Having been a life coach for 8 years, I’ve seen hundreds of clients for all sorts of different reasons. Most of them of suffering in one way or another. They may be dissatisfied with their job, their partner but most often with themselves. I share with them various Positive Psychology interventions and Life Coaching tools specific for their situation. Most people will commit to using these interventions and it can often turn their life around.
 
I would like to share a real and recent story to demonstrate the long term benefits one of my clients got from investing in themselves. Her name is Ingrid and she has generously agreed to me sharing her story in the hope it may help others.
 
I first met Ingrid in 2012 when she came to me describing feeling very lost with life. Ingrid found her job difficult, people unhelpful and was feeling depressed. Added to this she had two young children and was feeling somewhat trapped by the burden of responsibility this brought. Ingrid’s situation is certainly not an uncommon one.
 
One of the homework tasks I invited Ingrid to undertake was completing a VIA Character Strengths* survey. The results of this scientifically proven survey gave us a list of Ingrid’s 24 strengths of character, listed in order of her preference for using them. Understanding your Character Strengths gives you an opportunity to operate out of your top strengths more often. When one engages in their top strengths it is energising, making any task seem easier, and increases wellbeing and life satisfaction.
 
The other benefit in knowing the order of preference you use your character strengths, is that it helps you also become aware of lower order strengths too. In Ingrid’s case, the strengths of ‘Hope’ and ‘Gratitude’ were in her bottom 20. This doesn’t make them weaknesses, they are all strengths, but it does indicate she would have to be very intentional to use these strengths because they are so low in her preferences.
 
The abundance of research# on Character Strengths has shown people who experience higher life satisfaction have the following strengths up high:

• Zest (energy)
• Hope
• Gratitude
• Curiosity
• Love

 
Knowing Ingird was feeling lost and depressed, I decided one way forward would be to intentionally build her strengths of hope (the antithesis of depression) and gratitude (Robert Emmons, a leading gratitude researcher, confirms gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression).
 
Ingrid diligently practiced the interventions I gave to her to build ‘hope’ and ‘gratitude’. In a fairly short space of time she reported feeling much happier and in control. In fact, she enjoyed doing the gratitude intervention so much, she has continued, in a less formal way but become very intentional about being thankful for all the good things in her life.
 
Fast forward three years, Ingird calls me out of blue to share some devastating news – she has been diagnosed with a tumour in her brain that is growing rapidly. The good news is it’s not malignant, yet still life threatening if not removed. The brain surgery involves an 8 – 10 hour operation which will leave her permanently deaf in her right ear. She will also experience paralysis to the right side of her face and tongue. This should regain feeling in the coming months but no guarantee. Further to this, she will need to re-learn to walk because the removal of her inner right ear disrupts her balance. By any measure this is a very serious and complicated operation.
 
Ingrid called me not simply to share the bad news but to proactively put steps in place to enhance her recovery phase. She asked me to be there post-surgery to assist her to move forward in the best way emotionally possible. What a privilege. I feel honoured to be asked and I didn’t hesitate to assure her I will do all I can to support her.
 
A couple of things really struck me in my pre-operation phone conversations with Ingrid. She was incredibly calm and matter-of-fact about facing the operation. She decided to focus on one thing only – to survive the operation. Anything beyond surviving was considered a bonus. What else I noticed was how surrounded with loving and caring people she was. Not being from Australia, her sister and mother had flown in to be at her side, to care for the children and support her husband. Her work colleagues, friends and associates were bending over backwards to show their love, care and support. On top of all of this, despite Ingrid’s insistence her focus was just on surviving the operation, she spoke with real hope. Deep down she believed in her surgeon, and trusted her own determination, her love and her bravery.
 
As if her pre-operation outlook wasn’t already mind-blowing for how optimistic she was, nothing could have prepared me for the text message I received exactly 9 days after the surgery. The text said she was home, going really well and wondering when we could have our first catch-up. Nine days after major brain surgery! I visited her two days later and the amazement continues. I had prepared myself for Ingrid to have had her head shaved, face swollen, unable to walk unaided. What I actually saw was a beautiful, vibrant women greet me at the door – most of her hair, looking as radiant as ever and walking only a little more slowly than normal……11 days after major brain surgery.
 
How was it that Ingird had already bounced back so well? I reflected on this and also on many other clients I had seen flourish through their adversity.
 
I notice there are three things people have in common who bounce back after adversity:
 

1. They have an optimistic and hopeful mindset. They truly believe things will be alright. They create their destiny through positive thoughts and actions.
2. They are deeply grateful for all the good things in their life. They proactively hunt for the good every day. Small gifts from nature are gratefully taken-in – the lovely sunset, new budding flower or dramatic thunderstorm. As are their friendships, none taken for granted, all valued and cherished.
3. They surround themselves with wonderful people. People who care and love them. This love they receive is simply the love they constantly radiate out, coming back to them in spadesful – but they don’t see it like that. They just feel honoured to receive such love and care; it lifts them.

Ingrid didn’t get herself to that place by accident. She had invested in bettering herself for the year’s prior by building her strengths of hope and gratitude. They had become a part of who she now is and how she thinks. This gave her a fresh, new, resilient and optimistic mindset. Little did she know this operation lay ahead of her but she says herself she doesn’t know how she could have faced it if she was still feeling how she was when I first saw her in 2012.
 
