed to promote physical strength, flexibility and balance. The thinking was that physical fitness provides a foundation upon which mental and spiritual fitness can occur, and that it is therefore necessary to achieve a certain level of physical fitness before mental fitness is going to become an achievable goal. Regardless of whether you agree this is true there is no denying that the regular practice of Hatha Yoga provides its students with a wealth of benefits, among them opportunities for profound relaxation, improved mental and emotional control, and freedom from the aches and pains of aging.

The practice of hatha yoga involves the mastery of various physical postures, most of which are named in mimicry of animal motions or various images that suggest strength, flexibility or relaxation. "Downward Facing Dog", "Mountain Pose", and "Half Moon Pose" are three such names. A typical hatha yoga teacher will lead her students through a balanced range of these poses, lasting for about 90 minutes. The poses are deceptively simple to perform. It is relatively easy to approximate them, but months and years of gradually increasing strength and flexibility must occur before they can be mastered.
Yoga poses promote physical strength, balance and flexibility and do so in a gradual manner. These qualities improve slowly, over time. As they improve, so too does practitioners ability to relax deeply, to shrug off mild anxiety and depression states, and to feel more generally at ease in their own bodies.

In yoga, prana is a name given to the life force or spirit, which is thought to be allied with breathing. As students begin to master basic hatha yoga practices, they may be exposed to the practice of Pranayama, or breath manipulation. Pranayama students learn how to manipulate their breathing in a deliberate and conscious way. In so doing, they learn how to manipulate and control their emotions and mood states, for the two are quite distinctly linked in practice.

We are not aware of scientific studies validating the claims made for Pranayama. Nevertheless, our own limited experience would suggest that it is indeed a valuable practice for people seeking to learn how to control their moods to explore. Pranayama supposedly can be dangerous if taught or learned incorrectly and we have no basis upon which to dispute this sort of warning. The student is thus cautioned to only pursue the study of pranayama in its proper context (e.g., as an advanced part of traditional yoga study which must be preceded by mastery of a certain level of hatha yoga as taught by a qualified teacher). Our advice is to seek out a qualified yoga teacher and start at the beginning so that you get the full and properly balanced benefit of the marvelous teaching that is yoga
Self-Soothing Techniques: Meditation
Meditation. Most people have very little control over their minds. Though they can certainly take control when they need to, in order to concentrate on a project or problem, for instance, when they are not concentrating, their minds wander, daydream, and chatter incessantly. They want things, even things that are very impractical to want, or very dangerous. They worry about things, even things that are very unreasonable to worry about. These desires and worries greatly influence people's moods, especially the negative ones that people become motivated to change.
The mind's desires and worries wouldn't matter so much - wouldn't have so much power over people's moods - if they didn't take them seriously. Most people do take them seriously, however. They are identified with their thoughts and feelings - embedded in them - lacking in a certain kind of perspective necessary to understand that just because something feels urgent doesn't actually make it urgent.
Without this perspective, people become defined by and overly identified with their moment to moment desires and worries and spend their time running around endlessly trying to satisfy them - a truly thankless and impossible task.
Meditation techniques are designed to help people grow a larger perspective on the contents of their mind. With this perspective, people can move from being their moment to moment worries and desires, to having their moment to moment worries and desires. Instead of being worried, people can start to understand that they are experiencing a worrying feeling. The same old worries and desires are still there after growing the new perspective, but now they are things you can manipulate and choose whether to take seriously or not, rather than things that define you as a person. Because the new perspective allows you to view your mental landscape in a new and powerfully freeing way, it is sometimes referred to as the "witness consciousness
The term "meditation" refers to a family of methods; not to a single one. Any method that promotes the growth of the witness consciousness, the expanded perspective from which to view ones mind can be said to be meditation.
The most commonly used method for meditating could not be simpler to do. You simply sit on the floor with your legs crossed (or sit in a chair, or lay down, depending on what is comfortable), and then quiet yourself and remain there. This will feel incredibly unnatural at first. You will likely experience an urge to move around, to scratch, or to get up and do something. You may even experience some anxiety. This is okay. The nature of the task is to simply observe these urges and sensations as they occur, and then to let them go when they are no longer urgent. Don't act on these urges, but instead simply observe them. A variety of thoughts and feelings will parade through your mind making their usual demands; your task is to observe them rather than to respond to them. Hold on to nothing; just watch. If you get distracted and start acting on an urge, just note that this occurred and go back to your watching. Sit there and observe for 20 or so minutes (set a timer so you don't have to watch the clock - which will kill the experience). When the timer goes off, get up and go about your business.
Meditation is not something that will pay off quickly. In fact, it will take quite a long time of regular practice before you will "get it" and start feeling the benefits it has to offer. Practice meditating every day at a regular time, for a regular duration. Remain alert during your practice; do not go to sleep! Be patient. Ultimately, your perspective will start to evolve and you will grow more able to choose your moods and reactions instead of them choosing you. Meditation practitioners typically report feeling much calmer than they did prior to meditation, and much more focused and clear-minded. The stressful things that used to distract and torture them fall away.
More information on meditation is available here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation)
Self-Soothing Techniques: Distraction
Self-soothing methods help to sooth calm and relax you when you are upset. However, they are not the only reasonable approach to helping alter your unwanted moods. Sometimes, as the saying goes, a change is as good as a rest.
 Distraction. Distraction is a surprisingly effective technique for changing your mood. When you realize that you have become upset, choose to interrupt your negative mood by engaging in something that distracts you from what has upset you. For best results, the thing you engage yourself in as a means of distraction should be both absorbing and interesting to you. Doing this thing should either require your full attention, or be so absorbing of your attention that you will forget yourself. Watching a movie or TV show, surfing the net, reading a book, listening to (energizing) music, calling a friend, and exercising are good examples of the latter, while engaging in detail-oriented tasks like writing, programming, cleaning your house, weeding your garden, playing music or singing or otherwise being artistic, or organizing your files are examples of the former. You should do something you like doing if at all possible. Work can be a fine distraction if you like working or find it absorbing, but it won't work out well if you don't.

