Tag: psychology

Why you won’t know who you are and what you want out of life until you give yourself a fucking break

on By

Out of high school I was very passionate and driven. There was a whole life and career that I envisaged for myself and I was keen to get started on it. However, as become clear through my tumultuous, laborious and scattered twenties, none of the things I believed I wanted for my life actually brought me any joy or sense of accomplishment. I drifted from one career aspiration to the next, with fabulous opportunities to grow and cultivate myself in live theatre, commercial radio, film & television production, and the visual arts. And each time, the opportunity and experience fizzled out leaving nothing more than a brittle sense of disappointment and failure. 

Looking back on all that now, I recognise that I actually had no idea what I wanted. I was a complete and utter stranger to myself. And it’s no surprise, because I treated myself like an absolute c*nt.

When understanding our relationships with others, it makes complete sense that most of us only reveal our real and authentic selves when we feel very, very safe. People cultivate this sense of safety in the way they treat us – with kindness, softness, understanding, and trust. We rarely bare our souls and reveal our intimate needs with someone else who heavily criticises us, demeans us, takes advantage of us and doesn’t ever listen. However, this is pretty routine behaviour when it comes to the relationship we have with ourselves.

When it comes to ourselves we don’t think twice to label ourselves “stupid” or “lazy”, “fat”, “old” or “a failure”. We push our bodies to the breaking point with work or parenting or partying, never heeding the growing demands to pause, reflect and rest. We avoid quiet time with ourselves, instead, drowning out periods of stillness with illuminated screens and endless Seinfeld re-runs. It’s no wonder we’re reluctant to reveal our innermost needs & desires. We treat ourselves like crap. But while you may have made this kind of inward relationship second nature, it doesn’t mean you can’t turn things around – after all, you have a lifetime so it’s never too late. I have been working on reinventing my relationship with myself over the past 4 or 5 years. I won’t say it’s been easy, after all, my inner self was understandably suspicious after all the initial maltreatment. But slowly, and reticently she’s begun to reveal herself. And here are some kindness practices that I used to help coax her out – hopefully they’ll help for you too…

  1. Stop with the negative self-talk.
    It’s not motivating. It’s not chic. And it’s not necessary to make hilarious memes out of. Think of the things you say to yourself and ask yourself if you’d say those things to someone you actually like and would want to be on your side. Trade in cruelty and condemnation for curiosity and compassion. It’s fine to make mistakes, it’s fine to screw up – just be creative in the way you respond to yourself afterwards. See how you can try to soothe and learn, rather than criticise and condemn. Also, call a mate out for being unkind to themselves, help them see how they might reframe that into something fuelled by kindness and self-respect.
    .
  2. Seek out stillness.
    If you want to hear what your inner self wants and needs out of life, you need to make space to listen. That means taking time out to  go inward. Practices like meditation, yoga, deep breathing and intentional listening are great to give your mind and body some space from the demands of the world and let your inner connection flourish.
    .
  3. Walk away from toxic people & places.
    If there are outer relationships or environments that make you feel really shitty, it’s time to move on from them. The longer you resist, the longer you tell your inner self that this is what you deserve. Try to surround yourself with people who have your back and lift you up, and immerse yourself in places that leave you feeling creative, connected, recharged and purposeful. 

It can be a tough time reinventing your inward relationship but there really is no rush. Baby steps are better than no steps. And you can be guaranteed that once you foster a better relationship with yourself you will begin to see your external relationships improve, and your relationship blossom of external experiences and opportunities. Best of luck showing yourself some love this year, you bloody deserve it.

Why I secretly want celebrities to fail

on By

Ok. I’m going to be real with you right now and I’m well aware that it will not make me look good. But there is a part of me that quite enjoys seeing celebrities fail. Whether it’s marriage breakdowns or public scandals, their creative projects bombing on a grand scale or them simply getting dragged for being socially unaware and generally tone-deaf to the current cultural climate.

Now I don’t generally enjoy basking in the suffering of others. Schadenfreude is a big ugly German word and, I mean, I’m not a psychopath (I know, I’ve done the test). So I’ve been curious about why I derive pleasure from seeing – what are essentially – other human beings fuck up.

I first thought it was the reassuring thought that “celebrities are people too” and they make mistakes. This would then make me feel better about my own mistakes. However, I think this reasoning is far too magnanimous to explain my reactions.

