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Everyday meaning The busy-ness of life can deplete your batteries without you even knowing until you suddenly find yourself exhausted and unable to function. When your emotional batteries are charged, you have access to a sense of fulfilment and purpose that may result in happiness. This is what we call “flourishing”. You can charge your emotional batteries in many ways but one way is to find purpose in the tasks you do every day. Something as fundamental as doing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, or pulling weeds has meaning. Look for meaning in the small things and you recharge your batteries, allowing meaning to flourish everywhere.…

Small grieving In the scheme of things, a friend cancelling a coffee date is not a major tragedy. It is not a disaster when you finally find the exact style of trivet you were looking for online, only to discover that they are out of stock. Finding out that a few people from the office went to the races on the weekend but did not invite you is not world shattering, but it does hurt. There are many instances of small harm that happen in life but if you dismiss them, they accumulate and become problematic. Allow yourself to grieve the small things. Don’t wallow but acknowledge your loss or sense of sadness and make a gesture like buying a plant for your desk or writing a short poem. Grieving…

Gentleness is power that is also soft, nobility that is also humble, sweetness that is also intelligent, subtlety that is striking, and fragility that has the strength to transform the world around it. What do you think of when you think of “gentleness”? If your thoughts go towards weakness and meekness, then you are not alone. In a world where aggressive assertion of strength is applauded, gentleness can seem, superficially, to be at best ineffective and at worst pathetic. To see gentleness this way, however, is to not see it at all. Philosophers and psychologists have done a lot of work around gentleness and they see it as immensely powerful, now more than ever. Philosopher and psychoanalyst Anne Dufourmantelle wrote that gentleness can be an extraordinary force for change in…

Human kindness, human generosity and human rationality are at least as ubiquitous as injustice, but we focus on the negative far too easily. Life is not fair. You do not need to look too far to see this is true. There are countless instances of injustice for you to see every day. People betray other people in the workplace. Children are struck down with disease. Dreadful human beings gain wealth and are elected to political office. Inequity is entrenched in society. Injustice is everywhere and if you wait for a just world to live in then you will never start living. You must learn to cope with injustice, and the good news is that philosophers have been thinking about how you can do this for thousands of years. Justice is……

When you see a star performing on stage or on screen, it is tempting to think that the performance is easy for them. For some it may be, but many superstars have admitted to experiencing anxiety prior to a performance. Taylor Swift said, “In my opinion the only way to conquer stage fright is to get up on stage and play.” Andrea Bocelli admitted, “Stage fright is my worst problem. A voice is very intimate. It’s something of your own. So, there’s always this fear, because you feel naked. There’s a fear of not reaching up to expectations.” Actress and model Britt Ekland revealed, “As for the stage fright, it never goes away. When I’m waiting in the wings to go on it’s agony every single time.” Many other stars…

Trust your intuition There will be times as you seek to grow and learn when you are beyond the power of reason to help you. Sometimes decisions will have to be made when you are so far from what you intellectually know that you have to resort to some other form of decision making. At these times, your intuition is an invaluable ally. The great philosopher and psychoanalyst Carl Jung said that intuition is perception via the unconscious. The Greek philosopher Plato regarded intuition as a superior way to perceive the world. To access your intuition, you need to take time out, to be silent and to observe your own thoughts and emotions. In that space, free from bombardment of thoughts, is your intuition. Listen to what your intuition tells…

Prepare When you have an important or tricky task to perform, it can be tempting to avoid it, but that is the worst thing you can do. Engaging with the task involves developing an awareness of the demands that the task will make of you. Ask yourself what the task will demand. It might be physically rigorous, mentally draining or emotionally challenging. Perhaps it will operate on all of these levels. Identify what the tasks demand and prepare yourself accordingly. As Confucius said, “Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.”…

Living with uncertainty is not easy. When you are uncertain it makes it difficult to plan, and you may even find yourself paralysed by your lack of knowledge of what is to come. What is challenging to accept, but nevertheless true, is that uncertainty is always going to be present in your life, and the life of everyone else. Ever since the COVID epidemic it as if the veil of fake certainty has been removed and the uncertainty that underlies all things has been laid bare. Globally, institutions and states of play that have been taken for granted are being revealed as in flux. The uncertain nature of the world has been laid bare, but that is no bad thing. If uncertainty is the true nature of things, then being…

There was a time when leisure was a sign of prestige. Not anymore. In the 2020s, busyness is the new status symbol. Busy people are considered important and impressive, and in a culture that values people who do many things, it is easy to internalise those values and just keep doing more and more. The problem is that overcommitting does not work. It doesn’t work for the people or businesses you make commitments to, and it does not work for you. Overcommitment leads to multitasking and according to the American Psychological Association, while multitasking may feel more productive than doing just one thing, it reduces your productivity by as much as 40 per cent. This is largely due to the accumulation of what are called “switching costs” when you move…

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes.Carl Jung…

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.Walt Disney…

He [she] who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him [her] who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. Plato…

The world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.Chris Abani…

Drop your defences Defences are past habits, patterns and excuses that you fall back on when your life is going through massive change or upheaval. While you might have all the good intentions in the world to make your life better, quite often your journey is sabotaged by defences. The best way to unlock your defences and truly begin to live your dreams is to make sure you are living authentically. That means taking the time to truly figure out what your values, priorities and dreams in life are. Knowing what your true values and core priorities are is how you grow your power. Don’t hate your defences, they have served you well. Use them as signposts for where your personal growth can occur, love them for the service they…

Play The Greek philosopher Plato said, “You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” If this is true, what better way is there to get to know a lover, a friend, a work colleague, or even yourself than through play? When you put playfulness into your day, you transform what may have become a mundane existence into a more vibrant way of living. A life devoid of play hinders your ability to connect with others and identify with your true self, often leaving you feeling numb, as if on autopilot. Play is creative and it unearths the YOU that has disappeared under your everyday burdens.…

