You want to change. You know you need to change. Maybe you’ve read the books, made the plans, set the goals. But when you try to actually do something different, your brain puts up a fight. Every single time. Often inconsistency-avoidance tendency is to blame, and it’s often the reason change feels so bloody difficult…
Give someone a little extra and often they barely notice, but try to take something away and you’ll fight like your life depends on it to get it back. That’s deprival super-reaction, and it’s probably controlling more of your decisions than you realise. We don’t react the same way to loss and gain. Have a…
You’re going to be fine. That’s what you tell yourself, you’re less likely to get lung cancer even though you smoke. You’re less likely to have a car accident even though you text while driving. You’re less likely to fail even though you haven’t prepared, you’re going to be the exception to the rule. That’s…
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…
Nobody likes being wrong. That’s not a character flaw. It’s human, but some people take it further. They don’t just dislike being wrong, they can’t tolerate it. They’ll move heaven and earth to avoid being proven wrong, to reframe the evidence, to find anyone who agrees with them. Then they make a critical error, they…
Would you rather have £90 today or £100 in a month? Have you ever thought about how long it would take for that decision to change? Most of you would take the £90. Right now. Guaranteed. In your hand today. And honestly, that’s exactly the response your brain is designed to give you. It feels…
In the last lesson, we talked about habitual inertia and how we want to build good habits that trigger automatically, without thinking. This happens when our mind connects a trigger with a practised response or behaviour. If this habit or response is practised enough, it happens under the radar of our consciousness. You don’t think…
Sometimes the only way to move forward is to first let go of what’s holding you back. And what’s holding you back isn’t usually what you think it is. It’s not the lack of opportunity. Not the missing motivation. Not even the circumstances you blame. It’s the negative event from last week, last month, or…
You consistently label yourself. Maybe you don’t realise you’re doing it, but you do. You look at yourself through the same stereotypes you use to judge everyone else, and in doing so, you can inadvertently put yourself in a box that you’ve never consciously chosen. Let me explain the problem with this in a little…
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…