So I started re-evaluating our relationship with celebrities. Generally, they are quite shallow, curated and voyeuristic. Unless we’re close friends with a celebrity, we don’t know that much about them besides the fact they are publicly recognised in their given field, have a large platform through which to communicate and are (probably) wealthy.

Now how do we define/understand the following…?

  • Recognized in one’s given field
  • Has large platform through which to communicate/access resources
  • Wealthy

If you’re anything like me, you might see the former points as a clear representation of objective success. These celebrities are often living, breathing icons of “success”. So when someone successful stumbles, fails or fucks up in some way, it’s almost indicative of the fact that they can’t have it all. They can’t have the success and the happy relationship, or success and the smart kid who gets into college off their own back, or success and a first-class law degree.

This type of objective “success” is seen as its own reward. And a pretty lush one at that. Why should these people need more – when it seems like they have so much already? Perhaps I enjoy their failure (as Scrooge-ish as it seems) because it evens the playing field?

There’s plenty wrong with this way of thinking – enjoying the failure of others is a definite “dick-move” mindset. But it does provide me some insight into my personal insecurities and shortcomings as well as a little perspective on a few issues, namely:

  • The mindset of scarcity, e.g. the more someone else has, the less there will be for me.
  • My personal concept of success, e.g. what does it mean to live a successful life? What do I need in order to consider myself a success?
  • Judgement e.g. why do I react with hostility to other people? What is it about them that makes me feel threatened?

 I’m going to explore these points in some future blogs to see if I can get a little more wise in these departments. Do you ever recognise these issues at the heart of any of your dick-move mindsets? Lmk.  

Why Meditation Sucks

on By

I don’t like meditating. Thinking a lot about everything is possibly my favourite pastime and so when someone says I should meditate it’s kind of like saying to someone who loves to crochet “Don’t crochet. Find time in your day to specifically not crochet.”

When I was a young kid, I remember my dad meditating. I remember thinking it was weird. Fancy being a grown-up and getting to do whatever you want, like buy every single tube of Pringles at the supermarket or drink Creaming Soda every day or ride all the cool rollercoasters – but instead, you choose to just sit down and close your eyes and do nothing.

I learnt meditation when I was around 8, when I started yoga. I was a super anxious kid – my head would often swarm with vivid and horrible imaginings of awful things happening to me and my family – and it used to give me chronic stomach aches. So to calm me down, my mum (who was way ahead of the yoga game) enrolled me in a kid’s yoga class. At the end of each class we were led through a very basic meditation. It involved feeling love radiate from within you like warm sunshine and fill your body, and then flow out your feet and fill the Earth. I liked how it made me feel and often let it play out in my head before going to sleep. But then I remember bringing it up around some primary school friends once and they laughed at me and said it weird. So I stopped doing it after that.

Fast forward to grown-up me, I’ve found myself consistently shocked at how frequently and adamantly most great thinkers in the psychology field insist upon a regular meditation practice. I mean, don’t they have anything better to do? And yet, time and time again, there it is. Just clap meditate clap So I tried picking it up a few times. I didn’t like it. I thought it was boring. It felt difficult most times, confusing other times, and all in all, not particularly useful. So I gave up. I had better things to think about.

Then late last year, I felt myself in a slump. That feeling where you’re being pulled in every direction (mostly from yourself and your own expectations) and I felt swamped and overwhelmed, like my face was wrapped with a wet towel and it was difficult just to breathe. I was mainly concerned with the fact that I felt chronically uninspired. My days seemed to fill up so quickly with meaningless fodder and at the same time I never had time to do things that really mattered to me. I went to my therapist and explained all this to her, and she said to me…

“Have you tried meditating?”

Pls, not this again.

Couldn’t she suggest something else? Like, anything else? When you go to chat to someone about how busy you are and they come at you with the old “Have you tried sitting down and doing nothing”, it’s like “Seriously? No.”

But she explained to me this notion of “creating space”. How the heaving pull of life can feel so stifling and suffocating when we neglect to give ourselves space from it.

I recalled the feeling of the wet towel. I wanted to breathe. So I tried meditating again.

I don’t like meditating. I don’t like cleaning my bathroom either, but when my bathroom is clean I feel good. That’s how I feel after meditating. It clears space in my head and as a result, helps me clear space in my life. It’s helped me become unwound from my wet towel and breathe through soft linen. I am not free of the weight of the world, but it’s no longer suffocating me.