Ingrid goes so far as to say she is grateful for the tumour which has further deepened her gratitude for life. She describes feeling no fear any more for anything life brings to her. She’s faced this with enormous bravery (also one of her top Character Strengths!) and self-compassion. It has been my absolute honour to have witnessed the dedication to her personal growth and see the benefits all these years later.
 
Every single day I feel incredibly privileged to have people share their lives with me. Often sharing very intimate and sometimes challenging conversations. Ingrid’s story is one example of the long-term benefits you can have by putting in the self-development time and effort. She has reaped the rewards 10 fold during this very challenging time and has come out even happier from the experience.
 
So how can you develop your hope, gratitude and friendships? That will be covered off in next month’s blog.
 
 
* The fantastic free Character Strengths survey can be found at www.viame.org
# http://www.viacharacterblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Character-strengths-well-being-Park-Peterson-Seligman-2004.pdf

The number 1 reason people give for not being able to make the healthy lifestyle changes they want, is lack of willpower. It’s certainly my own experience with struggling to maintain exercise over winter too…..just need a bit more willpower!
The good news is there is a psychological science behind self-control. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all cure, however there are a number of scientifically supported strategies that can help you finally achieve that allusive healthy lifestyle.
To understand the secrets to having more willpower, it helps to first understand what reduces our willpower. Roy Baumeister, PhD is a psychologist and leader in researcher on willpower has found our self-control diminishes during the day as we use it. It’s like a muscle that can get fatigued from over-use. Think about how many times each you need to exert your willpower. You resist the cake for morning tea. You ignore the email that just popped into your inbox. You fight the urge to look at Facebook until your lunch break. You bite your tongue in a meeting when you’d like to have made a smart retort. Each time you exercise self-control you deplete your strength. 

Here’s 6 strategies science says can preserve and strengthen our willpower:

1. Eat regularly – willpower depletion is tied to lower fuel for the brain. The brain is a high-energy organ and requires a steady supply of glucose (blood sugar). Each time self-control is exerted, it uses up glucose in the brain faster than it can be replenished, depleting our willpower. Therefore, eating regularly to maintain the glucose levels might help to maintain higher levels of willpower throughout the day. If you are attempting to lose weight, you might find you have more willpower by eating regular small meals, rather than skipping meals which risks exhausting your willpower.
2. Avoid temptation – there are numerous willpower studies that support the idea that it’s easier to resist temptation if you can’t see it! If you’re trying to lose weight, make sure you don’t have chocolate or unhealthy treats in your house. There’s a famous piece of research on willpower in young children, called the ‘marshmallow test’, which was conducted over 40 years ago by psychologist Walter Mischel. He left each child alone in a room with one marshmallow in front of them. He told them he would be back in a few minutes, if they didn’t eat the marshmallow while he was gone, he would give them another one. If they ate it, that was fine, but they wouldn’t get any more. The children with good self-control resisted the immediate pleasure of eating one marshmallow to instead get rewarded with another. What was interesting was the strategies used by the young kids who resisted the massive temptation to eat the marshmallow. A lot of them turned away so they couldn’t see it, or otherwise distracted themselves by singing, thereby helping them to avoid the immediate temptation. As it turns out this strategy proves very effective for adults as well. If the temptation is in front of you, it requires a lot more willpower to say no. If it’s not there, it increases your chance of success. So avoidance of the temptation or distraction from it by good planning ahead can be very useful to assisting your willpower. [If you want to see the marshmallow test in action, have a look at the You Tube clip below, it's totally worth it!]
3. Build your willpower ‘muscle’ - just as muscles are strengthened by exercise, so too is your willpower ‘muscle’. Research shows that when we regularly exert self-control it may strengthen your willpower over time. An Australian study found that people who were assigned to a two month program of physical exercise found that by using their self-control to maintain the exercise routine, they also had more willpower to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat more healthy food, avoid frivolous spending and studied better! By building their willpower muscle, they found they had better willpower across the board.
4. Have a strong goal - when people are much clearer about what they want to achieve and why, it assists willpower. Think carefully about the goal you want to achieve and importantly consider why you want to achieve (ie, what’s the emotional reason/benefit you will gain by achieving this goal). Then write that down and it will boost your self-control by having that clarity.
5. Keep your mood positive - the effects of willpower depletion can be offset by maintaining a positive mood, positive thoughts and a true belief that you can do it. Each day do things that bring you joy and happiness to boost your mood. Hang with friends who are positive. Watch movies that are happy. Listen to upbeat music. Take a walk on the beach or in nature. And monitor your thoughts to make sure you minimise the unhelpful, negative chatter. Keep re-reading your goal to keep alive the sense of belief that this is achievable.
6. Use if/then statements - plan ahead and anticipate the situations that may rock your resolve, then create in your mind an ‘if/then’ statement that will help you through this situation. For example, you may be wanting to lose weight but you know there’s a party coming up where finger food will be served and in the past this has been a massive temptation. Your ‘if/then’ statement might be, “If I am offered some nibbles, then I will take the carrot stick only”. So when this situation becomes a reality, you already know what you’re going to do, meaning you don’t have to rely wholly on willpower alone.

