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The lottery started in the UK in 1994 and my sister suggested that our family should have a syndicate. Every Saturday we sat in the living room seeing if our numbers would come up. My 93 year old grandmother would sit there, not saying a word until all the numbers had been chosen. Then, when, once again, it was clear we hadn’t won anything she would let out a sigh of relief and thank God for sparing us…

Her relief often comes to mind when people describe their dream life. The major successes th…

[Excerpt from EASE, getting real with work]

Let’s have a chat about goals and desires and what we want to achieve.

Wouldn’t it be great if, every single time we set a goal, we achieved it?

Want to earn more? Done.

Want to get more clients? Done.

Want that next promotion? Done.

Want to achieve that target? Done.

Want a new job? Done.

Sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we don’t.

What’s going on there? What makes the difference? 

Why does desire not translate every time into auto…

[Excerpt from GAME, getting real with the play of life]

Game 1: Drama and Tension

This is the ‘getting your money’s worth’ from The Game. Because, after all, who wants to play a boring game where nothing happens?

The character is given the aims which create maximum drama:

“Go out there and find yourself! Be someone! And then you will have everything you want. Security, happiness, love, success, freedom! It is all there for you to find. Off you go!”

This is the ultimate search of all time.…

[excerpt from SANE, getting real with reality]

In ancient Rome and Greece ‘aimless wandering’ was considered a form of madness. The ‘treatment’ was stoning and beating.

In mid 1800s America, the label ‘Dysaesthesia Aethiopica’ indicated that black men and women were incapable of living in freedom. The ‘treatment’ was slavery.

In the 1850s and 60s when train travel was becoming possible, it was believed that the shaking motion injured the brain, sending travellers mad. The ‘treatment’ was to s…

[excerpt from HOME, getting real with what you already are]

One evening, I was on my own watching ‘Fleabag’, the series created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Fleabag is the main character (we never learn her real name).

Her sister in the programme is called Claire. Married to someone who treats her appallingly, Claire is in love with a Scandinavian man she has met through her work. He is called Klare.

Fleabag and her sister bump into this man in the park. (It’s the ‘I look like a pencil!’ haircut …

[an excerpt from HOME, the return to what you already are]

An ape remembers a tool they need to retrieve an inaccessible reward and heads off in search of it.

A cave man sketches a hunt scene on the stone wall, allowing for the transportation of his learning to another, long after the hunt itself is over.

A scientist designs a rocket that will reach a planet no one has never visited.

Even the amoeba, a single-celled organism, stores memory in protein structures.

All of this made possible by…

My sister and I were in Costa one Sunday (we love a café). We were talking about holidays.

A memory came up of when we were in France in a swimming pool. I was waiting behind someone on the ladder to get out.

At the same time as I pulled myself up the ladder, the woman in front dipped down. Her foot went right down the top of my swimming costume.

In reality, it probably took less than a few seconds for her to extract her foot. In my memory it took so long that it is probably still there. My s…

[an excerpt from SANE which looks at lack, need and greed]

In a conference on building mega brands and mega businesses, years ago, my colleague Nicola Bird asked the only question that mattered: ‘How do we know when to stop? What is enough?’

The seminar leader couldn’t answer.

‘Enough’ was, for that leader, an unexplored concept. And this lack of enquiry, this assumption that the next thing is always, unfailingly necessary and better meant the underlying theme of the conference was actually ‘…

You might have heard of the ‘marshmallow experiment’. The one where researchers give children a marshmallow. The children are told they can eat their marshmallow now or if they can wait until the researcher returns to the room, they will be rewarded with two marshmallows. Follow up with the children, years later, shows that those who display ‘delayed gratification’ are more successful across the board than those who sacrificed the greater reward for immediate pleasure. You might not have heard, …