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“When you feel enthusiasm to do something, it means you’ve lined up the Energy, and you are being inspired to take action from that point of alignment. When you don’t feel like doing it, don’t push yourself, because your effort is not worth it. But, when you line up the Energy, the feeling of procrastination goes away”.     Abraham Hicks The P Word: Procrastination You have a Presentation to prepare but find yourself on Instagram or watching Netflix instead, does this sound familiar to you? Procrastination, as we are all very well aware, is the putting off of something we “have” …

Procrastination Read More »

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Winston Churchill . Our “Plastic” Brains Stressed? Anxious? Feeling down? Or do you just want to feel even more positive than you already do? Discoveries in neuroscience over the past 30 years have taught us that we don’t need to be stuck in a downward spiral of negative thoughts which dump stress chemicals in our brain often leading to stress, anxiety and depression.  We now know that our brains change and grow by creating neural networks and these neural networks are formed and developed …

Improve your day with one small step Read More »

“You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be.”  David Viscott It’s a well-known secret – Diets don’t work; Well, not for 99% of people who try them and this can lead to feelings of frustration, hopelessness, guilt and in some cases, self-loathing. The diet industry is gargantuan, turning over billions of pounds every year, but it doesn’t deliver. Diets tell you what to eat, how much to eat and when to eat, but they don’t tell you how to handle the stress and anxiety you may have in your life that can trigger …

It’s a well-known secret – Diets don’t work Read More »

It is important to know that you have processes to help you cope on days when you feel that things are just not going your way and that you can’t get away from your worries and anxiety. We wrote an article some time ago entitled “Brain Dump” a name we took from Gillie Botton who has written widely about the process of writing down your fears, doubts and anxieties as a way of unloading them and achieving psychological distance from them. It is a powerful technique and neuroscientist Mark Walderman suggests a quick variation which goes under the name of …

The Power Of The Pen Read More »

How often are you aware that you are talking to yourself, in your head or even out loud?  Self-talk is the internal conversation, the voice in your mind, that comments, questions, evaluates and judges your behaviour and experience.  Experts consider it to be a subset of thinking and it can be positive – when we congratulate ourselves or use it to motivate, or negative – when we criticise, judge, catastrophise and ruminate. All self-talk influences our feelings and behaviour, but scientists are discovering that it is not only what we say to ourselves that is significant, but also how we address …

Talking about….. Read More »

With our newsletter we are keen to pass on self-help techniques that our readers can use to find relief and enhance their lives. Here are five tried and tested ways to retrain your brain to let go of constant worry. If you are worrying unproductively, we hope that there is something here for you. Chronic worrying is a learned, conditioned behaviour which many suffer from. It seems there is at least one worrier in every family. Have you heard, “Who will worry if I don’t?” or “Somebody needs to worry!” said. These thoughts are not uncommon, many equate worry with …

Five Ways to Re-train your brain to stop needless worrying Read More »

“I feel overwhelmed”, is a phrase we are hearing more and more in the therapy room. The state we call “Overwhelm” is not the anxiety and impatience that is experienced when our list of “To Do’s” is too long, but a very uncomfortable emotional state when there is a sense of being stuck; a lack of motivation to do anything; an inability to decide what’s important and what can be left, and a tendency to ignore what has to be done. Those who experience “Overwhelm” are likely to be short-tempered and confused, feel bodily tension and have a general fear of …

Feeling Overwhelmed? Read More »

On Saturday 20th March the International Day of Happiness was celebrated with various activities in many countries.  You may have missed it altogether or the media coverage possibly entered the peripheries of your awareness or  you may even have been involved in an awareness raising event yourself. In 2011 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution which recognised “happiness as a fundamental goal” and called for “a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that  promotes the happiness and well-being of all people.” The UN wants us to remember that it is family and friends and emotional …

Happy Days Read More »

A few years ago we were excited to learn that Jennifer Aniston proposed to co-produce and star in a film based on the book, “Counter Clockwise Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility,” written by the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, whose research interest is in how attitude affects both health and the rate of ageing.  This film would have introduced Langer’s research findings to a new and wider audience but sadly, it seems that after the initial publicity the project has been discontinued. Langer’s book records a study she did in 1979.  Eight elderly men in their late 70s and …

Turning back the clock Read More »

“And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.” ~D.H. Lawrence Almost everyone experiences sleeplessness at some time in their lives but for those with persistent insomnia the effects on their mental and physical well-being can be extremely damaging.  And we’re not just referring to an insignificant minority.  Some estimates suggest that a quarter of us suffer and it is one of the top three health topics that men search for on the internet. …

Insomnia Read More »