You overvalue things simply because they’re yours. I’ve got a wardrobe full of clothes I haven’t worn in years. Won’t wear this year. Probably won’t wear next year either. But I can’t throw them away. Why? Because they’re mine, and I like to hang onto stuff. That’s the endowment effect in action. You hang onto…
Your life × doing zero = zero progress. That’s the Zero Law. Simple mathematics with profound implications for your life. I’m not a mathematician. I’m a GP. But I remember enough from school to know that any number multiplied by zero equals zero. n × 0 = 0. Always. No exceptions. And this basic mathematical…
You’re driving forward whilst staring backwards. That’s the problem. People often tell me they want to change their life, lose weight, quit smoking, sort out their anxiety. Great. Brilliant. Let’s do it. We make a plan, and weeks later I ask them what they’ve been doing since we last spoke. They look sheepish, because they…
I had my foot down on the accelerator. Engine revving. Going nowhere. Not a metaphor. Actually happened one morning. Driving to work, engine screaming, but the car wasn’t moving. Or rather, it was moving, but painfully slowly. Like pushing through mud. Then I realised. Schoolboy error. The handbrake was still on. That’s the feeling I…
“How do I tell my wife?” That’s what he asked me. Not “Am I going to die?” Not “How do we beat this?” Not “What do I do now?” Just “How do I tell my wife?” I’d just told him he had cancer. He was a man’s man. The one everyone leaned on. The provider….
Sometimes, in new situations, it’s really common to feel like you’re faking it. You’ve done the work. You’ve passed the exams. You’ve got through the interview, you’ve got the job, even the qualifications to prove you’re competent. Yet there’s this persistent voice in your head whispering that you’re a fraud, that someone’s going to find…
You took the first step. Congratulations. That was the hard part, right? Wrong. You’re still early in your journey. You’ve got to the starting blocks, you’ve taken the leap, and now you’re continuing to move forward in the new situation you find yourself in. Before long, something will start to become clear. This new situation…
You’ve finally done it. You’ve taken that big leap into what feels like the deep end. Something big, and perhaps something that felt brave at the time and now feels increasingly like it might have been stupid. Maybe you’ve left a job. Started a business. Ended a relationship. Moved to a new city. Signed up…
You’re Not the Same Person Who Started This Course Think back to where you started. Maybe a week ago, maybe longer. Think about the version of you who opened this course for the first time, probably with that familiar mixture of hope and quiet scepticism that you’ve felt before, the part of you that wanted…
There’s a simple equation that’s been used for years when working with top athletes, helping them achieve peak performance. Tim Gallwey first framed this as Performance = Potential − Interference in The Inner Game of Tennis, and John Whitmore built modern coaching practice on it in Coaching for Performance. It’s one of the most useful…