Distraction works because it interrupts your mood and forces you to "shift gears". Many negative moods contain an element of rumination to them. When you ruminate, you go over your problem or worry again and again in your mind. Each time you go over your problem or worry, you reinforce its grip on you. Distraction breaks this grip by forcing you to think about other things. If the thing you distract yourself with is sufficiently compelling or demanding of your attention, you will temporarily stop ruminating and start to feel better. Maybe not good, but better.

Distraction is not anything more than a temporary respite or reprieve from negative moods. It is not a permanent cure or fix and should not be thought of as one.

Some people feel a responsibility to their negative moods. Guilty or grieving people feel that they will be betraying someone or something if they stop feeling badly, for instance. If this is an issue for you, rest assured that your guilt or grief will return shortly. It is safe for you to distract yourself, because your pain will be waiting for you after a short break.

One reason why distraction is not more popular as a means of coping with negative moods is because it goes against conventional wisdom which suggests that you have to face down your troubling emotions before you can escape them. From this point of view, saying that its okay to distract yourself when you feel bad is akin to saying that denial is a good way of life. This is a false argument, however. It is true that a certain amount of facing or learning to accept negative emotions is a healing thing. The less you struggle against negative emotions, the less you have to feel badly about. It is also true that sometimes negative emotions can be overwhelming, and you really need a break from them. You need to find a personally appropriate balance between dealing directly with such moods and escaping from them in order to have the best chance of healing.
 Organization. A very good way to distract yourself productively is to do something to better organize your life. By organize your life we mean clean and order your living or working spaces, your personal calendar, the way you handle your finances, your computer, or the way you dress, exercise and generally carry yourself. Cleaning your house can be an incredibly empowering thing to do, especially when you are feeling bad. Typically, when you are feeling badly, you are also feeling out of control. Your internal state is often a reflection of your external state. When your environment is messy, you feel messy inside. When this is the case, any time you spend organizing your environment (your home or work environment, etc.) is also time you spend building up your own personal sense of control and accomplishment. Your efforts to organize your life are thus both distracting from your mood, and separately empowering and confidence building. It's a simple thing, but it works.
 Comedy and Humor. Another good way to distract yourself is to immerse yourself in comedy and humor. Watch a funny movie or TV show. Listen to a favorite comedian's routine. Read a funny book or magazine. Find something that will make you forget yourself and laugh out loud for a while.

