Reactance bias can help or hinder us in life. Use it the right way, and it’s a powerful driver. Get it wrong, and we’re going to stubbornly hang on to the bad stuff in our lives just because we can. Let me tell you a story that shaped my entire career. When I was a…
There is no shortage of self-help material. Books, courses, podcasts, seminars, apps, coaches, therapists. The industry is enormous, and it keeps growing. And yet the number of people who feel genuinely stuck, who can’t seem to change despite real effort, who try one approach after another and end up back where they started, doesn’t seem…
In this article, we’re going to discuss the subject of worry, and specifically we’re going to talk about worrying excessively and the harm that this mental trait can cause. Because here’s what I need you to understand right from the start: worry is useful in small doses and unhelpful in large ones. There are things…
Have you ever driven somewhere familiar, arrived at your destination, and realised you can barely remember the journey? You stopped at the right junctions. You indicated at the right moments. You navigated the route correctly. But consciously? You were somewhere else entirely. Thinking about work, replaying a conversation, planning your evening. The driving just happened….
The last lesson talked about worry, and this feels like an ideal time to discuss the four big emotional drivers behind our worry and how these can affect our thinking more broadly. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: your emotions are running the show far more than you’d like to admit. The four emotional drivers that…
I want to tell you about a patient I saw in my consulting room. He was a smoker, had been for decades, and wasn’t interested in stopping. We’d had the conversation more than once. The health risks were well established and he knew them. But he had an answer ready every time. His grandfather had…
You know them. Maybe you are one of them. The naysayers, the pessimists, the complainers, the negative people who cast gloom around them everywhere they go. These unfortunate souls live in a world seeing only what’s wrong and what could go wrong. They’re constantly scanning everything around them for something negative to comment on, and…
A few years ago, I worked with a patient who was struggling badly with anxiety. Not the occasional nerves most people experience before something important, but a persistent, debilitating pattern that was affecting her work, her relationships, and her confidence. At the centre of it was a physical experience she’d come to dread: the racing…
You’re stuck, though maybe you don’t realise it yet. Maybe you’re convinced you’re making progress, working incredibly hard and wondering why nothing’s changing. Either way, something’s not working, and that’s why you’re here. Here’s the uncomfortable truth I need you to hear. Getting the life you want almost always means making changes, and inevitably you’ll…
You’re here because you want something to change. Maybe it’s your job. Maybe it’s your health. Maybe it’s the constant nagging feeling that you’re capable of more, but somehow stuck exactly where you are. Whatever it is, reading this tells me you’re serious about making it happen. Good. That’s the first step. Now here’s the…