Have a try…..
Practice using these different strategies above, and hopefully there are some in there that will help you achieve your goal. Good luck, you’re not alone with wanting more willpower, the great news is these things can help.

Please enjoy watching a replication of the 1960s marshmallow test here, the kids are so adorable trying to resist!

At the ripe old age of 49, I took up athletics! My son’s sprint coach encouraged me to join their training squad – a squad filled with young and highly talented athletes. For weeks I made excuses for why I couldn’t join the squad, knowing deep down the only reason for not joining was the negative self-doubts and voice that told me, “you’re too old”, “young people in the squad will think you’re a joke”, “you’ve never competed in athletics before, what if you’re no good?” …… yadda…… yadda…… yadda!

By way of a background, I love keeping fit and pushing myself pretty hard. I play netball, and I totally love the feeling of power in my legs – in speed or hills. But the others in the squad were in their prime, many competing at state or national level. I felt like such a fraud going onto the track with them. I have played loads of team sports over the years but never competed in an individual sport, and never competed in a sprint race since high school.
To get myself out there, I used 4 different strategies:

1. Make the desire larger than the fear - I had to make my desire to have a crack at this sport, larger than the fear itself. I was aware of the intense thrill I get from the feeling of sprinting flat out and the feeling of the power in my legs, so I focussed on that. Each time my fearful voice began its unhelpful chatter about being too old and looking silly, I reframed it into how incredible it will feel to get to sprint hard, on a proper track. This helped to create a more balanced and realistic context of the size of the fear verses the size of the rewards.
2. Be grateful - I also found the use of ‘gratitude’ to be very helpful. When I intentionally stopped the negative, fearful voice and replaced that with how grateful I feel to be offered this opportunity; to be physically able to sprint; to have the full support of my wonderful family; to be able to afford the running spikes etc, it quickly made the doubts melt away. I find gratitude a very powerful antidote to fear and insular thinking.
3. Write a goal - I wrote a goal for what I wanted to achieve with sprinting. This helped to sharpen my focus on what was possible, to quieten the “what wasn’t possible” voice. I wrote an intrinsic goal around bettering my times, not focussed on winning. This helped it to feel a lot less scary when I didn’t set myself up to have to beat anyone but myself. I know I’ll work hard on the track, so beating my own time was more realistic and achievable. Beating someone else’s time was a big unknown and not wholly in my control.
4. Get a cheer squad - I also surrounded myself with my personal ‘cheer squad’. Those wonderful family and friends who believed in my dream too, and encourage me. 

So now in a much better mindset, I attended my first training. Nervous and unsure what lay ahead, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone. To my great relief and pleasant surprise, the squad were really inclusive, friendly and fun. Quickly my courage to participate was hugely rewarded – well beyond my wildest hopes and dreams. At 49, and having played sport my entire life, I just discovered a whole new level of thrill, excitement, congruency and deep satisfaction. This was my sport of all sports.

Next challenge – my first competition. After training for only 4 weeks my coach tells me to enter a race. Really? I wasn’t nailing the block starts yet and was still developing so much, surely I wasn’t ready to compete? My coach’s argument was nothing beats experience as your best trainer, so just do it. He tells me not to expect much, just have a go and see how it feels. The. Voices. Start. Again! “You’ll look silly out there”, “what if you muck up the start?”, “why did you think you could do this?”. Again, I make excuses for a couple of weeks for why I can’t compete. They seemed like pretty real reasons at the time - other commitments and things - but if I was honest with myself, deep down I knew they were avoidance strategies.

Again, I go back to using the four points outlined above - 1) make the desire larger than the fear, 2) be grateful, 3) re-read my goal, 4) speak about my fears with my cheer squad.

So I find myself on a mild Saturday evening, lined up at the start line of Santos Stadium to run in my first competitive race. The marshal calls us over, “number 629” (that’s me!), “lane 2”. Now my heart starts racing, this is kind-of surreal. “On your marks”…..as I crouch down to place my feet into the blocks I get this massive grin across my face. I am overwhelmed by a feeling of  “does life actually get any better than this?” This feeling of sheer, bursting joy and excitement completely overtakes the nerves. I’m as excited as punch. “Set”……now I’m talking myself through the steps – bum up, head down, turn elbows…..brace yourself for the gun. BANG…. I’m off, (and I’m pretty sure I’m still grinning), I power down that track. I come second but the place was a lot less relevant than my time, and way less relevant than the amount of fun I just had.

I did it. For me it was instantly addictive. I felt more at home for those 13 seconds on the track that I think I ever had in any sport before. I loved this and the rewards for pushing through my fears and negative voice were 1 million-times rewarded.

I kept competing for the remainder of the 2014/15 summer competition. That sees me compete at the State Track and Fields, State Masters and several Club meets. I find that I don’t only love sprinting, but I’m actually quite good at it for my age. My best time over summer, still sits at 19th fastest in the world this year for women aged 44 – 49 – and that’s out of 84,700 women across the world who have registered an official time. I start to extend my sites. I love this so much, with a solid winter training, I can come out next summer a lot faster. A bonus is that I’ll be 50 next year, so that puts me up into a new age bracket where if I ran even the same time again, I would be sitting 6th in the world. The rewards are far outweighing the original fear.