When you're feeling anxious or down, you tend to have a rather grim face, and your thoughts, which are keyed to your emotions, are similarly grim. By laughing, you engage facial and body muscles associated with positive emotions. As these emotions are enacted, however temporarily, it will become slightly easier for you to remember positive thoughts and positive memories. It's a temporary effect, to be sure, but it can be a relief. Laughing also has a relaxing effect, and will help to reduce body tension.
Self-Soothing Techniques: Physical Exercise
Physical Exercise is an incredibly powerful and compact means of altering your mood. Regular physical exercise offers many of the benefits of the other techniques we've described for controlling moods. It distracts you by causing you to attend to your body sensations rather than to your agitated thoughts. It relaxes and physically exhausts you (after a workout is complete), helping you sleep soundly. It removes the kinks from your muscles and helps you to stay limber and strong. It elevates your mood directly (during and just after a workout) by increasing circulation of naturally occurring body chemicals known as endorphins. Finally, it increases your overall general health and stamina and strongly prevents the development of numerous disabling diseases that otherwise would make life difficult in later years. There is a certain amount of physical pain involved in exercise, but if you can get past that, the benefits are enormous.
An isolated exercise session will be useful for altering mood, mostly because it will be distracting and physically exhausting. However, for maximum benefit, including some prophylactic (preventative) protection from negative moods, exercise should be fairly vigorous and repeated multiple times per week.
Most all aerobic exercise, regularly practiced, will provide benefits.
 Calisthenics (jumping jacks, push-ups, sit ups, etc
 Exercise classes (Aerobics, Spinning, Jazzercize, Yoga, Pilates, etc.)
 Team sports (baseball, softball, rowing, golf, etc.)
 Solo sports (jogging, swimming, hiking, climbing, etc.)
 Working out with weights or "Nautilus" style machines.
 Martial arts
Yoga offers a particularly well balanced and designed exercise program for those who like it (provided that you pursue it regularly and progress through to intermediate classes where the poses begin to require strength to master).

See our article on how to create an exercise program for yourself for more information.
Before we leave this section entirely, we wish you to think about two different ways you can use these techniques for controlling your mood.
 You can use them (some of them anyway; the ones that don't require much practice) on an as-needed basis, pulling them out when you are feeling badly, and then putting them back away when you feel better. For instance, if you find that you get into a bad mood after dealing with a particular person or repeating event, you can use these techniques before you encounter that person, as a kind of inoculation (like a vaccine to keep you from getting the flu) so that your mood is less effected when you do encounter that person.
 You can also use them on a regular basis so as to gain a protective and preventative effect. When you regularly practice these techniques, you are simply less susceptible to negative moods. They will occur less frequently, and when they do occur, they will likely be less intense or at least shorter in duration. In effect, regular practice of these methods helps you build Emotional Resilience; an important topic on which we have much more to say in this separate document Emotional Resilience article.
As-needed usage of these techniques (the first way) are helpful for defusing your negative reaction to existing crises and problems. However, regular use of these techniques (the second way) gives you an opportunity for something even more precious; the opportunity to avoid feeling negative in the first place, or to feel less negative, for less time. If you have the time and attention to spare, you will be rewarded for your regular practice.
Chapter 7 - Changing Your Knowledge
Changing Your Knowledge, Skills and Abilities and Credentials
Knowledge, and skills are different but related sorts of things. Knowledge has to do with what you know; what you are aware of and what you understand about how things work and how things fit together. You may have come by knowledge first hand through life experience, or you could have taken it from books, websites and other means of recording. Skill or ability, on the other hand describes your ability to influence things; to take what you know and apply it so as to cause a real effect to occur. A certain amount of knowledge is a prerequisite of skill; you can't be skillful without first being knowledgeable However, you can easily be knowledgeable without being very skillful. Knowing something intellectually is a very different thing than knowing how to make practical use of knowledge.

When the world was young and people lived exclusively in small tribal and family groups everyone knew each other intimately. Everyone's areas of strength and weakness were common knowledge and there was no need for certification. The modern world is a far more complex place. Knowledge has become highly developed and specialized and it is no longer possible for one person to know it all, first of all. Secondly, it is now normal for people who are essentially strangers to one another to work together for the same employer. People need to have ways of demonstrating that they have mastered bodies of knowledge and skill to strangers who don't know them. Credentials, such as high school and university diplomas, professional certifications, and commercial licenses issued by trusted institutions and governments have become the way that people demonstrate their accomplishments to one another.

