How wonky have your thinking patterns been this past week? Have you found yourself disappearing down a rabbit hole of thinking in extreme all-or-nothing terms? Or careering off into the chasm of catastrophising? These are both forms of cognitive distortion. I started musing on what cognitive distortions are last time. As we consider what it…
What I can control and what I can’t
How much time do you spend worrying about that which is beyond your control? I was musing last time about this quote from Arthur Somers Roche (1883-1935): Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” We all worry. It…
What direction are your thoughts taking you?
What direction are your thoughts taking you most often this week? Is what is going in to your cup good, kind, inspiring, positive? This is where we left off last time – the idea that what spills out of us is a mark of what is inside of us in the first place. This applies…
Creating habits that stick
How do you go about creating habits? As we continue into autumn, I have been musing here about taking time for a reset as the seasons change. Resetting intentions, creating habits, taking time to review what we want these next months to look and feel like. What might have worked over the summer or last…
A time to reflect
This has been an extraordinary week. A time to reflect if ever there was one as we consider the life, service and death of Queen Elizabeth II. For you reading this, for me and our household, for the majority of our country, none of us will have seen anything like this before. No doubt you…
Reset your intentions
I was talking with a client recently, and towards the end of our session she stated that she wanted to set a couple of intentions to which I would hold her accountable. For this client, this is less about specific action steps and more about a heart attitude towards the actions that she knows will…
Time for a reset
This is a big week in our house. Not because of school restarting in Scotland (more on that in a mo). But simply because we are having our kitchen refitted, after 17 years in this house with a kitchen we have never loved. This has involved having the entire contents of the kitchen redistributed throughout…
A little summer breather
Once again we find ourselves at the end of June. As I look back over musings over the past few summers, I see a pattern. I continue to live dominated by the school term, and therefore for us in this household, the end of June coincides with the end of the school term. And also…
How do I know what I am feeling – Using the Feeling Wheel
How do I know what I am feeling? Last week I was musing on how difficult it can be to identify what we are actually feeling, given the thousands of different emotions humans are capable of. The Feeling Wheel has been developed by the psychotherapist Dr Gloria Willcox to give people a language to help…
Practice what you preach
The last trait of genuine people, as outlined in a recent article, is that they practice what they preach. Genuine people are not self-righteous. They are comfortable in their own skin, know who they are and what they can do, and don’t set themselves up in judgement over anyone else. Living with genuineness makes it…