Let’s start with the glaringly obvious fact we all know but few of us are really tackling. We all know mobile phones are, in many ways, horrible for us. Before you click away because you’ve heard it all before I promise I’m going somewhere with this. ( and bear in mind it could be your overstimulated brain that’s stopping you being able to hold focus long enough to keep reading! ). Mobile phones are our shiny little attention seeking, focus draining companions. A complex rela

“By regularly voicing our small sorrows and minor irritations we are scraping the barnacles off our keel of our relationship and thereby ensuring that we will sail on with continued joy and admiration into an authentic and unresentful future” - Alain de Botton — The Therapeutic Journey With a quote like that to start off I may as well shut my laptop lid and be done with it because how do I follow on from that? Firstly I greatly admire Alain de Botton. I think he is one of my

"Are you feeling lonely?"... Did you know one in ten UK workers often or always feel lonely at work? Or that amongst senior managers 32% say they feel lonely and more than half feel estranged from their colleagues? ( Source Opinium/Red Cross ). This and other research backs up the expression "it's lonely at the top". I saw it over and over in my many years as a doctor and the maladaptive ways that people addressed it: Booze 🚫 Drugs 🚫 Comfort eating 🚫 Affairs 🚫 Never switc

"OMG BOUNDARIES!!!" I found myself shouting this at the TV over this weekend as I watched the absolutely fantastic The Banshees of Inisherin. Having clear boundaries is something a lot of us struggle with, especially people that tend to be people pleasers. Some questions you might ask yourself around boundaries are: Do I know what my boundaries are? Do I know people or situations that challenge them? What's my role in allowing that? Is that something I would like to change? L

“I’m fine thank you! How are you?” My response to my client at the start of a call this morning. In truth I started my morning being woken up and being told we have a leak. Not the best way to wake up! I was waiting for an emergency plumber to arrive. So was I just being polite and professional? NO! I had done the work on myself to ready myself for this moment. I knew this question would come. I pictured answering this question. I slowed down. I asked myself the same question

“I don’t know if I can do it” “I don’t know how to do it” This might not be true ( but usually it isn’t ). It might be true. But who said you had to do “it” alone? Who do you know? Who can you speak to? Who can you email? Who can you tweet? The truth is if you open your mind you have way more possibility available to you than you’re currently seeing. Make that call. Knock on that door. Send that email. See what life brings you and be open to the response. You may just find i

I made up the term “conversational tailgating” when learning about effective communication. There were certain patterns of behaviour people can exhibit in conversation that reminded me of tailgating on the roads. Listening for gaps to insert yourself into the discussion rather than truly listening. Finishing peoples sentences for them. Showing or verbalising irritability for someone to hurry up and get to the point. Feeling the need to make the discussion about you. Do you re

We can often feel like people we care about aren’t listening to us… But are we REALLY listening to them? Or is something in the way of us being able to do so? You’ve likely heard expressions like “you can’t pour from an empty cup’. In a similar way we can’t fully listen to others when we can’t listen to ourselves. Some signs that you might not be allowing yourself to listen to your inner voice are : Filling natural gaps in time with social media or games. Filling almost every