Yet my dream continues to be challenged. Unfortunately I developed tendinopathy in my quad tendon, including a long bony spur that has grown into the tendon and snapped off when I was pushing out of the blocks. Prognosis currently isn’t good. I’ve been forced into 10 weeks rest – which is very frustrating to watch all the hard training on my muscles just shrivel away. Possible surgery, which would likely end my sprinting altogether.

As the resting weeks drifted on, no change was happening. I had an orthopaedic surgeon who I felt had little interest or understanding in how badly I wanted to get better and see how far I could go on this journey. I got caught up in his complacency and I felt myself giving up on the dream.

Refer back to point 4 above – my cheer squad! At this point my cheer-squad swung into action. They weren’t going to accept the uncaring surgeon’s view. They got fired up about seeking a second opinion. They reignited my dream and reminded me of how unbelievable the sprinting experience was for me. This helped me push against the negative voice that had got louder again about being too old for this sport and getting over myself.

I met with my sports doctor to seek a referral to another Orthopaedic surgeon. Her support, passion and care was amazing. She totally backed me in, and got straight on the phone and booked me in the same day to see another highly regarded surgeon. This surgeon certainly didn’t pretend it’s an easy journey because of the extent and complication of my injury. But he really assured me he was on my side to do everything possible to get me back on the track. And that brings me to today.

The World Masters Track and Field happens to be in Australia in October 2016, and the surgeon and I are both working very hard to have me competing at that. My journey is far from over. I am still very unsure of the final outcome. But what I do know is that your mind has a negativity bias that magnifies and hunts for the worst-case scenarios. Try not to be guided by your unhelpful negative voice, and use the types of strategies that I’ve outlined above.

At my mature age, I have experienced some of the most peak experiences of my life because I didn’t give in to the negative voice. Don’t deny yourself the chance of wonderful new experiences simply because some unhelpful voice inside your head says you can’t!

According to Youth BeyondBlue, one in four young Australians currently have experienced a mental health disorder in the last 12 months. This is equivalent to 750,000 young people today! One in six young Australians have experienced anxiety in the last 12 months. This is equivalent to 440,000 young people. Suicide is the biggest killer of young Australians and accounts for deaths of more young people than car accidents. A quarter of young Australians say they are unhappy with their lives.

Why is it when we have more wealth, gadgets and connection than previous generations, we are less happy than ever before? There are many factors, some are biological and others are traumatic early life experiences. But also it has to do with children not being given opportunities to learn enough resilience and coping skills. In our endeavour to look after our children, we parents deny them so many opportunities to learn from mistakes. Making decisions, taking the consequences of those decisions and building skills to deal with negative emotions and situations – are learnt skills. Incidental learning and intentional learning of these skills occurs with our parental guidance.

We can help our children understand that sadness is temporary but this must be experienced to learn and build the skills to move on from it. Knowing that your anger will subside is something that you learn. Realising that your euphoric joy also dissipates, helps us to embrace it more next time, while it’s there. We generally learn to manage our feelings through experiencing them. Yet many well-meaning parents protect their children from experiencing negative feelings – from failures and mistakes to scratches and bruising.

Here’s 2 ways to be most helpful for your children’s lifelong wellbeing:

• Let them feel the consequences of their decisions and actions. Don’t leap in to salvage the situation for them. This can begin at a young age with minor decisions and build up as they grow older and have developed better skills. For example, what do you do when they insist on wearing the fairy dress to the shops, even after you’ve pointed out that it’s only 12 degrees outside and they will feel cold? Let them wear it, and learn from their decision. When they complain at that shops that they are cold, you don’t take off your jumper and give it to them, or stop shopping so you can get them home, you can gently and lovingly remind them they made that choice and you’re sorry they are cold and encourage them to think about what they might do differently next time. Or what if you had an adolescent child who didn’t get their homework done because they were on social media and also watching the TV? Instead of writing a letter for the teacher saying they didn’t have time to do their homework, you let them fail that assignment. In both of these examples the child will learn about making better decisions next time and also learn how to sit with the negative feeling (anger at you, frustration at themselves, feeling temporarily miserable etc) and will discover that this feeling doesn’t last forever. Very rich learning for life experiences and building resilience.

• Let your child take some age-appropriate risks. Don’t wrap them up in cotton wool to protect them from all bumps or bruises. So much is learnt while climbing a tree, jumping a creek or building a fort. Let them explore, take some risks and learn their physical limits. Imagine this - you let your child ride their bike to the park by themselves to play with their friend. On this journey they will need to use time management skills to know how long they’ve been gone and when to come back. They may come across a dead possum on the side of the road and poke at it with a stick. They may take in some new learning about a mammals innards! If they forgot to pack a drink, they may get thirsty and understand what that feels like and how it gets worse with time. They may climb a tree while they are out and have to engage coordination, strength and judgment. They might even fall out of the tree because the branch they sat on was not strong enough to support them. Another great lesson learnt! If they get some bumps and bruises it may have taught them something about pushing too far and helping them gain a better understanding of their limits. Let alone learning how to deal with pain. These types of experiences build resilience in understanding how to live by your decisions and deal with problems yourself.