Life problems can be caused by a lack of knowledge, skills or ability, or credentials at most any stage of life. Your ability to learn more advanced knowledge and skill depends on your having first learned basic knowledge and skills. If you never are able to master basic knowledge and skills, your opportunities for further advancement will become very limited.
 As a young child you might struggle to learn to read. You may lack proper instruction, or have an undetected learning disability. You may be left back a grade, or be passed on without having mastered that important skill. You may reach adulthood without having mastered reading if your circumstances are not fortunate. Because reading is a prerequisite for later knowledge acquisition, your ability to learn further knowledge will be severely stunted and your access to opportunities in life that depend on this further learning may also become artificially limited.
 As a young person you may find yourself interested in someone as a potential romantic partner, but honestly not know how to approach them. Feeling unable to ask someone out on a date or make your feelings known for fear of making a fool of yourself can lead to painful self-doubt, a lack of self-worth feelings, and (if the situation does not resolve) years of lost time and experience that you cannot recover.
 As an adult you might be interested in performing a particular sort of work but lack knowledge, skill or credentials necessary to take on that sort of work. Being prevented from working in this manner may cause you to be depressed. If your lack of knowledge, skill or credentials is keeping you from working at all, you may find yourself hungry; an altogether worse situation.
 Also as an adult you may become depressed and then not know what to do to help yourself recover from that depression. Because you don't know what to do to cast off the depression, you may suffer with it for a longer than necessary time.
In all these cases, it is possible to improve your situation through study, practice, or enrollment in a credentialing program (assuming that you have access to the resources necessary to study, or practice, or enroll in a credentialing program). Studying helps you to gain the knowledge you lack, practice helps you to build and improve skills, and enrollment in a credentialing program (such as a college, university, or training institute) will, if you are able to stick with it for the duration, result in your being issued a credential that may open doors for you that were previously closed.
Skills such as reading are basic and should be mastered before you can help yourself to learn on your own. If you cannot read your first step towards improving your knowledge should be to learn how to read. Search the LiteracyDirectory.org website for assistance locating an adult literacy program near you. If a telephone is handier than the Internet, you can call the National Literacy Hotline at 1-800-228-8813 for similar referrals. Many communities have adult literacy programs offering assistance with reading and writing for native speakers and persons learning English as a second language.
If literacy is not an issue for you, you are faced with a different set of starting problems. You must figure out what to study; what body of knowledge you should learn in order to best fulfill your need or desire. You must also figure out whether you should peruse that course of study in a formal, public manner, which will result in your earning a certificate, or if you would be better off learning in a more private, relaxed self-study manner.

Personal Knowledge and Informal Learning
Some problems caused by a lack of knowledge or skill are purely personal in nature. They affect how you live your life, and solving them would make your life easier, but even if you do succeed in mastering skills necessary to overcome such problems, it is unlikely that anyone will ever ask you to prove that this is the case. Examples of purely personal problems like this might include not knowing how to behave during a date, or how to beat a depressed mood. Problems of this personal nature can be pursued independently by way of self-study.
There are many places you might look to learn about the area of knowledge you lack. You might:
 Search the internet for information on your topic (as you are currently doing).
 Search your local library or bookstore for books, workbooks and magazine articles relating to your topic. Obtaining a workbook and following the exercises described therein can be a particularly helpful thing to do.
 Take classes relating to your topic offered by local institutions and experts.
 Hire the services of a local teacher who is expert in your topic
 Join a club or attend a support group (local or online) relating to your topic so as to socialize with other people interested in addressing your topic.
These varying ways of learning about a given topic can be mixed and matched in different combinations as best fits your needs.
The first two suggestions above encourage you to study prepared written materials on your own, while the latter three encourage you to take a more social route and learn from others who are struggling with your issue or who have mastered it. Both types of knowledge (individual study and social study) are valuable. Individual study exposes you to ideas in an efficient and systematic manner that is unlikely to be available to you outside of a structured class. Alternatively, social opportunities for learning can help you to meet and form valuable relationships with other people who can expose you to new ideas, encourage you to read new authors or explore new techniques and methods, and provide you with opportunities (such as jobs !) that you would not otherwise have known about. The process of forming relationships with other people who share similar learning interests is known as Networking, and networking is very important.

A major advantage of pursuing a social path towards learning is that the people you interact with can help guide and motivate you to continue on your learning path. This is especially important when the going is rough and you would otherwise be easily discouraged. For example, alcoholics and other addicts who do not understand the practical things they need to do to reign in and control their drug use cannot generally hope to learn how to be sober on their own. Caught between cravings and withdrawal symptoms, such people are under enormous pressure to keep using. Their behavior is out of their control, and they really need a group of people around them to help them set limits for themselves. Formal rehabilitation and drug treatment programs and more informal twelve step style programs can help provide this needed limit setting in a way a book or internet site cannot.
Learning is a difficult process during the best of situations There are always complex choices to make. Having an experienced guide to help you navigate makes learning that much easier to complete. A Mentor is someone with more experience and knowledge than yourself who takes an interest in your growth and agrees to help guide your progress.
It is a good idea for people engaged in a learning process to seek out mentors to help guide their growth.

