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…
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…
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you don’t find yourself, you create yourself, and that takes effort, direction, and time. Not just a summer, not just a sabbatical, it takes years of consistent, deliberate work pointed in a direction that matters to you. The person you want to become isn’t waiting to be discovered somewhere on a…
You have a limited number of good decisions in you each day. After that, the quality of your decisions starts to suffer, and the dangerous thing is you won’t always notice it happening until after you’ve already made those bad choices. That’s the nature of decision fatigue: it degrades your thinking precisely when your thinking…
Have you ever asked yourself if your stress is a real thing? I’ve been a doctor for over 30 years, and I’ve never seen stress appear on a blood test or under a microscope because it has no physical form. You can’t weigh it, scan it, or generally prescribe something to take it away. Stress…
This lesson is all about the concept of boundaries in your life; on one hand, they are meant to be pushed, on the other, they create a place of safety within their walls. I see a lot of self-help literature that tells you, in no uncertain terms, to live a life without limits, to tread…
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…
Nothing in your life is 100% certain. Not your job. Not your health. Not your relationships. Not your plans for next week. You know this. You’ve always known this. But you spend an enormous amount of energy pretending it’s not true. My work as a GP puts me face to face with uncertainty every single…
Most people who struggle to make progress aren’t struggling because they lack intelligence, talent, or desire. They’re struggling because they’re trying to do it alone, surrounded by the wrong people, in groups that are quietly working against them. We’ve already looked at some of the internal hurdles that keep you stuck: the stress that quietly…
Everything is your fault. That’s what you tell yourself. The argument with your partner, your fault. Your colleague’s bad mood, your fault. Your friend’s disappointment, your fault. The weather’s ruined the party, somehow, also your fault. You go through life saying sorry for things you didn’t do, taking responsibility for events you couldn’t control, and…