This course is based on the assumption that workings of the mind, brain, and environment must all be taken into consideration when working to understand and improve human experience. The ways we understand our personal capacities, interpersonal connections, and social resources have an important influence on how we actually function in the world. In other words, our expectations or personal assessments bear on how we feel, what we do, and how others respond to us. At the same time, the options (or lack of options) that we encounter in our lives shape these personal meanings. Given this perspective, the course focuses on ways to help individuals reduce problems and reach their goals by helping them reconsider what things mean or could mean and by working actively to open up real options in their lives. Although the class is organized around a cognitive orientation to direct practice, it goes beyond traditional models of cognitive therapy by explicitly considering the social sources of negative meanings that many of our clients confront as well as integrating more recent research findings in attention, emotion, and mindfulness.