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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
“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….
They say that the more you struggle in quicksand, the quicker you’ll sink, and the less you struggle, the better your chances are to get yourself out safely. Your density is half that of the quicksand. Physics says you should float. The difference is how much you struggle. The more you move, the more you…
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…