March Highly Recommended Read This month’s recommended book is It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn. You can watch a conversation with Mark below. This is a very exciting book that picks up the mystery which is underpinned by a…
Conscious or subconscious thought patterns Mental functions can be either conscious or subconscious. The conscious mind consists of thoughts you are easily aware of. They take place when you’re awake and choose to apply purposeful attention to what is happening and what you want. The subconscious mind consists of everything else such as habits, reflexes,…
February Highly Recommended Read This month’s recommended book is Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and Hope to Find Hope by Johann Hari. You can watch Johann in conversation with Decca Aitkenhead, interviewer for the Guardian from a Thursday lecture at the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) below. This is a beautiful, deeply…
Contemplating self-love Whether you get swept up in the red hearts and roses or decide to go against them, there is no denying it – February invites us to contemplate love and closeness in all its forms. While Western culture tends to celebrate the nobleness of giving and sharing romantic love, at its core love…
Burnout Context A few weeks ago I was on a call with one of my coaching clients – a leading academic – who was clearly unwell. Yet against the pressures of work responsibilities, demands of his team and colleagues, my suggestion that he considers taking a few days to recover was met with shock and…
Regrets. We are always told to live without them. Yet when every decision in life is bound to a specific context and time while our evaluations of them often enjoy far more freedom, having no regrets seems a tall order. You may be living the life you have always dreamed of and yet you may…
People come to coaching often because they want to realise BIG results. I have managed to learn a great deal about productivity by achieving the following: a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Caltech – one of the best science universities in the world write and publish a book with the No1 UK publisher Wiley and Sons,…
Micro and macro moments of bliss Before Christmas, my editor Victoria Woodward and I met for dinner to celebrate each other’s presence in our lives and to catch up. That was a great highlight in my social life: genuine connection, truthful stories, and a strengthened friendship. I felt so lucky and walked away inspired at…
What critics do? We all have an inner critic. Critics tend to: Get in the way of our aspirations and potential success. Evaluate us from the sidelines without doing any actual work! Judge us and our feelings, behaviours, and actions. Sometimes even judge our entire self as in, “You’re just all bad, worthless, a loser”.…
While the UK Summer broke more records than most Olympics in terms of how hot this country got, the cold season has finally arrived: grey skies, frequent soggy rain, the crackle of radiators, and more tea and coffee to sip trying to feel a warmth from the inside that warm socks in my drawers. I…