It's been said that if we are unhappy about a situation, we have only two choices: change the situation, or change our feelings and thoughts about the situation

So if we want our life to be more fulfilling, filled with opportunities we are excited about, filled with changes we confidently adapt to, filled with personal growth we cherish and relish, it’s time to change what is happening by recognising our role in it

When thinking about the changes outside ourselves, let’s start with changing our responses, building our mental strength so that we can spot opportunities for positive action and take our future into our own hands

Sounds good eh? So where exactly do we start when it comes to building mental strength?

Well, as Carl Rogers says, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change”. Recent ground-breaking research by psychology professor Nathan Hudson and his colleagues, confirmed that with the right psychological strategies, and enough effort,...

Is your team building up, burning out, or checking out?

In 2023 we all were introduced to a new phenomenon, 'quiet quitting'. The idea spread virally on social media and suddenly millions of people confirmed that they were not going above and beyond at work, and were just meeting their job description. They were checking out

Yet as well as checking out, burn out has an equally negative impact on individual and team performance

Mental health UK in their 2025 study cited that 1 in 5 workers still needed time off work due to mental health struggles caused by burn out. The Report states, "With burn out, you feel so detached and demotivated that it impacts your ability to function and you feel hopeless that your situation can change"

Both burn out and check out (quiet quitting) are real. The ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is now 1.8 to 1 according to a recent Gallup poll. This is the lowest in almost 10 years. The overall decline in engagement is particularly related ...

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s you being promoted to a leader – you are now a Superhero!

And we do all love a Superhero – from 1938 when the first Superman comic was published, to Wonder Woman appearing in comic in 1941, to the present day Marvel cinematic Superheroes. The Marvel Superheroes look like us but they’re better. Whether she is battling baddies, fighting against the odds, smart, strong, fast, furious. Wrestling the insurmountable, Superheroes offer a sense of hope and inspiration. When things seem overwhelming, They are something to look up to. They take on the impossible and win

And now you are a leader, that Superhero, my friend, is you

The thing is, a lot of us sort of ‘land up’ in our leadership roles. We are picked as captain of the football, hockey or chess teams at school, identified for our ‘natural leadership style’ and it sort of goes from there. We maybe get sent on a leadership course or two, yet often we simply work hard, are the best at what we do, an...

You know the worst thing about being scared of feedback? We live pretty much all our life with our own narrow perspective of our own potential  

The truth is, we are all nearly always capable of achieving much, much more than we currently achieve, in pretty much all areas of our lives, whether as a teacher, an AI engineer, a chef, or a CEO –  we simply lack a different perspective, a different skill-set, a different take on what we can do, a different appreciation of our potential 

So we stay, comfortably uncomfortable in our own ‘one day I will’ – but never do 

We often lack perspective on our own potential because we feel we don’t have the courage to shine a light into the blind-spots of our lives by reflecting on what we really want, and who can really help us do that. We do not Welcome Feedback   

Often this is because we are honestly a little bit scared of the outcome, believing that welcoming feedback in the most important areas of our lives will be like opening Pandora’s box...

Look around and you will see that a lot of us want things, really, really 'want things'

In fact, we often sacrifice our health, our relationships, even our sense of self to the ideas that culture has given us of what we 'should want'. The thing is, are we actually in control here, do we truly want this?

Want to perform at your very best? Guess what, it's time to put down being so serious, and pick up being playful

Multiple studies show that playfulness in adults is not only extremely beneficial to our physical and mental health, it is also key for optimal functioning. Studies have found that play relieves stress, improves brain function, boosts creativity, increases and improves connections with others, and to top it all, increases our energy levels. These benefits extend beyond ourselves to our loved ones as we are playful in our relationships. Neuroscience supports the old theory that laughter really is the best medicine

Being Playful is often a huge mind-set shift for people. We tend to be more restricted by our past experiences, than being optimistic about our future because we don’t see ourselves as a work in progress. What we don't realise is that our brain is most agile when we approach life seeing ourselves as a work in progress

Re-learning how to be open, to be hopeful abo...

A lot of people  - and we are talking very, very 'super successful' people - tell us that they suffer from imposter syndrome

Famously, even the multi award winning actress Meryl Streep is quoted as saying,

“You think, why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?”

What is fascinating is that these ‘super successful’ people are often falling for the myth that everyone else surrounding them is way more confident and composed than they themselves are. The Meryl Streep sentiment is playing on repeat in their mind

It's fascinating because we often don't realise that the reason you can’t hear other people’s inner monologues of self-doubt isn’t that they don’t have them. It’s because you only have access to your own mind, your own imposter syndrome playing repeat, minute by minute, hour by hour

As the UK organisation Action for Happiness points out, one of the biggest reasons many of us feel miserable is because we constantl...

For a lot of us today, one of the most exciting and aspirational ideas is to imagine a world in which we can swap the now often normal feeling of overwhelm for a feeling that we can show up and thrive, no matter what our day brings

So many of us are fed up of feeling overwhelmed. We are bored with our own catastrophising. We are drained by the lack of hope and optimism. We want to swap this feeling so often labelled as 'overwhelm' for a feeling that we can face any challenge that comes our way head on, roll with the punches and enjoy - even relish - the ride!

The truth is, for a lot of us, we can improve our lives dramatically by letting go of the rubbish that a lot of us carry around in our heads today about how life should be, without challenges or difficulties, and start to Show Up, roll with the punches and actually enjoy the ride of this wild thing we call life

We spend our entire lives in our minds, yet very few of us ensure they are a great place to be by carrying out a regul...

There's this boy ... 

A 15 year old GCSE student on his way to one of our best Universities. He is smart, sociable and spirited, excelling at everything he puts his hand to, from sport, to his grades, to fronting the school band. Looking in from the outside it seems that his life is stretching before him full of hope and opportunity 

And yet. He is crippled by anxiety and shame. Anxiety and shame driven by perfectionism. Permanently on a high wire, of perfectionism. Desperately driven by an anxiety thinking that if he falls off, there is no world to welcome him. He does his schoolwork, he does his pull-ups, he does his push-ups, he checks his phone, hour by hour, minute by minute, ever fearful of the shame of not hitting his high performing, perfectionist targets

How can I explain to this smart, sociable and spirited 15 year old that striving for excellence is one thing. Striving to excel in his unique way, using his own combination of brilliant brain, inate sociability and fierce d...

Opening our mind to the idea that we are all a work in progress allows us to look beyond our current work, home - in fact, our whole life - and see we have the power to open up our world. Developing new skills, adopting new beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets, we change what we may have once thought was a fated potential

With this new perspective of progress, we open up a world of opportunities for ourselves, improving our overall quality of life and workplace productivity so that we can live our best life, a life full of progress

A good starting point for how to open our minds to open our world is to start with understanding a bit about what is a 'growth mind-set'

The concept of a growth mind-set first appeared in 1988 as a theory relating to learning and education. It was cited as the reason why super smart kids can still fail, despite their actual capability. The central thought is that a child’s attitude towards taking on a challenge, instead of their innate ability, was the main ...