How to Embrace Discomfort: Essential Ways to Thrive
We spend an enormous amount of time making ourselves comfortable. We heat our homes when we’re cold, cool them when we’re hot. We take tablets when something hurts, and reach for our phones when we’re bored. If something leads to anxiety, discomfort, or unhappiness, our learned reaction is to try to remove the feeling. There […]
Are Boundaries Stalling Your Essential Learning to Get Along?
Are We Using Boundaries to Avoid Learning How to Get Along? The word boundary has become part of our everyday language. We are encouraged to set boundaries with our partners, our children, our parents, our friends and even our workmates. However, generally speaking, this is a good thing. Healthy boundaries are important, but I believe […]
How to Let Go of Perfection for Powerful Love
I had a client who shared with me that their partner had listed a huge number of admirable traits… but finished stating that wasn’t enough for them. I started thinking about the damage that perfectionism does to relationships, because this wasn’t the first example I have come across. Most of us have some idea of […]
How Volunteering is Good for Everyone
With the retirement of Aaron Lee from his position of Captain of the Bairnsdale Fire Brigade, I began to ponder the role of volunteers in our community. We often think of volunteering as something we do for other people, we give our time to the local sporting club, CFA, school, community organisation, op shop or […]
We love each other, so why do we fight?
One of the things that often saddens couples is how they can genuinely love each other yet fight so bitterly. We tend to assume that if we really loved each other we wouldn’t fight, but the truth is often quite different. It is probably impossible to have a close relationship without conflict, fortunately, it is […]
Should I vent my anger to get it out of my system?
For many years we were told that anger was like steam building up inside a pressure cooker. The advice was to let it out before it explodes, punch a punching bag or pillow, smash something, scream out loud. Just get it out of your system. It sounded logical, but research has consistently shown that this […]
What is Positive Sentiment Override and can it be learned?
Thanks for the Question W. One of the greatest predictors of a happy, lasting relationship isn’t whether couples argue, every couple has differences of opinion. It isn’t whether they occasionally annoy each other, that is inevitable too. The real difference often comes down to something psychologists call Positive Sentiment Override. It sounds like a complicated […]
The power of our thoughts is greater than we imagine
One of the most important things I have ever learned is that while we can’t directly choose our feelings, we have far more influence over them than most people realise. Many people spend years waiting to feel motivated, happy, calm or confident before they take action, unfortunately that usually meant they kept waiting. Our behaviour […]
How do I develop confidence?
How do I develop confidence? When some people seem naturally confident, but others hesitate before almost every decision, it can be easy to believe that confidence is something you either have or you don’t. We often think that if we could just change our thinking and become more positive then confidence would magically appear. Interestingly, […]
Are We Forgetting How to Talk?
Many people nowadays seem less comfortable having a face to face conversation than sending a text message. Technology has given us many wonderful ways to stay connected, even over great distances, but there is growing evidence that our increasing reliance on texting is changing the way we communicate and not always for the better. Text […]