What do you do to perform at your best? A morning routine, endless self-development or follow the gurus' tools and techniques. It seems there are lots we can do to perform at our best but here is something you may not have considered. Your perfection! I guess you probably don't look in that direction very much because we are not encouraged to do so are we? We are not encouraged to look inside and see what is really there; wisdom, calm and love. All inside you, all the time! You see, we are designed for performance but so many things get in the way of us seeing that. Well, one thing really - thought! And the more we look outside ourselves for the answer, the more noise there is and the less able we are to see what is really there. I would love you to see your perfection!

Have you created any goals for next year? Perhaps you are just contemplating them at the moment. Thinking about what you would like to create in 2022. But here is a little truth to throw into the mix. You cannot predict the future. It is fun and exciting to create goals but holding them too tightly closes us down and stops us seeing the possibilities. But if we start from the present moment with an intention, so much can happen. Just by setting a direction of travel and seeing what unfolds we can live on purpose from the present moment. We can enjoy the journey rather than predicting it. And remember, if it looks like your wellbeing depends on life being a certain way in the future, it's worth knowing that life does not work that way. The future is a mystery, our future responses are a mystery and everything in the future is made up. So set those wonderful goals, but hold them lightly. You life really does not depend on it!

Can you think of some of the rules you learnt as you were growing up? 'Don't touch flames, they will burn you!' and 'Don't walk in front of a car, it will hurt you.' The rules about the physical word we learnt when we were small, have stood us in good stead as we have gone through life. They have kept us safe. As those little sponges we were, that information went in and it stuck. The trouble is, that we learnt some less useful things when we were small. Things like you are stupid, not good enough or ugly. These things are not true but because they were being learnt at the same time as the useful stuff, they looked like they were of equal value. There are some helpful, practical things to learn about the physical world but this is not the same for the things we learn about the self. The things we learn about ourselves are made of someone else's thinking. They are NOT true! They are NOT the same as the rules about the physical world. And when we can start to see the quality of the thoughts we have about ourselves, we can more easily let them pass. It is possible for all of us to have a different relationship with the things which we think about ourselves.

Have you ever tried to remove a habit? Perhaps you are contemplating that as we near the start of a new year. I spent a lot of time on habit change. I read all the books. Tiny habits, Atomic habits and The Power of Habit to name but a few! I did lots of therapy - hypnotherapy in the main and I tried affirmations, subliminal tracks and meditations. But then I learnt what a habit really is. It's just a bit of old, stuck thinking but not as stuck as you might think. You see, when you change your understanding of thought and start to take it less seriously, those habits start to fall away. That's what happened with my Saturday night chocolate thought. Habits are not as solid as you might think but if you would like to change a few next year, please get in touch.

A crystal ball is place in which to gaze to see the future with the wise old woman sitting on the other side. You know the scene. If you haven't seen it in real life, you have seen it in films. We might be intrigued by the contents of the crystal ball but I think we would mostly take it with a pinch of salt. In that situation, we know the future cannot really be told. But we don't always see that truth, do we? When we engage with the contents of our internal crystal ball, it can look so real. We forget that the future is unknown - a real mystery. But here's a beautiful clue, your body will provide. It's that uncomfortable feeling - telling you that your thinking is off. Off feeling = off thinking. And all you need to do is spot it. And then the crystal ball inside your head simply rolls away.

Out of the blue is where all the best ideas come from. Not from racking your brains and puzzling things out. Have you noticed that? For me it's during a walk, in the shower or when I first wake up in the morning. When do you get your best ideas? I heard a survey of entrepreneurs once. They included the golf course and times when they were on holiday in their list of times when they had their best ideas. There is something true about all these situations. They are not times when we are thinking about our problems. 

It sounds counterintuitive when we have been brought up to solve problems and 'think about it'. But the thing about 'thinking about it' is that it can only ever be a process of going through old habitual thinking. This is not very helpful when you are looking for something to solve a problem which has probably been created by that old habitual thinking. The thing about all those situations is that they are spacious; they provide space in our heads and that is when intuition can burst through with answers and solutions we had never considered. If you would like to create more space inside your head so you can connect more deeply to intuition it would be lovely to talk.

Do you like a good vent? Go on, fess up! Once upon a time, venting would have been my Olympic sport of choice. I used to get so riled up about other people's behaviour. I would vent at my nearest and dearest, my colleagues and anyone who would listen (I clearly didn't see their eyes rolling😂). It gave me a horrible feeling but I misunderstood where that was coming from. It felt like it was coming from the people or situations I was venting about but now I know that is wrong. Now I know the truth.

Every single feeling I ever have is coming from thought in the moment. Thoughts and feelings are two sides of the same coin. When I vent, I am feeling my venting thinking, not the circumstances or person so suddenly it makes less sense to vent. It's tiring and feels bad and I don't want to do that to myself. If you are tired and feel bad more of the time than you want to, I can help.

Human nature is defined as follows: the general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioural traits of humankind, regarded as shared by all humans. So what are those things which are shared by us all? Things which cannot be denied which are truths about humans. They may be tricky to see, but there are three things. As you hear them, I hope you will see that they are undeniably true.

The first one is that we are alive or filled with aliveness. It's an energy like that which runs through all living things. The second is that we are conscious. We are aware of the world around us and inside us. The third is that we think. Thought in the moment is what creates our feelings. These are the principles via which all our psychological experience is created. But underneath that, there is something more; peace, love and wisdom. Confidence, resilience and wellbeing. Thought means that we don't always experience these things about ourselves, but they are always there.

It was only a nightmare is what we say when we wake up from a bad dream. We might be sweaty, our hearts might be beating fast and our thoughts might be racing. But knowing it is a nightmare makes that all fall away. It happens really fast and there is relief and a return to peace of mind. But isn't it strange that we don't treat our daymares in the same way? We don't wake up quite so easily. There is a difference in how our daytime thinking is perceived. So when we feel sweaty, shaky and our hearts race during the day we look for the source of that anywhere else but in thought. 

At night we know it's thought (a nightmare) but during the day, we don't know it is thought (a daymare). That really is the only difference, what we think our experience means. But nightmares and daymares are made of the same thing. Thought in the moment perceived by us as an uncomfortable feeling. Image waking up and realising that. Imagine the peace that would be possible. It's available to everyone.

It could be was something I heard many times during my time in therapy. It could be this thing which happened in your childhood or that thing which happened when you were small or maybe this other thing you experienced a long time ago. I see now that it led to confusion. Literally poking around in the past in the hope that we would find something which sorted it all out. It was the 'could bes' which were creating the confusion. I knew there must be something simpler and there is! Principles of psychology!

Something which works the same all the time for all humans. How much more simple does that make things? Well the truth is, for me it did, exponentially! Years of thinking I needed to meditate every day gone replaced by living in a state of meditation. Years of daily journaling gone replaced by an unshakeable feeling of gratitude. Years of thinking I was broken replaced by a deep connection to innate wellbeing. All because I know that the source of all my experience is 3 simple principles. And now I have seen them, I just have to share them.