Mentors can offer their services on a formal or informal basis. They may volunteer their mentoring services, or receive compensation for them. Master tradespeople and professors who agree to take on apprentices are serving in a formal mentor role, as are sober sponsors who agree to sponsor new twelve step members. However, an experienced co-worker who provides friendly advice just because he or she likes you can also be thought of as a mentor. You can have one or more mentors at a time, or across your learning career. As you gain in mastery of your area of learning, you can help younger students by agreeing to mentor them.
Public, Documented Knowledge and Credential Programs
If your reason for wanting to learn knowledge and skills has to do with qualifying for a particular sort of work that interests you, you will almost certainly want to enter into a formal and accredited learning program that will result in your receiving a certificate such as a high school or college diploma or which will qualify you to sit for a license examination (such as a realtor's or a counselor's license). In other words, you'll have to go back to school.
School can be expensive and frustrating at any time of life. When you return to school as an adult it can be even more frustrating however, as you may have to balance the demands of your school program with other family or work demands. You may need to take out loans in order to afford school in the first place. School will take time away from other important areas of your life, including family and work. Also, it is likely that you will be required to take at least some classes that seem irrelevant to what you really want to learn. However you slice it, going to school will require sacrifice. What justifies sacrificing to attend school is that when you do so, you are investing in your future earning potential and happiness.

Like any investment, attending school and receiving a certificate diploma might pay off very well, or it might not; there is no guarantee For this reason, you should plan your school program very carefully before committing to it. Not all degrees are equal. Some degrees are much more sought after by potential employers than others. Some jobs that a degree may qualify you for are much more flexible in terms of the demands they place on your lifestyle than others. It's not a good idea to study something purely because it is enjoyable to you; doing so may make it very difficult to find a job when you leave school, thus defeating the purpose of attending at all from many people's point of view. You should have an idea of what the course of study will prepare you for before you commit yourself. Your choice of study should take all of your needs and the needs of your family, including your personal interests and your financial needs both, into account.

Learning Knowledge vs. Skill
In order to learn, you must study. In order to study, you must committing yourself to going over lectures, books, websites, other written materials, picking up the concepts and facts that are taught therein, and assembling them in your head into an integrated system that makes sense. You should emerge not with a random unconnected collection of facts, but rather with a unified understanding of how all the facts fit together in the area you are studying. You will know when you've mastered an area of study when you no longer have to rely on memorization of isolated pieces of knowledge in order to come up with correct answers, but instead are able to "see" the shape of those missing pieces in your head because the rest of the system implies them.
 Study Skills. Studying is a skill you learn how to do well; it is not inborn or instinctual, but rather takes practice and commitment to get right. Effective study habits help you retain what you learn and to organize what you learn into a system of knowledge. When you know how to study properly you tend to get better grades on tests of your knowledge than you do when you don't know how to study. More importantly, you tend to understand the material you study better (more completely) when you have studied it well vs. when you have not.

