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Project Self Life Coaching

Negative Thinking

Negative thinking is likely the most powerful obstacle to inner peace. We are hard wired to look for the negative in order to circumvent threat, so many of our thoughts are biased to the negative. This includes rumination and catastrophisation which is often at the heart of anxiety.

On Not Thinking Negatively - Project Self Life Coaching

On Not Thinking Negatively

Project Self
Many people are feeling various low and negative moods at the moment. We can’t do much about how we feel in response to difficult circumstances but we can be aware of how our thinking may be affecting us. The brain has a negativity bias. As Rick Hanson describes it, teflon for good news, velcro for bad news. This is because our system is wired to look for and hook into any perceived risk and threat. Our brains tend to scan for bad news, overly focus on it, overly react to it, over remember it, and become sensitised to it over…
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ON BEING KIND TO YOURSELF - Project Self Life Coaching

On Being Kind to Yourself

Project Self
Our innate human quality is compassion and kindness. In our natural, relaxed state we are warm and caring. Our self is inclusive and allowing. Such qualities expand us towards consideration, generosity and understanding, trust and forgiveness. We have sympathy for suffering.  We like. We are kind. We are love. When we are unhappy or upset we can become tight and sometimes ‘mean’ spirited. Our capacity towards generosity and openness diminishes. We shrink in as our heart suffers; we may close off, down and up. We contract our care as we take on negative or challenging thoughts and feelings. We may…
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ON NOT FEELING BAD - Project Self Life Coaching

On Not Feeling Bad

Project Self
We often feel bad about ourselves, conflating how we can behave with who we are. We can also feel a dislike for who we are and also feel deep down, a sense that we lack worth as a human being. And so we tread heavily on the earth, comparing our weighty lack of substance to the seemingly Sorted & Successful Ariel figures around us.  Welcome to the walk of shame. The walking dead. The human experience of walking around feeling like there’s a cloud, a shadow, hanging over you; a weight on your chest; a restriction in your throat or an emptiness…
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ON NOT BEING A BETTER PERSON - Project Self Life Coaching

On Not Being A Better Person

Project Self
“All of us think we are a little better than we really are. All of us think we are a little worse than we really are”. Michael Yapko I’m beginning to rebel against the concept of Being a Better Person. You might think what’s wrong with wanting to be better person? Within the dictionary definition of ‘better’, I found that it does relate to increasing good qualities, but more prevalently, it describes surpassing, superiority, preferability, acceptability. Bettering oneself speaks historically of status. Being a better person suggests we need to improve. Sure, we could all be nicer, kinder people with healthier,…
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On Wasting Time - Project Self Life Coaching

On Wasting Time

Project Self
What’s your relationship with time? This piece is the first part of two explorations into Time: 1) fast time 2) slow time. Time is the back drop, the crucible, the catalyst. The start and stop, the constant duration and the spaces in between. It’s a measure of the past, present and future of our life-time, but also now and the split second moment that has just passed of our living-time. It’s a stream and an interval, preparation, the event and the dissection. How amazing that one concept affects so much of our reality in so many varied ways. It defines existence…
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On Getting Out Of Your Own Way - Project Self Life Coaching

On Getting Out Of Your Own Way

Project Self
I had a conversation with someone recently who was anxious about an important forthcoming meeting. As we often do, he had expectations and hopes. He was very invested in the outcome and potential significance of the meeting. He was concerned things wouldn’t go as he wanted them to.  He was afraid of disappointment. He worried about how he would be perceived by the other person. He felt the meeting could affect his future and not knowing which way the meeting would lead, he played out different scenarios in his head. The meeting was with someone he didn’t know. All he knew…
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On Not Being Productive - Project Self Life Coaching

On Not Being Productive

Project Self
Along with “Have you had a good day”? how often are we asked: “Have you had a productive day” or “What have you done today”? ’Good’ as a measure or description seems open to interpretation since a day can be good for a number of varied and subjective reasons. But productive as a measure holds within it an implicit judgement. Have you done something useful with your life today? Have you been constructive? Applied yourself, achieved? Been energetic, focused? It feels as though a productive day is ‘good’ and related to success. So that if we haven’t been productive somehow…
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ON ACKNOWLEDGING WHAT YOU KNOW - Project Self Life Coaching

On Acknowledging What You Know

Project Self
The whole premise of coaching is based on the concept that the client already has the answers. A coach works with the client so they can surface what they already know and so this forms part of their solution. The fact that we often know more than we let ourselves acknowledge is usually to do with shutting down part of ourselves, self-protection, devaluing intuition and ignoring our truth because of what it will mean if we face it – a call to action which is often challenging – and may involve facing our fears. But acknowledging that we do know…
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On Changing Your Story - Project Self Life Coaching

On Changing Your Story

Project Self
Stories are the way in which we make sense of the world, create meaning and understand our experience in relation to our surroundings and relationships. They are a combination of social-cultural and inner psychological workings. Stories can be a narrative to hold a series of events together in time, to create an account, create continuity and order complexity. They can also be a work of fiction and imaginings designed by the narrator to purvey a message to their audience. Their re-telling alters or refines their meaning, as does the context in which they are told. They may have some basis in reality,…
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ON CHANGING YOUR PERCEPTION- Project Self Life Coaching

On Changing Your Perception

Project Self
The World as you see it is not The World. We are meaning making creatures. We have to be in order to make sense of the world we are in. To locate ourselves within a framework which provides us with security and safety and enables us to negotiate complexity. We shrink the world into our own world through a scale of recognition and familiarity. We internalise the world. We will skew, adapt, interpret, deny and project so that what we see and experience is an internal representation or perception of external reality, framed by our previous experiences and understanding. We both replay and look for…
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