Some people believe luck is a mystical force, a kind of invisible favour that gets distributed to the chosen few and withheld from everyone else. An explanation for why some people seem to have everything handed to them while you’re left grinding away with nothing to show for it. I understand the appeal of that…
This article is about conditions of worth — a term coined by the psychologist Carl Rogers for something most of us carry without ever naming it: the terms other people set, usually without meaning to, for when we’re allowed to feel good about ourselves. Rogers’ idea, from his 1959 theory of personality, is that from…
The simple way of thinking about the law of diminishing returns is what happens when you reach the point where the effort you’re putting in is no longer worth what you’re getting out. Sometimes in life you just keep going, grinding way beyond that point, and you need to stop and ask yourself an honest…
“Try to pose for yourself this task, not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.” Dostoevsky wrote that in 1863, and whether it be polar bears or purple elephants, often when we don’t want to think of something the reverse happens and…
Feedback is said to be the food of champions. It’s a key to successful practice and an essential part of how any learner actually improves, that’s why higher level performers in almost any field actively look for feedback. Not because they enjoy being told what’s wrong with them, but because they’ve worked out that without…
We talked about failure in the last chapter, this lesson is about the other F word and that is Fear. Fear is that primitive, hardwired drive that’s been keeping humans alive since before we had language to describe it. Fear is one of the most powerful emotions you have. It sharpens your senses, floods your…
Everyone fails at some time in their lives and failure hurts, it undoubtedly leaves scars, mentally and emotionally. Every day of my working life I see people sitting opposite me telling me about something that has failed in their lives, their relationships, their body, their treatment, their marriage, their business, or something else in their…
Perhaps you’re making the same mistakes over and over again. You know you are. Same arguments with your partner. Same problems at work. The same patterns repeating themselves in your life. The same poor decisions leading to the same disappointing outcomes. Why? Because you’re not reflecting. You’re just repeating. Reflection in its simplest terms is…
You perform at the level expected of you. Not at the level you’re capable of, not at the level you want to reach, at the level others expect from you, and more importantly, at the level you expect from yourself. That’s the Pygmalion Effect in action, and it’s either working for you or against you…
You’ve lost something along the way. Not your keys or your phone, something bigger than that, something you had as a child, but you don’t have anymore, chances are you’ve lost your curiosity. When you were five, you asked questions constantly, why is the sky blue? Where do babies come from? What happens when we…