Don’t tell me to fucking “breathe”

on By

The first time I discovered that my breath might be key to managing my anxiety, I was really fucking mad.

Breathing? Seriously?

I do that already. All the time. Automatically in fact. The idea that something so basic and constant could provide relief for a condition I considered so volatile and overwhelming was almost…insulting. Don’t you think I would’ve worked that out on my own by now?

And yet, there I was. Fritzin’ out my mind. Uneasy about nothing & everything all at once. Wringing hands in the pit of my stomach. Pause. Eyes closed. Attention drawn inward.

Breathing in. 4 – 3 – 2 – 1.

Hold.

Breathing out. 4 – 3 – 2 – 1.

After a few more of these, something weird happened. Almost like an invisible balm was rubbed somewhere on the most nervous parts of me. And for the moment it brought calm. But not for long. That calm was quickly replaced by embarrassment.

How can breathing be the solution? It’s too easy; too natural – to quell something so complex and unrelenting? It made me feel dumb. And it made my anxiety feel dumb too, and I didn’t like that.

In the following years after this experience, I’ve curiously prodded my strange emotional reactions to it. I mean, fancy being upset when you discover something free, easy and cheap could be a helpful solution to an ongoing problem?

Something I discovered about myself is this need to idolise complexity. I am very quick to discount the simple, easy & accessible. In high-school, I remember feeling like getting married and having a family was literally the most basic and elementary path to life satisfaction – it was what lemmings did, and I wanted more than that. This pattern of thinking was destructive, as it led me to exalt my anxiety, and revere my depression as factors that gave me depth. It didn’t inspire me to go on to do great work or create great things – in fact, it made me resist creating because nothing I produced could ever be profound enough. It shut me off from appreciating the small, simple and wonderful things in life – believing them to be reserved for individuals less ‘enlightened’ than myself – when it turned out that I was the one who truly needed to get woke.

This is something that I’m still teaching myself to un-learn. Confucius served up a zinger when he said “life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” We can spend our whole lives searching for meaning, analysing our own and other people’s thoughts, emotions and behaviours, thinking for so long about so many things that seem so important. It’s still pretty much what I do 95% of my waking life. But now, in the other 5%, I’m forcing myself to breathe.

WHY YOU’LL NEVER BE CONGRATULATED FOR YOUR GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS

on By

At this time of year, there’s plenty to celebrate. With an influx of engagements and pregnancy announcements – our parties, functions and online feeds are gushing with public proclamations of some recently unlocked life achievement. 


After celebrating my own engagement this year, my partner and I have received many congratulations regarding the upcoming nuptials. Our online announcement elicited many messages of celebration and well wishes, and after the wave of dopamine subsided, I pondered the moments in our lives that will be met with the most congratulations. Weddings, engagements, new jobs, new houses, babies and births – these milestones are widely understood as positive, undoubtedly  celebration-worthy events and they all mark the occurrence of one thing – a new beginning.   
New beginnings are exciting. They symbolize the heralding of something different, and unknown. Starting something new can fuel us with a fresh sense of purpose and direction.
The moments in life that I feel are truly celebration-worthy are not the beginnings. But the middles. When you’re faced with hardship you never anticipated. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable and it is scary and uncomfortable. When everything seems to be conspiring against you. When you are so overwhelmed, broken and defeated and you’re teetering on the brink of giving it all up.


But you don’t.

These silent and noble moments often pass unnoticed. Not met with any filtered Instagram posts or public announcements over Christmas lunch. I often wonder if we underestimate the importance of these moments because they’re not received with a champagne toast, or a stylized photo shoot or 100+ little cyber thumbs-up. 

So with no likelihood of public congratulations, it will be up to you (and perhaps those very close to you) to recognize and celebrate these true life achievements. Albeit not as flashy as the beginnings of a lifelong love or a brand new baby, these moments make up the invisible middles that help strengthen our connections, build our resilience and fill our lives with purpose, direction and growth. So if no ones congratulated you for those moments this year, I’m raising a glass for you right now. 

