Are You a Silent Prisoner of Shame?
If I were to name one thing that has the most impact on a person’s happiness and experience of life, it would be their self-worth. Our level of self-worth affects everything – from our health and relationships to our careers and financial abundance. So, let me ask, where do you stand on the spectrum of self-worth? Do you feel good about yourself? Do you love and accept yourself, warts and all? Or are you ‘self-rejecting’, always finding reasons to feel bad about yourself? If it’s the latter, I invite you to read on …
How to Stay Sane during These Unpredictable Times
I hope you are keeping well, safe and, quite frankly, sane. We are living in unprecedented times, and there is a lot of fear, confusion and uncertainty in the air. If you’ve worked with me, you’ll know that I take a holistic approach to problem solving life’s challenges. Here are some practical mental, emotional and spiritual tips to help you stay calm, balanced and empowered through the current coronavirus crisis …
How to Find the Limiting Beliefs You Are Holding
It is said that we are what we believe ourselves to be. Our beliefs are so powerful that they create our reality. They shape our thinking, our feelings, our behaviour, the actions we take or do not take – and as a consequence our experience of life. Holding positive beliefs about ourselves serves us well. They cause us to feel good; they empower us and fuel healthy behaviours. Limiting beliefs, on the other hand, undermine our well-being. They fuel unhealthy emotions and …
Where’s Your Problem Really Coming From?
Every day in my practice I work with people who are smart, empowered and committed to bettering their lives. They may be facing challenges, but they show up to appointments, and they invest time, money and energy on their personal growth. Usually, they’ve appeared at my door because their situation has come to a head. They’re feeling distressed, confused and unhappy and need some external support to work through their issues. One of the things I bring to the table is …
Natural Ways to Lift Your Mood
Let me ask, do you feel helpless when you’re going through a tough time and feeling down? As if there’s nothing you can do to get yourself out of that state? We’d all like to feel good all of the time, but, inevitably, we go through periods when we feel demotivated and irritable, or worse unhappy and upset. I can recall a time in my younger life when I struggled to manage my emotional state. Feelings of tension and unease were my constant companions …
How to Get over Rejection
I witness a lot of heartache in my therapy work. One of the biggest causes is rejection. The circumstances may be different: for one person it’s being told by their spouse of twenty-five years that he or she wants a divorce, for another it’s not being asked out on a second date; for someone else it’s not getting the job they wanted after an interview, or being slighted by a close friend; rejection comes in many forms. But the feelings that arise from it are always the same: pain, anger, disappointment, self-doubt, sadness and despair. I’m pretty sure you can relate to these feelings …
How to Recognise the Toxic People in Your Life
You probably know as well as I do that the quality of our relationships directly affects the quality of our lives. Healthy relationships are good for us. They have a positive effect on our mental and physical health, enhance our lives, help us grow into better versions of ourselves, and even cause us to live longer. Unhealthy relationships are not good for us. They have an adverse effect on our mental and physical health; they diminish the quality of our lives, cause us pain and hurt, and degrade us. People who value their inner peace and happiness always keep their relationships under regular review …
How to Not Take Things so Personally
You may recall that last month I began a series of newsletters focusing on the personal habits of happy people. Happy people tend to think and behave in ways that allow them to feel peaceful and content, no matter what’s going on around them. With a little effort, we can all learn to do this. The first of these habits, which I wrote about last time, was letting go of grudges. This month I’m going to focus on happiness habit two: how to not take things too personally. I think you’ll agree that many people struggle with this one. Someone says or does something, and before you know it your mood has plummeted and you’re upset or angry …
How to Let Go of a Grudge
Do you know that you can learn to be happy? And that ultimately happiness is a choice that you make? Sure, there are circumstances in life that can strip you of your contentment, joy and wellbeing, but most of the time the only person stopping you being happy right now is you. It’s amazing how many people spend a large proportion, if not all, of their lives waiting to be happy, as if it’s some elusive thing far off in the distant future that’s dependent on health, wealth, status and perfect relationships. But happiness doesn’t come from these things. It comes from within …
How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Do you constantly compare yourself to other people? Do you often find yourself thinking that other people have more than you or are better than you? The comparison game is as old as humanity itself. I guess we all want to know how we measure up to other people. This drive is a part of our innate desire to understand ourselves, and our place in society. In recent times, however, social comparison has risen to a whole new level thanks to social media. It’s almost become an epidemic. Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” And he was right …
