If you know me, you’ll know a favourite mantra of mine is that ‘baby steps add up’. I don’t tend to succeed if I try to go for big shifts. Some people get a sense of momentum from big changes. Personally, they exhaust me. So if you’ve tried the new year’s resolution, the big “right that’s it” moment and created a grand plan to change your life… and it hasn’t… Read More »The One Reason you Should Commit to Taking Baby Steps
Although I no longer support people specifically with their mental health, one of the key lessons I picked up from teaching cognitive therapy tools was the differentiation between a Lapse and a Relapse; which is a concept that applies to any form of progress we’re looking to make. Let’s begin with some definitions. These are not necessarily the dictionary definitions, but they are how I have come to see progress… Read More »The Truth about Progress: Lapses and Relapses
When we want to make a change, we essentially want to ‘learn’ something. Learning is considered a “permanent change in behaviour which occurs as a function of experience.” But there is a force working against us. Nope, not aliens. Nor Nazis. Nope, no Jedis here… In the human body there is a state called Homeostasis. In Greek, it literally means “Staying similar.” This mechanism is entirely devoted to keeping… Read More »Why Change Is So Damn Hard
For those who have taken a psychology class, you may have heard of something called “Miller’s Law” or just “the 7 (plus or minus 2) rule” about human nature. Today I’m going to apply this memory rule to those (big or little) life projects or self-development quests. Don’t worry if you hadn’t: I’d never heard of the first term until this week, and the second was a tiny part of… Read More »How To Use Psychology for Life Project Success
I used to make New Year’s Resolutions. Then I used to spend December reflecting and consolidating the year gone, ready to plan “thorough goals” for the new year. Then I stepped back, and chose a “Word for the Year” instead. Finally, I used a guiding word to ‘theme’ my goals for the year, broken into sections. But equally, I see all this “Forget the new year, it’s meaningless.” So I’m… Read More »Dealing with Criticisms: The New Year’s Resolution
I began studying the psychology of my own experiences in 2004 with a book on Psycholinguistics and one on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Since then, I’ve studied a bunch of qualifications, and have worked in social care, education, mental health and youth work fields. Yet, there are some ‘lessons’ you don’t fully comprehend until you’ve lived them. Mind-Training A few years ago, Christine Kane wrote an article about smiling after challenge, and… Read More »Happiness: The Truth about Self-help Tools
There is a culture of wanting ‘fresh starts’, usually focusing on making new choices. Most of us have experienced ourselves, or someone we know saying “oh, well I’ll start again tomorrow / next week / in the New Year” when that person has made a choice that does not fit in line with their overall goal. People have a few ways of describing behaviour, but today I want to think about ‘falling… Read More »The Myth of Fresh Starts: How to Stay ‘On Track’