More than Sad

on By

I don’t want to call it the black dog. Because I like dogs.
a
I don’t want to see it as a dark cloud. Because I like clouds.
a
Most of us know something of depression. Whether we’ve experienced it first hand, or casually seen an ad about it online. But in a conversation I had about it recently, someone admitted “To be honest, I don’t really understand it. It’s being really sad, right? But not really for any reason?”
a
Our limited understanding and vague concept of depression leave us vulnerable. It makes it hard to see it in ourselves, maybe hard to spot it in others. Yes, sadness is an element of depression, but only one aspect. What needs to be understood is that depression is a disease of the mind, a disorder of perception and cognition – of sensing and thinking. It distorts how we experience the world, so much so that everything we see is filtered through an insidious lens and becomes a mangled and tarnished reinforcement of all the bad stuff we’ve been thinking about. It can be all-consuming and cyclical, it drains ones hope and ones strength, and  just like cancer, the longer it’s left untreated, the more dangerous it is to those experiencing it.
a
It is more than sad.
a
Imagine you are wearing dirty glasses. Doesn’t matter how they got dirty – the fact is that now they’re dirty, it’s impossible to see things right. Your friends don’t wear glasses, they can see just fine, but when you’re looking at the same things, you’re  taking it in differently, and because of your glasses, things don’t look as good to you. Now imagine you never learn how to clean your glasses. Imagine you don’t even know you can take them off. They become grubbier and grubbier. The world becomes foggier and uglier. Every little thing becomes hard to do. Every interaction or task, laborious and difficult. You can imagine how a world like that feels hopeless. You can imagine how a future like that looks bleak. With no concept that your glasses are seperate from yourself and removable, your view through the lenses seem to show life as it is. And it’s not a nice view. 
a
We need to start understanding depression better. As something that is not just “sad” but a gross distortion of how we think about and experience the world – like living life in a dirty pair of glasses. Once we realise that depression is something outside of ourselves, we are more powerful to make changes in order to heal, to know that it’s possible to see the world again in a different way, clearer and brighter.
a
Remember no one can clean someone else’s glasses for them. A conversation, a call to a counselor, a session with a psych can help but what is also needed is better understanding of depression and mental illness. We need to keep educating ourselves of the risks, the signs and the reality of this disease and that it can look different on everyone. Our best defence is knowledge. There are plenty of resources available online to learn more – about symptoms and about treatment.
c
And finally we need to keep practicing resilience, even in our strongest moments, because depression and mental illness do not discriminate. They can touch all of us at any time. So let’s keep having conversations about understanding and prevention.
c
Below I’ve included some of the American Psychological Association’s top ten ways to build resilience. These are for everyone. But, if you feel like you might be experiencing depression, know that you can access treatment at any time. In Aus, your GP will provide you with ten subsidised psych sessions a year (you should use them all and try to find someone you can really talk to). Or you can also access free, self-guided e-therapy online (http://headspace.org.au/ – it sounds hokey but it’s really great). Treatment might not work instantly but it’s a good first step. The world doesn’t have to be the world you see through dirty glasses.
c
The APA’s Top Ten Ways to Build Resilience
c
Make connections. Good relationships with close family members, friends or others are important. Accepting help and support from those who care about you and will listen to you strengthens resilience. Some people find that being active in civic groups, faith-based organizations, or other local groups provides social support and can help with reclaiming hope. Assisting others in their time of need also can benefit the helper.
c
Avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems. You can’t change the fact that highly stressful events happen, but you can change how you interpret and respond to these events. Try looking beyond the present to how future circumstances may be a little better. Note any subtle ways in which you might already feel somewhat better as you deal with difficult situations.
c
Accept that change is a part of living. Certain goals may no longer be attainable as a result of adverse situations. Accepting circumstances that cannot be changed can help you focus on circumstances that you can alter.
c
Move toward your goals. Develop some realistic goals. Do something regularly — even if it seems like a small accomplishment — that enables you to move toward your goals. Instead of focusing on tasks that seem unachievable, ask yourself, “What’s one thing I know I can accomplish today that helps me move in the direction I want to go?”
c
Take decisive actions. Act on adverse situations as much as you can. Take decisive actions, rather than detaching completely from problems and stresses and wishing they would just go away.
c
Look for opportunities for self-discovery. People often learn something about themselves and may find that they have grown in some respect as a result of their struggle with loss. Many people who have experienced tragedies and hardship have reported better relationships, greater sense of strength even while feeling vulnerable, increased sense of self-worth, a more developed spirituality and heightened appreciation for life.
c
Nurture a positive view of yourself. Developing confidence in your ability to solve problems and trusting your instincts helps build resilience.
c
Keep things in perspective. Even when facing very painful events, try to consider the stressful situation in a broader context and keep a long-term perspective. Avoid blowing the event out of proportion.
c
Maintain a hopeful outlook. An optimistic outlook enables you to expect that good things will happen in your life. Try visualizing what you want, rather than worrying about what you fear.
c
Take care of yourself. Pay attention to your own needs and feelings. Engage in activities that you enjoy and find relaxing. Exercise regularly. Taking care of yourself helps to keep your mind and body primed to deal with situations that require resilience.
c
Additional ways of strengthening resilience may be helpful. For example, some people write about their deepest thoughts and feelings related to trauma or other stressful events in their life. Meditation and spiritual practices help some people build connections and restore hope.
c
The key is to identify ways that are likely to work well for you as part of your own personal strategy for fostering resilience.

