All of us have encountered challenging times in our lives, when we feel vulnerable to the strains of daily living. Some of these strains show themselves as a result of big events that happen to us or people we care about, or are merely geographically close to.  Some of the strain is the cumulative impact of lots of little events that add up and threaten to push you over your tipping point of coping capacity. Both types of negative events - big and small - can have an effect on our wellbeing.

If you cross this with various cycles in our lives which mean that we are more vulnerable to the impacts of these big and small negative events, it becomes clear that it is really important that we keep an eye out for how well we can withstand these challenges when they arrive.  An example: for many of us, mid-January can be a testing time. This is about when those new activities designed to sort our lives out made in those New Year's resolutions are perhaps beginning to be very difficult to maintain. As a result, we can feel guilty, throw the towel in, and revert to old behaviours that we recognised we needed to change.

What do we do when we feel under pressure like this?

There are many strategies that have been put forward to help build our personal resilience and wellbeing. Here is a set of 5 practices that differ slightly from the 5 Ways to Wellbeing that you might be familiar with, designed to help you to focus on basic self-maintenance, and some reflection on what you want your life to be about.

Positive deviants are people who appear to be finding better solutions to complex and pervasive problems compared to their peers and neighbours despite having access only to the same resources. Their 'uncommon behaviours' can then be spread and adopted more widely by the community. And they are uncommon behaviours. Positive deviance is about behaviours that break the constraints of the accepted norm and has profound effects of those people and organisations that foster and encourage those behaviours.

The good news is that there is a lot of evidence that optimism isn't fixed. It isn't a commodity that you either have or you don't. Optimism can be learned.

You have probably had the delightful experience of being stuck in a jam of slow-moving cars that suddenly disappears without revealing any obvious cause for the jam. No crashed cars, no roadworks - what was that about?

There is nothing wrong with having dreams and goals. But often, we don't take the time to stop and consider whether this self-critical and competitive attitude actually helps us towards reaching these goals or realising our dreams, or actually might be getting in our way.

Being present in your everyday actions seems to be a key ingredient for good mental and physical well-being. The more you practice the practices described in this short podcast episode, the better you will get. These exercises will help you to centre yourself and engage with your environment. Practice them throughout the day, especially at times when you find yourself caught up with your thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes when we come to a situation of thinking that we know all there is to know, then we may already risking missing some vital elements of what might make this situation different. Although you might be an expert in a technical field or as a manager, when you aim to communicate or create change in a complex environment it is in your interests to adopt a 'beginner mind' and open up to additional possibilities.

Our minds do not have all the answers. The interesting thing for athletes and others is that there are ways of knowing about the world and ourselves that operate beyond the mind. Sometimes what your mind knows might not be enough, and what it does know might even get in the way of what you want to do.

When we find ourselves doing the same thing over and over again in our lives, it can be hard to figure out why. Listen to this podcast for some clues.

Suppose you had a choice:

Option 1: you never had to experience a painful feeling ever again. That's never. BUT, it means that you lose all capacity to love and care. You care about nothing and no-one. Nothing will matter any more. No one matters. Life becomes meaningless because you don't care about anything whatsoever.

Option 2: You get to love and care. People matter to you. Life matters to you. You care about what you do, and what happens. You care about friends and family. You get to build loving relationships. Life becomes meaningful. And where there is a gap between what you want and what you've actually got, painful feelings show up.

Which option do you choose?