Some people are born smart and think they don't need to study. While in grade school, they don't have to study as much to get good grades as the other people around them who aren't so gifted. However, this advantage only lasts so long. When the material people study becomes more complicated and advanced (as it does when you attend college or graduate school), even smart people have to learn how to study if they are to do well. It is not a good idea to rely on being smart as a strategy for learning. At some point smart is not enough, and you have to learn to study properly if you are to make progress. You might as well learn how to study properly now.
 Here are some basic tips for studying properly and well:
 Make study a priority. You only have so much energy, and if you leave study for the last thing you do you will not have energy for it. Study during your "prime time" hours, when you are still energetic enough to engage. Do not study when you are tired or fatigued.
 Quiet your mind before you begin a period of study. Do what you can to put your other concerns and worries down for a time and allow yourself to focus exclusively on the material you need to learn
 Schedule frequent and regular periods of study; every day if possible and roughly at the same time of day. It is better to study a little bit every day than a whole lot once per week. Studying frequently keeps material fresh in your mind and helps you to organize it. Scheduling your study period at a regular time helps you to make it a priority.
 Make notes as you listen to lectures or read. When you are done reading, take your notes and then re-write them so that they make more sense and restate what you've learned. It is a real "pain-in-the-butt" to do this rewriting, but it truly helps you retain and organize what you are learning. The more you "process" and organize the material you're learning, the more completely you will learn it.
 Work out the steps to any problems you need to calculate or reason through in order to solve. Most textbooks show only partial solutions to problems. If you accept what they offer you, you will have memorized the solution, but not understood why and how it works. Don't be satisfied with mere memorization. Instead, work through the steps until they make sense to you. If they don't make sense to you despite your efforts, seek the aid of a more experienced student or teacher who can help you see what you are missing.
 Where and when you don't understand things, ask questions until you do.
 Don't allow yourself to procrastinate. Do your homework in advance of when it is due. Start papers and other assignments in advance of when they are due, especially when they aren't due for some time.
 If your teacher is a poor communicator, either fire your teacher and find a new one who is a better communicator, or hire some other teacher on the side to help you comprehend what you are learning.
Learning Knowledge vs. Skill: Practice
Knowledge can be studied, but skills you desire to learn or improve must be practiced. You have to practice - to do - skills in order to learn them. This is because, generally knowledge is something you learn mentally and abstractly, while skills involve some amount of physical coordination, or experiential learning to take place. Skills are connected to the world and allow you to manipulate the world, while knowledge is more intangible. Skills you can learn include: how to speak in public, how to build a house or fix a leaky washer on a faucet, how to make a web page, how to ask out someone on a date, and how to cook a meal. You can learn such skills or others in a class or group, or from a description printed in a book or web page - but they won't help you and you won't learn them unless you practice them.
The old saying, "Practice Makes Perfect" is only partially correct. It is very much true that the more you practice something, the easier it will become. However, there is not necessarily a relationship between how often you practice and how well you execute a given skill. It is entirely possible for you to learn a skill incorrectly, or to introduce bad habits and poor form into a skill you spend a lot of time practicing. Bad habits or poor form may endanger you at a later time. For this reason, it is a good idea to get an experienced person who has mastered the skills you are pursuing to periodically view your practice and give you corrective feedback so that you stay on the right path while learning.
If you don't have access to an expert, you can become your own expert by videotaping or recording your performance and then critiquing it during playback. Practice only makes perfect to the extent that you practice correctly!
New skills you practice will very likely feel odd when you first attempt them. You will be trying to do something new, and you may be uncoordinated at first, or feel self conscious. The more you practice, the more such feelings will recede

It is one thing to practice by yourself or with a small group; it is another entirely to perform a skill in public situations. It is quite common to feel some anxiety or "stage fright" the first couple times you perform a skill in real life situations Anxiety can be distracting and it can keep you from smoothly executing the skill you've learned. You can loosen the effect of anxiety on your performance (and lessen your anxiety at the same time), by practicing your particular skill over and over and over again in a process called Overlearning. When you overlearn you deeply ingrain action routines and habits necessary for your skill performance into your brain so much so that they become independent of you having to think about them in order to perform them. Once overlearning has occurred, it doesn't matter that your mind becomes clouded with anxiety and you get distracted, because your performance no longer requires you to think clearly.

For best results you should practice in as close to real-life conditions as you can. For example, if you are practicing a stage performance, you should practice on the actual stage you will perform on if at all possible. If you are practicing faucet repair, you should practice taking apart an actual faucet again and again until it becomes second nature.
If it is not possible to practice in a realistic setting, you will still benefit from practicing. Simply practice in as close to a realistic situation as you can, and use your imagination to fill in the gaps.
Time Management and Organization
Many people are discouraged from trying to learn new knowledge or skills because of time issues. They already feel that their lives are too busy and they don't see how it is possible to fit more commitments into their already jammed schedules. Other people take an overly laid-back approach to new knowledge acquisition. They sign themselves up for classes and programs and then don't take those classes and programs seriously. They show up late for class, or study in a haphazard manner. They may procrastinate with regard to assignments. At the end of the semester (when the course is over) they wonder why their grades are so low!

Both types of people described above might benefit from improving their time management and organization skills.

The first type of people (who shy away from new challenges because they are "too busy") might actually be able to make the necessary time available if they participate in a values clarification session (so as to figure out whether new learning might be more important than other current commitments), and then (if it is more important to learn), a careful rearrangement of current commitments and responsibilities so as to move aside things that are less important and make room for learning. Normally scheduled events (like preparing dinner, or paying bills, or child care) might be able to be put off for a while, or given over to someone else in the family so as to make room for school a few nights per week, for example.