The Art of Putting Yourself Down

on By

There is a trend among some to be outspoken and vocal about the parts of themselves they’re unhappy with. The art of the put-down is less fashionable now but I remember, particularly back in high school, when it was the done thing. And I was certainly a master.
A
Putting myself down around others was an attempt at reasserting my humility. It tried to quash any suppositions of the narcissistic, egotistical aspects of my character that people might have read into. The idea that someone might take me for “loving myself” made me very concerned. I didn’t want to be seen in that way. So the easiest way to express myself was to offer frequent reminders to others that I was less than happy with a great slew of general aspects of who I was.
A
The acknowledgement and dissatisfaction of certain personal qualities was real. And I’m sure, not unique to me. However, the need to share this in the company of others was not particularly brave and vulnerable. Nor did it act as a great impetus for change.
A

Constant reinforcement of how crap I thought I was didn’t motivate me to improve.

And sharing it with others merely reconfirmed those insecurities – because even when people would argue back and insist I was wrong, I didn’t believe them anyway.
A
It’s taken a while, but I have since learned what a dangerous and detrimental behaviour this is (here’s when my nana and dad both roll their eyes because they’d been telling me this for years.) Not only does repeating these self-derogatory notions continue to give them more power and truth in your own mind, but the social expression of these notions also helps build them into your public identity. You become the person who isn’t good enough, the person who is insecure, the person who lacks confidence and dislikes themselves. You can also inadvertently make people feel worse about themselves by putting yourself down – if you’re constantly saying “I’m so fat” or “I’m so ugly” some people will use that benchmark at which to judge themselves. And if they consider themselves less attractive than you – you’ve just indirectly called them fat and ugly (it’s not nice, is it?)
A
The idea of “self-love” now is very much in vogue, and as much as it’s used as a tool for making us buy more of Rhianna’s new Fenty line and other shit we probably don’t need, it’s a much more healthy and empowering attitude to be encouraging. It reminds you “It’s great to like yourself!” It doesn’t mean you think you’re perfect – but it reinforces positive and adaptive ways of thinking about ourselves that help us develop, grow and flourish.
A
Next time you ‘re on the verge of negative self-talk – check yourself and see how you can rephrase that thought into something more healthy and useful. Make an effort to remind yourself of THREE THINGS you like about yourself, every time you think about something you don’t (because negative cognitions carry more weight than positive ones). And if someone offers you a compliment, just f*ckin’ take it. Don’t challenge it if you don’t believe it – someone has seen something good in you that they deem worthy of mentioning. Perhaps it might even be true.

Why Social Media Makes You Feel Crappy About Yourself

on By

A few months ago a bunch of Insta-models shared polls in their Instagram stories asking if followers thought Social Media seriously harms mental health. The general consensus was a resounding YES and the research seems to back it up. A number of recent studies have been done investigating the effects of social media usage on our psychological well-being and they’ve shown that many of us tend to feel pretty crappy after an extensive stint spent on the socials.
A
So why does it make us feel like crap? Well, aside from the fact that time spent on social media is time spent not doing other stuff we’re probs supposed to be doing (pls dont make me vacuum) one of the leading theories is Social Comparison theory. Basically, we see depictions of others that are a closer representation of our concept of the “Ideal” and we compare ourselves against those. It’s effect is particularly strong when it comes to making comparisons against “ideal body types” (for anglo, white women, it’s called the “thin ideal”), but can pretty much apply to any aspect of life. It’s likely that there will be people on your feeds that represent aspects of life that you would consider closer to your ideal (remember, representations can often be deceiving). The space between where you’re at and where they’re at can cause some stress and anxiety. “I wish I had that job/degree/house/family life/relationship/friendship group”, etc. Their relative social proximity to you can also increase these crappy feelings.
A
How can we combat these feelings? There are two ways, either change your Social Media usage or change your concept of the “Ideal”. Sounds simple, right?
A
It’s easy to get sucked into Social Media. Almost 75% of Australians actively use it (ABS, 2014), it’s on our smart phones which makes it constantly accessible, and it’s pretty much optimised by web gurus to make it as addictive as possible (it’s like internet crack). If it’s making you feel shitty, try limiting your time spent on it or deleting apps off your smartphone so you can only access it from your computer. If that’s too huge a leap, try curating your feeds a little better to stop following pages or users that make you feel angry, frustrated, jealous, resentful of or bad about yourself.
A
Changing your concept of the “ideal” requires a little more of a philosophical expedition. What we consider “ideal” is wrapped up in a lifetime of experiences, exposure, and social conditioning. Often ideas of what we want don’t always come from an honest and authentic place, and might instead be ego-fuelled by the need to prove something to ourselves and others. These things might not get us any closer to living happy and fulfilling lives – but it’s super easy to think they will (more 👏🏼 money 👏🏼 pls). 
A