An obvious, common sense caveat about these examples – it must be age appropriate risk, so you wouldn’t be letting your three year old ride off to the park by themselves. And you wouldn’t expose them to dangerous situations just to let them experience the consequences of their decision, if that decision was to train surf!

So within the context of ‘reasonable risk’, it is doing them a big favour letting them experience failure and negative emotions. And then gently helping them to take the lesson from the situation if appropriate.

So if you set a limit of one ride at the Royal Show, and they chose one that turns out to be boring and cry because they want another one instead – the most helpful answer you can give them is, “no”. Or put in a more helpful way for them, it would look like this, “I’m sorry that ride didn’t turn out to be what you had hoped, it can feel disappointing when you chose the wrong thing but we agreed one ride, so that’s it for today.” This way you’ve helped them to understand the associated emotion (disappointment) and they will need to build skills to deal with this disappointment. While this is a fairly small disappointment in the context of potential life time disappointments, what you’ve just done is to help them build a skill that will serve them if they do get a seriously big disappointment as an adult later in life (ie, just lost their job). Without learning these little skills along the way, when they are grown up and you’re no longer there to make it right for them, life can feel quite difficult to negotiate and maybe why we have this increase in mental health issues for our adolescents.

I’m not going to pretend that this stuff is easy. As a parent, all we want for our children is to be happy. But if you can take the longer-term perspective and see how the most loving thing you can actually do for your child is to help them to best cope with life, then you might find it easier to let them experience these things.

Best of luck as you negotiate the wonderful world of being a parent – it came without any instruction manuals so we can only do the best we can do. You won’t always get it right - darn sure that I don’t - but as long as you’re doing your best and give them broad experiences including the bad stuff, your kids will usually turn out with great resilience for life.

For many of us, it can be very hard to say no. Yet how many times when we say yes to something, do we regret it later?
Knowing when to say no, and how to say no, is not always straightforward to us. It can get mixed in with all sorts of emotions that can confuse the correct response for you. Often we don’t want to hurt another person’s feelings. Or we are not placing enough importance on our own worth and end up compromising ourselves. 
How can you say no, more successfully? Here’s 6 tips to follow:

1. Be very clear about your own personal values and be prepared not to compromise them. Many of us can’t actually state our values - those things that we believe are important in the way we live and behave. When the things that we do and the way we behave match our values, life is usually good – we're satisfied and content. But when these don't align with our personal values, that's when things feel wrong and can be a real source of unhappiness. When we say yes to something that is at odds with our values, it can lead to regret and unhappiness. So be very clear of what is not-negotiable to you and use that as a cue to say no.
2. Understand that saying no isn’t easy. It can make us feel awkward, anxious, fearful or guilty. It may be linked in with complicated stories and emotions from the past, such as I’m only worthy when I please others or I need be liked or belong. Just recognising that feelings of discomfort are normal when saying no, can help you be better prepared to overcome them.
3. With practice, it does get easier! Like anything, the more we do it, the better we become. So recognise that you might need to dig deep early on but it should be easier with practice.
4. To build your skills with saying no, it’s best to start small and have some success. Try saying no to lunch with a colleague who always wants to whinge and complain. Better still, start with yourself. Say no to staying in bed when you’d plan to go to the gym.
5. Make a list of all the things that you’d like to say no to. Be on the front foot by being prepared for the no before the situation arises. This will reduce the angst that it may cause you, so increases your chance of success.
6. Say no from a place of love and kindness – to yourself and to the person you’re delivering it to. Don’t say no from a place of anger or frustration. Prepare a few lines that you can use to say a kind, yet firm no. When it is delivered from a place of peace and love, it has a greater chance of being received well. Be kind to yourself when saying no to that chocolate (no I won’t eat that chocolate because I nurture and care for my body) and be kind to others when you say no their requests (thanks for kind invitation to lunch, however I had already planned to take a brisk walk in the break because I’ve made a commitment to look after myself better).

Try these steps to improve your chances of saying no successfully. If you notice feeling guilty after saying no, try to shift up your thinking to remind yourself that you are worthy of self-love and that you will live a more fulfilled and satisfying life because of it. 

I know I’ve been guilty in the past of searching for my happiness in another place. Subconsciously I was thinking that the next house, the next car, the next relationship, the next job, the next holiday……would bring me happiness. But alas, when those things arrived the happiness was usually short-lived because I was searching in the wrong place. After the emotionally challenging breakdown of my marriage, I decided that I needed to do some soul searching and personal development. It was then I realised that my real, sustainable, inner happiness had to come from within me, not from something external. I realised that until I gave up on the idea that happiness was somewhere else, I could never be really happy where I was!  That’s when I began to research, study and more deeply understand the science of Positive Psychology. The Positive Psychology approach and tools really resonated with me. I liked the idea of doing positive interventions that helped me to feel great with who I am. Through Positive Psychology I started living with daily gratitude, mindfulness and utilising my top character strengths. When I did this I found a new deep happiness and inner peace that had previously alluded me. I’d like to expand on some of the interventions that I use in the hope that others who are chasing happiness might also benefit.