The second type of people (who take an overly laid back approach to learning) might do much better in their chosen programs if they actually made school a priority, attended class on schedule and studied regularly (as our study skills section recommends). Many things can be accomplished in life when you prioritize them, and then take them seriously enough to see that they get done in a timely manner
Time management skills boil down to awareness, organization and commitment. You need to become aware of and record everything you're doing so that important things get done on time and nothing has a chance to sneak up on you. You also need to commit to keeping your schedule, and not wandering off when something more momentarily interesting occurs. Time management and organization skills are applicable to a wide range of life tasks you might decide to take on. They will benefit you broadly in what ever you might do.
The awareness part of time management corresponds to self-monitoring methods from our section on habit change. In this case, what you need to self-monitor are your commitments and how much time you spend on them. Commitments are appointments, or things you have to do like errands, or attending a class. They are also the things you choose to do when you are avoiding your actual commitments (such as spending time hanging out with your friends). Some commitments are predictable and follow a formal schedule, while others are informal and occur more spontaneously. You have explicit commitments (like classes and times you need to pick your children up from day care) and also implicit commitments (like the time you'll need to put in studying for tests, or researching and preparing presentations). Make sure you schedule time for both commitment types!
Time Management and Organization: Commitment Mapping
In order to get a grip on your many commitments, you need to map them all out, and then monitor how much time you spend on each one. With this data in hand, you'll be able to figure out what you are spending too much time on and what needs more of your time. Prioritize your tasks in order of importance, feeling free to delete those that aren't important or won't get you ahead in life, and adding those that will help you advance your agenda. Be sure to leave yourself adequate time in between commitments so that you can get from one to another.
People typically have many commitments, and only one tiny brain. In order to keep all of your commitments in memory at any given moment, it is absolutely essential that you write them down in a day planner (nice!) or on index cards (cheap!), or record them into an electronic Personal Data Assistant (or PDA) such as a Palm Pilot or Windows ® CE device. PDAs have many nice features, not the least of which is that you can set alarms on commitments you record therein so that you'll have a warning before they start. Inexpensive PDAs can be purchased for under $100 USD at most electronic stores.

Once you meet a commitment (e.g., attend that class, make that telephone call, pay that bill) check it off your list of commitments. Reschedule any commitments you weren't able to make on a given day for the next day, so that you don't miss any entirely.

As you go through your days, opportunities will come up that you'll want to take advantage of. Some things can't be planned. You will also find that ideas come to you for things you'd like to do. If you can write down your idea and then act on it later, when you can make time for it, then do so (don't engage it at the expense of your regular commitments!). Otherwise, take advantage of the new opportunity and rearrange your schedule so that it fits your new priorities.

As much as time management is about regimenting your life and sticking to that regimen, it is also about finding ways to make your life simpler and less complex. The more commitments you can throw out, the more time you have to devote to what is important. So time management also includes things like:
 Learning to say assertively say "no" to people who ask you to take on inconvenient non-emergency responsibilities. (link to discussion of Assertiveness Training in this article)
 Altering cherished family roles as necessary to meet goals. For example, if you usually prepare a family meal, don't feel obligated to do so on nights when you have to study - use a prepared salad instead or some take out, or ask your spouse to to the honors that evening.
 Learning to let go of "status" and "highest quality" in favor of "convenient" to the extent that doing this does not compromise your values! There really are good reasons to go out of your way for quality sometimes (for instance, organic and whole grain foods really are better for your health than conventionally grown and refined foods). Sometimes you will decide that it it is worth the extra time or expense it might cost to meet a commitment in a quality way, and sometimes you will note that nothing serious is compromised if you do a little less (for instance, it's okay to shop at the local grocery rather than the one across town, because even though you might pay more at the local grocery, it takes less time).
Because any rearrangement of your commitments will affect the people you live with and who depend upon you, you should make it a point to coordinate any changes you make with them, and see if you can't get everyone's buy-in for those changes. Making room for new commitments and rearranging old ones generally feels like a sacrifice to other people involved who will be getting less of your attention then they are used to. Don't try to hide this fact, but instead talk about the benefits of what you will be doing; how going back to school will make it easier for you to get a better job which will improve everyone's lives, for instan