Even Happier

“At least a portion of your mind is really kind of stupid. If it had an innate intelligence, it would remind you of the things you needed to do only when you could do something about them.” [David Allen - Getting Things Done]

In his famous book, David Allen says we often worry at very inappropriate times:
- You are having a nice dinner, and in the back of your mind you’re worrying about tomorrow’s meeting.
- You are enjoying a well deserved holiday, but you can’t stop thinking of what you’ll need to do when you get back home.

In order increase both productivity and peace of mind, Allen proposes a comprehensive method for “Getting Thing Done,” which could help you becoming more effective.

On the other hand  if you don’t worry just of your to-do list  Allen’s book will be of limited help in calming your mind: you need other tools to deal with other kinds of worries.

So what are you worrying about? Take a look at the following list, and see if you recognize yourself at least in one of the 7 worrier profiles. I’ll then describe a set of strategies which you can use to reduce your worries.   Read more >>

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He might be a dear friend, or maybe he is your father. Trouble is that he is now gone for good and there was still so much to say! Has he passed away or has he simply left? Well, the result is the same: you can’t talk with him anymore, and yet you think about him almost every day.

Maybe you haven’t expressed your love as you wished to, or maybe there were angry words to be said: it is all stuck here, deep inside of you, and it is making your life less happy than it should be.

The good news is that you can free yourself from the ghosts of your past: the memory of your loved ones will stay, but you’ll think about them in a more relaxed and less frequent fashion. Interested?

The steps below are adapted from the famous two-chair technique, successfully used by counselors and psychotherapists all over the word. Combine two-chair work with a Separation Ritual, and you get the Ghostbuster: my supercharged tool for letting your past stay where it belongs too…   Read more >>

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"I HATE TO BE ALONE, so I call my partner at least 3 times a day: am I addicted?" asks Laura from London. I sense frustration in the tone of her voice, the idea of being an addict just doesn't feel right, and yet she recognises herself in a magazine's description of "mobile phone junkies". Is she addicted to her mobile phone? And what about you?

Wait a minute, wasn't addiction only about drugs? Well, more than 20 years ago, Orford argued that people are at risk of becoming addicted to objects and activities of which drugs are only a subset. In fact, we can call Addiction any compulsive behavior that produces pleasure and reduces internal discomfort. So how can we use this chunky definition to understand if we are actually addicted to a mobile phone or not? Two little “experiments” can provide an answer…   Read more >>

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Nighty night. But then the nightmare begins… You might have one bad dream that keeps coming back. Let’s see how to get rid of the little bugger in 4 easy steps.

1. Tell your dream using the present tense: you are reliving it in this very moment

2. Describe your dream from the perspective of a positive character. ‘I am the Moon in your dream and I watch the Monster trying to harm you. I would like to help you, but my place is up in the sky, so I can’t come to the rescue’   Read more >>

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Here we go again... You just had the same argument with your boss, the same discussion with your partner, or yet another heated exchange with your mum. I wish it could be different… And it can, as Stephen Karpman explains us in his award-winning paper on Options. In short, we can break unpleasant communications pattern by choosing to react in a different way. Now let’s discover how to do it by reading Marta’s story.   Read more >>

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CHANGE IS NOT ALWAYS EASY. We might decide to stop smoking, we think we should really quit, we ought to do it for our own sake, and in the end nothing changes: it felt heavy, it was too much work, and something within ourselves rebelled against it.

How could that happen? When we impose limitations on our behavior, we often place ourselves on the side of our inner Parent, giving orders, saying DON’T, asking for obedience in a way which might be resented: most children would be pretty angry if you forbid them to play their favorite game!

In Transactional Analysis Counseling we have a saying: “Get the Child on your side”. Let’s say I want to stop smoking, how do I “Get the Child on my side”? Playfully, lightly, maybe deciding that “when I feel like smoking a cigarette, I’ll have a sexual fantasy instead!” or “with the money I save from cigarettes, I’ll buy myself a little present everyday!”. Focus on saying yes to something healthier, rather than just saying no. Teach your Child a brand new game, he will soon get bored to play the same old one.

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My psychology Professor used to say that we all hear voices in our heads: the only difference between us and psychotics is that we don’t actually believe there is someone speaking! Part of what such voices tell us is unhealthy. Sometime they might even attack us with false accusations: “You are a terrible mother” or “You are not worthy of that promotion and you should fail the interview”. The less we consciously listen, the more we unconsciously obey...   Read more >>

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An unexpected turn of events. Something goes wrong. And then a sense of déjà vu: life sounds like a broken record endlessly repeating the same old song...   Read more >>

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