Finally, remember people’s depictions of life on Social Media can be a false representation of actual reality.

The good news is that studies have also shown the negative psychological effects of social media usage can be thwarted by being an informed and educated social media consumer. So remember, don’t always believe everything you see, and don’t believe everything you think.

Why Inspiration Can Be Dangerous

on By

Do you spend a huge amount of time waiting for motivation/inspiration?
A
Whether it’s to write a song, or do an art or make a change, there is a popular notion that things of real value must be born of inspiration. One must feel some sort of deep, driving force to do something before it can be done and so it can be done organically, with authenticity.
A
“Inspiration” is so in fash that it’s peddled day in day out in magazines and on insta feeds. I guess what is considered inspiring is different for all of us, and it can be great when it offers us guidance or helps spark our interest in something new.
A
But, I feel like most of the time we should chuck the idea of inspiration in the bloody garbage.
A

Instead of motivating and encouraging, I find that so called “inspiration” can be stifling, guilt-inducing, and lead you to focus on all the shit you don’t have/are not and wish you did/were.

Most people who claim to be peddling “inspiration” are often just “inspiring” you to spend your money with them. Nothing particularly noble or enlightening there. 
A
Inspiration can also be dangerous when it’s considered to be the first step in a series of important actions or changes.
A
BE INSPIRED – > DO THE THING
A
I can tell you that I have spent a majority of time being uninspired or rationalised feelings of inspiration so much so that I’ve considered them to not be true or authentic inspiration. So I have not done the things. I was stuck at step one. Until I realised that you actually don’t even need step one. You can erase step one altogether and instead just…
A
DO THE THING
A
No stepping into the gospel church and seeing the light and backflipping down the aisle in your tuxedo, hat and sunglasses necessary.
A
Real, positive change is already difficult, without the added pressure of expecting the motivation to come to you like a magic lightening bolt shot out of the ass of a neon unicorn. We have to start challenging desire-led notions of change like “you’ve got to want to change for change to happen”. If you want to change, then change. Doesn’t have to be all at once, but if there is something you want to do, or someone you want to be – do something, anything, to get a little closer to that. Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. You might be left waiting forever.

HEAD FIRST

on By

People quantify success in many ways; what job you have, what car you drive, what school you send your kids to. I used to think that, in order to be successful, there was a bunch of stuff you needed to do/have/accomplish. But a few life lessons got me reevaluating my personal concept of success and exploring the notions of happiness and self-acceptance.
A
The most important lesson I think I ever learned is that everything starts from the head first – with our ability to take in and make sense of the world. We can be our own best friend or our own worst enemy (and sometimes both at the same time).

A
A

Our thinking determines everything. It determines how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about others, what we want, what we are capable of, how we feel about our past, how we feel about our future. It’s a daily struggle for lots of us, and for many, an inescapable nightmare. 

A
But the conversations around mental health and mental wellness are often stuffy and boring. We bring it up when things are going wrong (and even then, we can still be reluctant to do so for fear of judgement). Rarely do we celebrate our moments of mental victory, or take a moment to consider how making little changes can positively enhance our lives.
A
So I thought I’d start this blog. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it is a chance to share thoughts, discoveries and observations on tackling life, love and everything else head first. Perhaps together we can learn a few things, help take the edge off and start building new, inclusive concepts of success, happiness and self-acceptance that are achievable for all of us.