Wise Wednesdays

  What does it mean to celebrate yourself? Yes, you might buy something you like, have dinner with loved ones or take an afternoon off to do things you enjoy. In the good old pre-Covid days you might even have a party! All of these things amplify the joy we might already be feeling after an accomplishment or happy news. But is that it?   What if you don’t feel like celebrating or you want some quiet time.   Do you just skip?   ****** Over the past few years, I’ve skipped celebrations like my birthday. I didn’t even attend my PhD graduation. I needed a lot of quiet contemplation on what all these things really meant to me. As I worked with clients on their journeys to discover the careers and lives they really want, I noticed a deeper meaning to ‘celebration’. One of the meanings of celebration is ‘to make widely known’. While modern culture tends to focus on making known to the external world, it’s important that you know the impact of what you have achieved deep in ...

I know what I want. I just need more confidence to take action. Can you help me? Yes. And, no. The first thing is to agree on what the real issue is. It’s not helpful that people are told on their annual assessments that they need more ‘confidence’. Why?   Because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s like telling someone they should be more in love. Or be more angry.   But how do you manufacture an emotion or state of mind? Well, the easy answer I’m going to tell you is what an acting coach might say: Use your imagination. Pretend. Fake it until you make it, etc. But the truth is that will only get you part of the way. The next thing I’m going to tell you is to do the opposite:   Stop using your imagination. Stop imagining the worst case scenario or all the bad things that could happen if you follow your inner-voice. The word confidence comes from the Latin ‘with trust’.   So the real question becomes: what do you trust (or not)? Well, you can trust that life will have its...

  To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. - Lao Tzu   When I was growing up, I made a vow to learn everything I could about the world...   I loved learning and absorbing.   After gaining all the qualifications I could possibly get as a doctor, I realised something was still missing even though I loved my job.   I hadn’t solved the problem: how to ‘save the world’. I really wanted to know how to ease suffering and bring some kind of peace and contentment. This drew me to medicine.   But adding more knowledge didn’t seem to help anymore. Focusing on ‘the world’ didn’t either. I found myself drawn inward to a more intuitive mode. I realised I might have to reverse the process and shed layers of knowledge somehow.   I had to start letting go of what I thought I knew about life, others and especially myself…the biases, narratives and assumptions…   In the process, I realised it’s OK...