Gratitude
Our brains are wired to be on alert for what is wrong. It originally served as an important evolutionary purpose for the survival of our species but it doesn’t serve us so well today. To help counter that negativity bias, we can use gratitude. At the end of each day write three things that happened in the day that you are grateful for, and also what was your contribution to that happening. These don’t need to be huge things, it may be that you’re grateful for the new fruit growing on your tree, or for the friendly shop assistant. Then consider your contribution to those things happening. For example, the fruit is growing on my tree because I take the time to water and fertilise it. Or the shop assistant was friendly because I smiled at her and asked about her day. Writing your three things each night will build new neural pathways in your brain that are switched on to notice more good (and counters the natural bias to notice what is wrong). This helps us ‘accidentally’ notice more good which helps to us to feel happier.

Mindfulness
We live in such a busy world where we are constantly on call to people via our electronic devices. These stresses and demands on our time steal from us the ability to fully appreciate the present moment that we are in. To give yourself some respite from the busyness of your world (and mind) use mindfulness. I use mindfulness in three different ways:

1.       Mindfulness Meditation – is where you sit for 10 minutes (or more) fully focussed on your breath. You don’t alter your breath at all, just sit comfortably and notice with full detail your breath as it goes in and out. As your mind drifts off to other thoughts, gently notice that you’ve drifted and come back to your breath. If you’re anything like me, you’ll drift off many times but that’s OK, just keep coming back to your breath. There’s many apps for your mobile devices that you can use to guide your mindful meditation to get you started.
2.       Savouring – being fully present in pleasant situations to enhance their experience. I do this a couple of times a week when I’m eating my lunch. I make sure that I remain fully present and even curious about my lunch. I look at the sandwich in great detail, noticing shapes and colours that I’d never really looked at before. Then shutting my eyes and noticing the tastes and textures in my mouth. It’s also great to try this when having a shower. We tend to shower on automatic pilot; instead try being fully present and noticing every possible detail about your shower. Notice how the soap suds feel on your fingertips, notice the temperature of the water on your head and how it gets a bit cooler at your feet, notice the noise of the water going down the drain etc.
3.       Present moments – practice being more fully present in moments in your day. When you are talking with a work colleague or a loved one – be fully with them in that moment. When you’re sitting in a meeting give it your full and current attention, don’t allow you mind to drift off.

Character Strengths
Understanding your inner strengths allows you to intentionally use them more often which is very energising and fulfilling. It also gives you the opportunity to be in the state of ‘flow’ more often. Flow is described as those moments when you are at one with the music, where it feels like time stands still because you are so immersed in what you are doing. Flow occurs when you are operating out of your top strengths, while doing a task that stretches you. Do you know what your top five strengths are? The science would say that knowing yours and using them helps you live with greater happiness, and better mental and physical health. Knowing my top strengths allows me to lean into them when faced with a challenge. Intentionally bringing forth my top strengths to face challenging situations helps me to feel more resilient and happy. To understand your top strengths you can complete a free online survey.

I wish you every success in finding your inner happiness and peace in life. I’d love you to share any practices that you’ve found helpful towards inner happiness here too.

As another year draws to a close it is customary to start thinking of what your New Year’s resolution will be. We usually state some big plan, hope or dream – often in an unplanned or spontaneous moment simply because that’s what we’re supposed to do, right? Well not entirely. As a life coach, I’m all for writing down our goals, it gives them clarity, structure and a measure - if they are written well. However, let’s not underestimate the power of reflection over what we can be grateful for in the year that is just ending.

Reminiscing on past positive experiences evokes those associated positive emotions all over again. It boosts our mood just thinking about past good times. Importantly, it also reinforces a positive perspective of all the good that we have in our lives. Our brains natural bias is to latch hold of what is wrong or bad, so by being intentional about remembering the good, we create a more balanced and realistic perspective on our lives.

I invite you to pause for one moment right now and reflect on the good times in 2014. What went well? Who was good to you? What did you achieve? Think on both a macro and micro level. As an example, I am so grateful that my children enjoy being active and participate in many sports (macro), and a real highlight was watching two of my children running a 100m race representing their state (micro). Or how grateful I am to be a Life Coach to assist people to grow and flourish (macro), and getting to witness many breakthrough moments with clients in one-on-one discussions is an absolute privilege (micro).

Take a moment now to think about your big and small best moments in 2014. Re-live the feelings that were inside you at those moments. Be grateful that you had those times. The research tell us that in doing this we can become more cheerful, more motivated, have better sense of meaning and purpose in life, higher self-esteem and less prone to depression[1]. This may suggest that instead of stating a random resolution on New Year’s Eve, you could gain more benefit from reminiscing on the all the good that came from 2014. If you make this positive reflection a daily habit you might just set yourself up for the best year ever. So if you still feel the need to set a resolution, consider making a commitment to daily gratitude for all that went well in each day. That might be the best boost you could give yourself towards an amazing 2015. Happy New Year.



[1] Studies from University of Southampton by psychologist Tim Wildschut

What a rollercoaster of emotions I have experienced in the last week. The very tragic passing of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes raised absolute sadness at the loss of a fine young man. I had never met Hughes, yet I felt so deeply sad, touched and moved by his death. At the other end of the emotional spectrum, I shed tears of pride and joy watching my step-daughter represent her state in Athletics. I also felt frustrated at my son for ignoring my advice to not play a social indoor soccer game one week before he also runs for his state in Athletics; only to pull his groin. I’ve felt deep love for my amazing husband while just observing his genuine and consistent kindness and care for others. I’ve regularly felt overwhelmingly grateful for the amazing life that I have and all that I get to see and do.

