Wise Wednesdays

It was fun speaking at the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence's Annual Conference. It's the third time I'm invited but the first time it's under my title of Director, Next Generation Coaching and Consulting Ltd. Little did I know where my intuition would lead me when I attended for the first time. And yet... a lot of meditation and coaching later, here I am. Whenever we move towards an inspired vision of what's possible in our lives, dark forces awaken within us. The greater the vision, the more powerful the resistance. It can range from common analysis paralysis to a once in a lifetime dark night of the soul. The need to belong clashes with the desire to become and all sorts of forces are unleashed. Fortunately, the darker the storm, the greater the promise of joy, discovery and peace on the other side. Dr John Ndikum started working with me as his coach about a year ago, to support him in a career change. He ...

In a 2017 advert, Microsoft used a statistic estimating that we make 35,000 decisions a day… As someone with a PhD in epidemiology and statistics, I’m not one to take unqualified statistics at face value. However, it’s entirely plausible that we’re making many more decisions today than we did on an average day when our human brains first evolved, because we’re faced with so much more choice. As thought leaders and decision-makers, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg must have been onto something when they simplified their wardrobe to save decision-making capacity. But what if you don’t know what to cut out from your daily decision-making load? What if you’re in a phase of rapid or multiple changes when a large number of decisions need to be made? Or what if you’re going through an emotional time processing intense feelings like sadness, anger or grief and have less energy left to think things through? Decision fatigue can creep in...

The sad news of two celebrity suicides in one week has sent ripples through our collective consciousness. I don’t normally write on things in the media but a friend thought it might help so here are my two cents. I noticed two types of reactions to the tragic news: curiosity bordering on voyeurism over the details of the two lives lost; and existential self-projection in the form of an anxious questioning of what it all means for the rest of us. Having prescribed anti-depressants and anxiolytics as well as worked on national mental health statistics and policy, I learned two things about mental illness: 1) it’s common; 2) it’s misunderstood. I blanked the moment I found out that one of my close high school friends committed suicide; and I have vivid memories of friends and acquaintances taking time off and needing to withdraw from societal functioning when it all became too much. Today, I coach people to find their right path and build a balanced life,...