The Gap Chart is a very simple model of the mind. From our environment, we get various sensations – the light reflected off the paper you’re reading this on, the sounds around you, the feeling of the chair you’re sitting in, maybe some lingering tastes from what you last ate or drank,…. Each of these sensations has […]
Mindfulness for Marathons?
A few weeks after completing an 8 week Resilient Mindfulness course, Matthew emailed me to say he’d just run a half marathon, and achieved a personal best (1 hour 21, exactly a minute off his previous PB). What’s remarkable about that? He’d done no focussed training! He found that “amazing, and hard to explain.” So what was […]
Self Kindness
I had an email from a subscriber to my email list recently. The writer, let’s call him “Jim”, wrote that, “My biggest challenge is self-compassion and self-kindness. I’m great at giving it to others but not myself.” Isn’t that so common? In case you’re in the same situation, I thought you might like to see the resources […]
Being on holiday: being fully there
Photo by Jude Beck on UnsplashSo it’s finally happening. You’ve managed to get the time off work, travelled to this wonderful destination, and you’re on holiday! All you want to do is enjoy the place, the special people you’re with, and this moment…. you’re just starting to relax into it and….. “Bing!” you find yourself thinking about work. Maybe something […]
Being Generous without being a Doormat
Last week I wrote about generosity and success – how givers are at both the top and bottom of the success charts. I mentioned that the successful givers differentiate themselves by taking a win-win attitude: they consider their own interests as well as the interests of the people they’re giving to.There’s more to say on […]
Does Generosity Create Success?
There are takers, matchers, and givers. Takers are people who are always out for their own gain. Matchers like to evenly match their giving and taking. Givers just give. How do you think they compare?According to Adam Grant, in his book Give and Take, the least successful are givers. Studies in the fields of engineering, medicine, […]
Double the Value of your Holiday!
We normally think of mindfulness as an antidote to the difficult things in life. But it’s also relevant when things are going well, for example on holiday. You see, our minds are wandering about 47% of the time. We pay good money to go away and get the finest experiences – the place, the weather, the food, and […]
Ann’s Perfect Storm of Change – and how Mindfulness Helped
One of my readers, let’s call her Ann, emailed me about her “perfect storm of change.” She wrote about changes at work: regular messages on the intranet announcing “more change, more people losing their jobs, more of the surviving jobs being made unmanageable, more service being eroded, more things I value being destroyed ….” She wrote about […]
Mindfulness Makes You Stronger
There’s a popular image of Mindfulness, that it’s about retreating inside yourself, quietening down and generally being rather feeble. But I disagree. So do the US Marines – their Mindfulness-based Mental Fitness Training programmes achieve excellent results. Many organisations disagree too. Google, eBay, EY, HSBC, the UK Parliament, the UK National Health Service, Unilever, KPMG, Microsoft, Bupa, […]
Like Mindfulness but can’t find the time?
Mindfulness has tremendous benefits: it reduces stress while increasing clarity of mind, enjoyment, effectiveness and many other benefits. But it does take time. This article is for you if you’d love to practice Mindfulness, but simply can’t find the time. What’s the quickest way to practice Mindfulness?