This got me reflecting on the huge range of emotions there are and the importance of allowing yourself to be present with all of them – the good, the bad and the ugly. If you want to fully experience positive emotions, it’s not possible to avoid feeling the negative ones. To be able to fully feel and experience joy, love and excitement; one also needs to be able to feel angry, sad and anxious.

None of us like to feel sad; it’s easy to prefer to push it away, distract yourself with work, or use more harmful escapes such as drugs and alcohol. However, sadness is a very normal emotion and avoiding it denies us the ability to fully experience all the range of emotions. There is a way to feel and experience emotion without being afraid of them. Rather than judging your response to an emotion, such as sadness - “I’m weak because I cry” or “I’m a failure” – try simply sit alongside the emotion and not judge it or avoid it or try to fix it – just sit with it, acknowledge it and let it be. It will pass, in the same way laughter and joy don’t last. It’s another emotion to experience and not avoid.

The same applies to positive emotions, such as joy, pleasure, excitement and pride. These also pass so if we can be very present with them, it ripens the experience. This is about being mindful and present in the current moment so that you get to fully experience your emotions.

Sitting with the sadness I have felt in the past few days since the passing of Phillip Hughes has left me feeling quite drained and tired – sadness can be a draining emotion. Yet I felt a sense of purpose from experiencing the feeling. It heightened the appreciation of my own children, and it reminded me to live each day to its fullest.

Fully embracing the excitement and joy in watching my step-daughter run a personal best time at Nationals allowed me to share her experience in a really meaningful way, connecting us even closer together.

When we try to avoid, squash, hide or mask any negative emotion, we only serve to give it more power and importance in our minds.

I encourage you to embrace all of your emotions. It helps to learn a much wider vocabulary for your emotions so that you can express and understand what you are feeling. For example are you happy or is it more like pleased, excited, joyful, amused or delighted? Are you sad or is it more lonely, hopeless, hurt, discouraged or disappointed? Feel it, name it, sit with it (no judgments) and it will pass.

What emotions have you experienced lately? Please share your stories here too, I’d love to hear them.

Did you know that we have a natural bias to notice what’s wrong? We also tend to magnify or ‘catastrophise’ what has gone wrong and make it seem even worse in our heads than it really is. The more we notice the bad and the more we magnify what is wrong, it can lead to feeling flat, depressed or hopeless.
The great news is that there is a free, simple and effective technique you can use to shift your perspective to one that is much more helpful. It is a tool to help anyone learn more optimistic thinking. It was developed by Dr Martin Seligman, who built on the original work by psychologist Albert Ellis. It’s called the ABCDE technique, and I have found it to be very useful for shifting unhelpful and often unrealistic perceptions about bad events.

Here’s how it works:
A = Adversity
This is an adverse event that has happened to you – big or small. Let’s use an example: say you were walking along the street and someone from your child’s school walks past you. You see them and smile and they ignore you completely and keep walking. That’s your adversity - you’ve just been snubbed.

B = Belief
This is the very first thought and belief that immediately pops into your head after the adversity has occurred. Continuing with the example above: after being ignored by this person your very first thought might be wondering why they don’t like you and why you’re not good enough for them to even acknowledge you. You’ve tried hard to be friendly yet they obviously don’t like you anyway (that’s the automatic belief kicking in…… I’m not good enough).

C = Consequences
This is the physical and emotional consequences that automatically follow the belief/thought that you just had about the adversity. In our example this could be that you then feel a bit sad, unworthy and flat. Your blood pressure may have gone up a little and you may want to withdraw from other interactions for fear of being ignored again.

D = Disputation
Here is where the real power lies to create a much more helpful perspective. To explain how to use the ‘D’, we need to go back to A and B. Obviously there is nothing that we can do to control the adversity, bad things will happen to us. We also don’t control the very first belief/thought that pops into our head. Here’s the golden moment – immediately following the very first thought, we then have a choice as to the next thought and action we take. The moment that it’s come into the conscious realm is the moment we become empowered to choose the next thing that happens. We do that using disputation; we dispute with ourselves the first belief that we had – Is it absolutely true what I thought? Could there be any other reason for the adversity, other than my first interpretation of it? Let’s go back to the example to demonstrate ‘disputation’ - the person ignores our smile, we believe they don’t like us and we’re not good enough to acknowledge – before we allow that thought to continue its dark pathway, we immediately dispute the thought. We could say to ourselves, why else might they have ignored me? Perhaps they genuinely didn’t see me. How do I know that they didn’t just receive some bad news and were anxious and focussed on that? These are the types of questions we could ask ourselves. Do you get the idea here? 

You help yourself to see that it was your own interpretation of what you saw and everything is an assumption on your part. Your assumption might be right but it might not. Rigidly believing the worst case serves you no good purpose, other than to feel bad. By challenging your negative interpretation with something more realistic it can immediately reduce the flow-on consequences of your beliefs. Rather than being left feeling sad and wounded because you felt ignored, you are more likely to get on with the day feeling okay.

