Engage With Life

The Art of Self-Compassion

19/2/2014

Contemporary society seems to be in the grip of a self-confidence crisis. I so commonly hear people report that they "have no self-confidence" or "have low self-esteem."

The response of many people to societal demands to be "confident," is to rush around doing constructive, visible things that can give us a sense that we have done what a "confident" person would, or that we've been noticed by others and praised, or that we can compare ourselves to others and feel somehow better than they are. This temporary ego inflation may make us feel good for a while, but it doesn't last. We end up in a cycle of ups and downs that is not only exhausting, but emotionally damaging as well. Ultimately it makes us fundamentally unhappy.

One result of this damaging cycle are the innumerable clients who believe that they are "not good enough."

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Positive Psychology and Counselling

14/2/2014

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Positive Psychology seeks to increase happiness, not just alleviate depression

As an undergraduate psychology student in the late 1980's, the positive psychology I was exposed to was in the subject of history, where we were duly informed such notions would remain. Unscientific and airy-fairy notions such as "happiness" were not welcome in the hallowed halls of science. Why would this be? The Humanist movement, which aimed to recognise our core human tendencies, was not scientific by definition - it's notions were untestable and therefore results were unpredictable. To a scientific mind that made it less valid than things that are testable and predictable. Life, it would seem, was to be excluded from psychology.

This has thankfully begun to change.

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Phone Free February

8/2/2014

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Phone Free February (or Fone Free Feb as it is actually know) is an organisation that has commenced this year to encourage us to put down our phones and engage with each other. Their idea is to encourage us "to foster and strengthen our relationships with those around us," to give us "a chance to be truly present, whether that is in your own company and the environment around you, or the company of your friends and family." What are the details around why they recommend giving up your phone, and what is the psychological impact of a constant attachment to our smart phones?

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Teaching Happiness for Young Women

28/1/2014

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Can women have it all, and be happy too?

Contemporary women enjoy for the first time in history, the ability to have it all. But is that opportunity offering the rich rewards that were promised? It seems to me that while some aspects of society offer women an opportunity, other, more insidious aspects, continue to dictate to women how they should engage in holding themselves back.
There are some common pitfalls that women I see could find themselves in. Indeed, they are not even pitfalls as that implies you were not in the hole to begin with, whereas many clients have never known life outside the constraints of these walls.

Paula Davis-Laak writes on these eloquently in her blog on Happiness as she maps out 8 of these areas. In summary:

Maxing out isn't healthy, and doesn't make you happy. The physical and emotional consequences of striving to be the best academic, worker, friend, child, wife, mother etc. are deep, and take a significant time to recover from. She argues that women would be best served by finding their own boundaries and defining success according to those boundaries.
Experience more, and buy less. Being trapped in an endless purchasing cycle is in fact a predictor of unhappiness, and living at the edges of your ability to afford

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The Art of Self-Compassion

Positive Psychology and Counselling

Phone Free February

Teaching Happiness for Young Women

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