How to Handle Overwhelm
Overwhelm. I bet you’ve been there; the times when you’ve almost been immobilised by having too much to do and too little time to do it in. I know I have. Very many times in fact, especially when I was younger. Life is a constant juggling act, and every now and again we are all faced with the fear that we have more on our plates than we can handle. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that there’s nothing worse than that sickening feeling that arises when you think the intensity of your thoughts and emotions is about to get the better of you …
How to Cultivate Greater Self-Worth
Humour me for a moment and imagine that you have the power to clone yourself so that there are now two identical versions of you out there in the world. Now, let me ask you a question. If you were to meet this other ‘you’ would you be good friends? Would you like ‘you’? I often ask my clients this question and their response gives me an insight into how they see themselves. Their answer tells me a lot about their sense of self-worth and their self-esteem in that moment. Self-worth is defined as “the sense of one’s own value or worth as a person”. Self-esteem is defined as …
Alleviate Suffering by Changing Your Perspective
I don’t know what’s been going on with the planet’s energy patterns recently, but these last few months have been tough. Have you found that too? I certainly have. I’ve seen difficult issues surface in my own life, my family’s lives and in my clients’ lives. Everyone seems to be sicker, more fearful, and more distressed than usual. At the end of March I was told I was burnt out, so I took heed and had a complete break from everything: this did me immense good. I now feel like I’m getting back to my usual positive and energetic self. The time out not only allowed me to regenerate and rejuvenate …
How Much Power Do You Think You Have Over Your Life?
The concept of personal power is one that I deal with a lot in my work. Put simply, this is the degree of influence a person feels they have over their experience and circumstances in life. One of the key goals of therapy is to move a person from a place of disempowerment to a place of empowerment. A disempowered person believes they have no control or power over their circumstances and experience of life. An empowered person believes that they do. When I begin working with a new client one of the first things I do is ….
How to Transform Your Emotional State through the Power of Reframing
Can you recall the last time you felt bad about something in your life? Do you remember how you felt - and why you felt that way? What would you say if I told you that you could have used a simple technique to instantly transform your emotions and feel better? And that it’s something you can easily learn to do. One of the greatest shifts I made on my own personal development journey was to realise that everything I experienced in life was actually happening entirely in my own mind and body …
How to Resolve Inner Conflict and Find Peace
One of the key things I look out for in my work with clients is inner conflict. It is fascinating how much warfare goes on inside a person. It is also disturbing because this sort of tension, left unchecked, inevitably creates emotional turmoil and dis-ease. Can you relate to this scenario? You are lying in bed, warm and cozy when the alarm goes off. You want to stay exactly where you are but a voice in your head starts nagging you to get up. You resist it for a short while but it continues to get louder and louder …
What Should We Tell Our Sons?
If there is one message that any young man who would like to feel happy, healthy and content needs to internalise, it is to let go of other people’s expectations. As parents it is often our expectations of our sons that have the potential to cause them the most harm. Young men are bombarded with “You should…” messages from an early age. These messages are always well-intentioned, and can include expectations on their behaviour, friendships, academic achievement, relationships, career choices and social activities …
The 7 Myths about Counselling
Take a moment and cast your mind back over your life. Would you say that your life has been completely trouble free? Do you know anyone who has lived a totally problem-free life? A person who has never faced a difficulty, a challenge, a distressing experience or a significant life change such as bereavement, divorce, redundancy or illness? I certainly haven’t lived such a life, or know of anyone who has. The business of living can be tough at times. We all experience family …
The One Habit that Could Keep You Out of Therapy
It takes a lot for a person to seek support and, even more, to pay for it. We all do a great job of handling the issues in our lives by ourselves. Until, that is, it all gets too much and we reach crisis point; something happens that shakes us to the core and we discover that we simply can’t deal with it anymore. I see this all the time in my practice. It is the life crises that bring people to the services that I offer …
Feel-Good Factor Tip: Have a Clear-Out!
Pick one cupboard or area of your house that is full of clutter. Get four boxes and label them: ‘rubbish’, ‘recycle’, ‘sell/donate’, and ‘deal with’. Take everything out of the cupboard. Clean the space. Take each item and decide whether it needs to go into one of the four boxes or be put back into the cupboard. Ensure that the things going back into the cupboard are neatly arranged …