E = Energisation
This last piece is about celebrating (acknowledging) that you used the disputation intervention and now you still feel emotionally intact. When we pause and acknowledge our successes we are more likely to repeat them. The more often that you repeat this process, the more you will automatically do it, sparing yourself a downwards mood shift.

You can use this tool over and over, every day for all your negative assumptions, big or small. Every time you catch yourself assuming the worst in any situation, immediately step in to dispute the assumption and come up with other reasons it may have happened.  

One last example, when a car pulled out in front of me this morning, my very first thought was that the driver was arrogant and pushy and I started to feel angry and frustrated at them. As soon as I noticed this judgement and response on my part, I looked for reasons as to why else they may have pulled out. I wondered if they had a sick child lying in the back of the car that they were rushing to hospital……not very likely, I thought, but it still threw that little shadow of doubt over my first assumption. Maybe they simply didn’t see me, I know I’ve accidently pulled out in front of someone and I felt terrible for doing it. Maybe they feel terrible now too? My thoughts went on.......even if they are arrogant, so what?! At the end of the day, I’m about 5 metres further back than I was and I didn’t hit them, what does it really matter anyway?? As I did this disputing in my head I felt my anger subside and even my compassion build for this person. So it worked, my mood was still the same and I didn’t waste unnecessary negative energy on something that wasn’t in my control.

I encourage you to try this technique a few times. Like anything new, it takes a bit of practice. I can tell you from my own personal experience, and from what my clients report back to me, that this can be a very empowering and liberating tool to have in your armoury! Good luck.

Are you left wondering what happened to your communicative and loving little child? Have they possibly been snatched by aliens and replaced with someone that you no longer recognise?

I recently heard a wonderful teacher, Graham Gallasch presenting from his years of experience and passion around developing positive relationships with adolescence. I’ve borrowed his title for my blog because it’s a comment that hear often from my clients. They feel like they’ve lost the child that they knew and now have a child who can be argumentative, withdrawn, surly, a risk-taker, a know-all or lost.

Neuroscience helps to explain what is going on in the teenager’s brain. Many of the changes that we are observing (increased risk taking, moodiness etc) are not necessarily linked to hormonal changes, as we used to think, rather to an under-developed pre-frontal cortex (the decision making area of the brain) and an over-active limbic system that is hyper-sensitive to risk taking. This leads to poor impulse control and a reduced ability to understand someone else’s perspective. However, it also shows that it is an incredibly ripe opportunity for education and learning. It is a time when your child might identify with their real passion. It is a time of heightened creativity. It is a time where they are learning about the meaning and vitality in life.  

So how can you embrace and leverage this special period in their lives? Here’s some tips to help you and your teenager:

· Although they may appear not to want you around or to have hugs any longer, deep down they still do. Don’t overdo it, and certainly don’t embarrass them in public, but continue to give the occasional supportive hug and engaging chats. Ask open-ended questions so that they can’t answer with a simple yes or no. Questions like, what was the best thing in your day today? Rather than, did you have a good day?

· During adolescence, core character traits are being set, so there is nothing more powerful than you behaving in a way that you would like your child to be. They will be shaping so much of who they become on what they are observing from you. Sometimes the best way to help our teenager is by becoming a better person ourselves.

· Encourage creative outlets for them. This will help to satisfy their heightened brain activity during this period. Help them to seek out new experiences that engage them fully, stimulate the senses, emotions, thinking and their bodies in new and challenging ways. You may simply do something routine in a new way, such as where you sit at the dinner table, or encourage them to learn something new in an area they love. This may be learning a new sporting skill, like curving a soccer ball, or learning how to braid hair.

· Encourage regular physical exercise. It releases dopamine (a good feel chemical), uses up excess energy, fuels the brain and is good for their body. If the exercise involves team sport, that’s a bonus because it can also assist with the social networks that are so vital during this period.

·          Know that the adolescent period is about shifting from dependence to interdependence and independence. To achieve this your child needs to break away from you. Let them have the space to take small, regular steps on their own. Be aware of overlaying your need to keep your ‘baby’, verses allowing them the necessary growth away from you.

·  Encourage connections with your teen’s friends. Their friends are like their family during this period, it is vital for them to be connected. Get to know them yourself, invite them to your house and make it a welcoming place for them to be at. A part of our dinner table ritual is to go around the table and share the best thing in our day, the worst thing in our day and the thing that we’re most grateful for. When our teenagers have their friends over for dinner they pretend to be really embarrassed that we still do this (and invite the guests to participate) but on the quiet my kids have told me afterwards that their friends mention how much they love being at our dinner table.

Good luck as you negotiate this sometimes intense period with your adolescent child. I encourage you to embrace it as time of exciting development where you can set some incredible lifelong traits. Know that there are real changes happening in their brains that affects how they are behaving. But also know that despite their front, they still love you and are looking to you for guidance and support (they just have a funny way of showing it!).

So rather than asking yourself, “Are you parenting the right way?”, ask yourself, “Am I the adult that I want my child to grow up to be?”

If you need to have a laugh about teenagers (so you don’t feel alone)  this clip is an oldie but a goodie!