When to Regulate?

Strike while the iron is cold.

It’s generally most effective to use your ‘regulation tools’ before you need then, than it is to wait until everything is going sideways.

This is a bit like how a person rides a bike– they make a lot of small, constant adjustments to keep themselves upright and balanced. They do not wait until they are almost falling off the bike to correct. Instead, they do it a little bit all the time.

To do this, practice noticing the very beginning whispers of starting to feel stressed. Then attend to it right away, when it’s tiny. Attending to it might be as simple as noticing and naming it. For example, “I feel annoyed because the Wellington summer has been cold so far and I miss going to the beach.”