Procrastination might be common, and having a smartphone in your pocket to distract yourself with might make it easy, but it is not new. Almost 3,000 years ago the Greek poet Hesiod in his Works and Days wrote, “Never say you will do it tomorrow or the next day. Slow workers never fill their barns.” You may or may not have a barn to fill, but you certainly do have tasks that need to be done. Procrastination is the enemy of getting things done, but around three of every four people will do it — and we do it on purpose. The psychology behind this widespread issue is fascinating and it points us towards some methods for overcoming your procrastination problem. Delay or procrastination The conventional definition of procrastination is…

“Take control of your thoughts. You can do with them what you will.” What do you think? No, you aren’t coming into a conversation halfway through. I’m not asking you what you think about something, I’m asking you what do you think? What are the thoughts that run through your head daily? What are the thoughts that are in your head now? Often those thoughts are so automatic, so habitual, that you are actually not even aware of them. If you want to live your best life though, your thoughts are one thing you should be aware of because they are the one of the two things that you can truly control. Your locus of control Philosophers for many centuries have recognised that what you can control in this life…

Forgive Anger and resentment are powerful emotions that harm both you and the object of your emotions. Forgiveness is the antidote to anger, but it does not just come out of nowhere — you have to be ready to work in order to forgive. Sometimes you will need to forgive others, on other occasions you will need to forgive yourself. Forgiveness requires many skills of you. You need to be able to reframe the situation and refrain from assigning blame. You need awareness of the motivations of people involved in a situation, have compassion for all of those people, and then just let go. Remember, whether you are forgiving yourself or others, forgiveness is something you do for you; it is a powerful life tool that allows you to move…

How are you? That is a question you will probably be asked at least five times today, sometimes by email, sometimes face-to-face. So, what is your answer? “I’m good, how are you?” is a standard response, but it doesn’t really say much before deflecting back to the other person. What if, though, there is no-one else there? What if you are asking yourself, “how are you?”? What is your answer when there is no-one to deflect to? Distraction is easy — we are taught it from birth in this society. It might be sport, it might be a screen, or it might be alcohol. You probably have many tools at your disposal to distract yourself from the reality of how you are. The question is, do you have tools to…

Curiosity is the basis of the ability to keep learning. A year after Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species, he published a memoir titled A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World. This memoir might not be as celebrated as the ground-breaking former book in which he put forward his theory of evolution, but it does contain some beautiful passages of writing, such as: “The delight one experiences in such times bewilders the mind; if the eye attempts to follow the flight of a gaudy butter-fly, it is arrested by some strange tree ore fruit; if watching an insect one forgets it in the stranger flower it is crawling over; if turning to admire the splendour of the scenery, the individual character of the foreground fixes the attention. The…

Take a “sad day” When your brain and body need to reset, allow yourself to take a sad day. If you had a bout of the flu you would not feel bad about staying at home, so why not give yourself the same healing space when your mental wellbeing is ailing? Everyone has days when a little bit of overwhelm sets in and it makes sense to allow yourself to feel that down mood or sadness without having to try and function in the world as well. You don’t need to declare it as a sad day to anyone else, just say you are sick, but take the day and don’t waste it by feeling guilty. Having a day here and there to clear away mental debris is a healthy…

For millennia, philosophers have sought to establish how the human mind achieves a true knowledge of the world. A branch of philosophy known as empiricism has placed emphasis on the mind’s interaction with the external world of nature. Rationalists have tended to look inwards to the power of the mind itself. In either case though, the objective is to understand how we get a reliable view of the world, how we establish “reality”. Psychology has developed out of this ambition to understand our relationship to reality, but as 20th-century philosopher Jerome Bruner has observed, when it comes to human interactions, “we organise our experience of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative”. Narratives shape our entertainment, they shape our culture, and they shape your thinking. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in…

Imagine a film director. This film director has been granted a moderate budget from the studio to film a new type of film. The filming is to take place in the UK even though the film studio, most of the main actors and the director, are American. As rushes from filming come back to the USA, executives from the studio get nervous at what they are seeing and decide to cut their losses by ending funding. Despite concerns about what he is producing from executives and actors, to finish filming the director must keep his sound stages operating 24 hours a day and cycles between them, even at night, working around the clock for weeks. The director becomes ill, but the filming is completed and when Star Wars is released…

“God, he loves himself!” is not necessarily a complimentary observation. The implication here is that someone is displaying self-obsession. It’s quite unfortunate that love of the self can have such a negative connotation because true self-love is the most liberating thing you can aspire toward. In its positive state, self-love encompasses appreciation, awareness and acceptance of your true self. This is not about selfishness or egomania. When you love yourself you accept yourself, and that is the prerequisite for self-nurturing. The really valuable aspect is that self-love has implications that reach far beyond you. Healthy self-love is not about comparison to others, but it is about an awareness of who you are. At the same time, however, in this honest appreciation of yourself, you come to an awareness of your…

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So, when you are riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief, and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake up and live!Bob Marley…

Faith means living with uncertainty – feeling your way through life, letting your heart guide you like a lantern in the dark.Dan Millman…

Meditate anywhere Meditation is one of the most powerful tools you can have in your survival kit. It allows you to know yourself, it helps you to achieve distance from your thoughts, and it creates the space for you to change. The thing is, you can’t wait until you are on a retreat in a highland somewhere to do your meditation. Stress, anxiety and challenge occur in real life and real time, so you need to develop your capacity to meditate anywhere and anytime. It might be something as simple as a hand meditation. Just hold your hand in front of you, spread your fingers and then, with the index finger of your other hand, trace the outline of your hand. Focus on your tracing finger as you do this.…