Blog

What is psychological well-being?

My coach, Michael Neill, told me about a woman he had spoken to who had been in Nepal at the time of a major earthquake. She told him that she had had a sudden revelation that although she was in grave physical danger, the situation had no bearing on her psychological well-being. In that moment, she realised that however terrified she was, she was OK, she could do what was possible to help people. She saved the lives of many as a result.

This story had me wondering what it is we mean exactly by t…

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The everyday misunderstanding of being human

This week is mental health awareness week.

It’s a good week therefore to consider how we all have moments of misunderstanding that can cause us to believe either that there is something wrong with us or that there is something that we have to fix in the world to be OK.

It’s also a good week to consider how we all have the ability to see this misunderstanding more truthfully and in doing so realise the constancy of our mental well-being, our innate resilience and our access to our natural intellige…

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Replicator or convertor? 

Which are you? A human photocopier or a device to change energy from one form into another?  Let me explain...

I was on a writing workshop recently with the beyond amazing Steve Chandler and Michael Neill. During one part of the workshop we took it in turns to talk about the obstacles to our writing.

We all told our stories and the two world class coaches, in various lovingly dismissive ways, said ‘So?’.

And it struck me how unbelievably creative we all were being. From nothing, each of us was cons…

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The search for happiness (and other ways to ruin your life)

What if happiness was utterly, absolutely, unarguably irrelevant?

How can that be? Surely the whole point of life is to find what makes you happy and keep doing it? Isn't our purpose here on earth to enjoy being here on earth? Otherwise what...? Why...?

I totally bought into this. Clearly the point of life was to be happy. I read hundreds of books and watched thousands of ads that told me so, and told me how to be it. And if I wasn’t happy then obviously I had to change whatever it was that was ta…

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The passive aggressive present

The passive-aggressive present. This was the title of a post on a chat forum that I read recently. The writer of the post said that a few days before her birthday, her ex-husband had dropped off a present. She opened it. Inside was a pair of slippers.

The woman saw her ex-husband as abusive and passive aggressive. Therefore, a present from him would take on those qualities. So they sat there on the table, the discarded wrapping, the cardboard box and the pair of slippers, traumatising her.

The har…

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The uncontainable lightness of being

I'm sitting here in a room listening to a recovered addict and someone who has contemplated suicide. They are filling the room with light.

Many of us fumble our way through the darkness and use the few seconds of a struck match to watch shadows turn into monsters. Michael Neill and Steve Chandler created their own torches to find their way through the caves. Their torches showed them what was always there and what had never been there.

They brought this knowledge up to the fresh air of the surface…

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Why we don't need to change anything ever (and the importance of not confusing star jumps with making love)

I had a long list of things to talk through with my coach Michael Neill. Why wasn't I more productive? Why wasn't I finishing some of the things I had started? Why wasn't I creating more programmes? Why wasn't I signing up more clients? I was looking forward to a call in which we analysed all the obstacles to what I wanted, developed some actions to achieve them, got set up with a plan.

Yeah. Right. Forget all that.

The call turned into the most beautiful exploration of how we know what to do, of …

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The 'there's nothing out there to change' leaders who are changing the world

What if there was not one single thing in any part of your life that you had to change in order for you to be OK?

Our habitual thinking says, ‘If only I had more X and less Y I would be happy’. But the truth is, and this may sound surprising, ridiculous even, our psychological well-being has nothing to do with anything outside us. Nothing.

Sometimes things seem like a disaster to us. Sometimes it seems we have a handle on them. Sometimes they matter to us. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they seem…

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The tantrum, the toast and the two gifts that change everything and nothing

When my daughter was about two, and it was time to leave the park, she had an enormous tantrum. She was wailing and crying and stamping her feet and flinging her arms around.  Then all of a sudden, in the midst of all that outrage, she caught sight of her hand and in her hand was a piece of toast. She abruptly stopped crying. Standing in composed silence, next to the swing, she calmly ate the toast. And when she had completely finished, she started, with the same intensity as before, tantrumming…

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'wisssssdom' or Wisdom?

A while ago, an idea popped into my head to do a public talk. Almost instantly, thoughts crowded in to rubbish it. They were soothing, matter of fact and as reassuring as the snake in the Jungle Book. 'What if no one comesssss, Clare? You could make a fool out of yoursssssself….’ And this all sounded very wise, very sensible. Let’s forget that crazy idea and stick with the wisssssdom that says stay safe.

Which do you listen to?

Do you listen to the familiar, ultra-reasonable, ‘this is how it is’ v…

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