You live in your head all of the time and so you need to know how to talk to yourself in your head in a way that is going to be beneficial to you.

That internal constant chatter can either raise you up or bring you down depending on what you say to yourself.

Self-talk is that inner chatter that is influenced by your subconscious mind that highlights your thoughts, feelings, questions and beliefs. The way that you speak to yourself will determine how you feel about yourself and how you treat yourself. It will also determine how other people view you and treat you.

People who are confident in themselves and their abilities will have a good inner dialogue but people who look negatively towards themselves, and have little or no self-confidence will talk negatively to themselves.

Coping with life can seem overwhelming at times. No matter how old or what our circumstances are, we can all find moments when we feel out of control in our lives.

Although we live in an age where we have many time-saving devices and technology to hand, more money and free time and better living conditions than in any period in history, we can still feel that we have too much to do, are burdened down and are unable to control many situations in our lives.

When situations are out of your control or can lead to a build-up of stress and anxiety, it can affect everything from your relationships with yourself family and friends to your jobs and social lives.

You can also feel overwhelmed by the pressures of the world and find that life can at times be daunting.

Is it possible to trick your brain? If so how can you trick your brain into positive thinking? The brain is a complex organ in the body that controls our thoughts and our behaviours. This amazingly intricate organ gives us the power to speak, think, imagine, create and solve problems. As well as all of the cognitive power that we have, it also controls the temperature of our body, our heart function and our breathing. It controls all of our movement, every action that our bodies perform. Simply put, without our brains working properly we would not be able to function on a cognitive or physical level.

How often do we wish happiness on other people? Birthdays, weddings, the birth of a child. obtaining a great job or just signing off from work at the weekend. For most of us, granting other people happiness comes automatically and with real sincerity. Why then do we find it so hard to grant ourselves happiness?

Are you tired of you, of who you are and what you are doing? Do you wake up dissatisfied even though you may have the “good life” that we are all told is what we should be aiming for? Do you have a nagging feeling that you want something else, that there is something missing in your life but you don’t know what it is?

Building habits and sticking to them can be tricky. I am sure that most of us at some time or another have set out with the best of intentions when it comes to starting a new routine, giving something up, exercising more, eating or drinking less, only to break the habit almost as soon as it has started. Why is it that we find setting good habits and sticking to them so difficult?

Let’s be honest no matter how we sugar coat it, it isn’t easy getting older, and the big milestones, seem even more daunting. Changes that occur in our body can make us start to think about ageing and our own mortality. Those little aches and pains we get, joint stiffness when we move, and our eyesight deteriorating can all be depressing signs that we are getting older.

Newly divorced, separated or bereaved and starting your life again on your own can be overwhelming. All of the couples things that you used to take for granted, dining out, holidays, always having a plus one may now have ended but that doesn’t mean that your life has. Navigating through can certainly have its hard moments but there are ways that you can get through and come out much stronger.

One thing that we all need to be aware of in life, is that there are going to be times when it really sucks, times when we seem to just keep getting knocked down and don’t seem to be able to get up. These feelings are going to happen to everyone at some time in life, no one will escape them. Life is all about positive and negative experiences. What we need to know is how to deal with them when it happens, how to face up to living when it feels like you are falling apart.

Anchors can also be used metaphorically by coaches with clients during NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) sessions when they are experiencing stress or anxiety, want to appear more confident, or want to change learned behaviour from a negative into a positive. These anchors are usually external stimuli, that when applied can trigger an internal response or feeling. If you thought of your own anchors for instance, how do you feel if you hear a particular piece of music that reminds you of a favourite time or a smell that reminds you of a loved one? Or think about an alarm going off and it may bring back memories of stress or fear.

Self-worth, one of those buzz words that we hear so often now, but what exactly does it mean? There seem to be so many “self” words, from self-worth, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-care, that it is hard to distinguish one from another.

Self-worth comes from within, it is an internal sense of being that is achieved by acquiring self-love, self-acceptance, and self-understanding.

At different times in our lives, we are all required to take risks; without them, there can be no real growth in life. This ability to take risks and step outside of our comfort zone can change our lives in many ways.

For many though, the mere thought of stepping out of their comfort zone brings about severe anxiety which leaves them rooted in the same place in life.

From time to time, we’ve all had that feeling, a sinking sensation in the pit of our stomach when we realize that we have done something wrong; forgotten someone’s birthday, spent too much money on a purchase, made an excuse to not socialize with a friend, usually harmless occurrences, but they leave us feeling guilty none the less. Guilt, a powerful emotion that we have in life that can overtake us at times.

We are often led to believe in life that following a certain path and achieving set goals will give us everything that we want and that this will lead to us being happy as if in some way, happiness is a goal to be reached, an endpoint in life. This is not what being happy is about. Happiness is not some final destination or something to be earned once you have put in the hard work, happiness is about living, day to day doing things that you love, that bring you satisfaction, and things that you want to be doing.

We will all have many varied relationships during our lifetime, from school to work to home life and social life. These relationships will bring us joy and sorrow, will be complex and long-lasting, fun and fleeting. They will see us through the good times and the bad times of our lives.

We live in a society where we are led to believe that there are certain markers we should hit by a certain age; finishing school, college, getting your first job and meeting your life partner usually by your late 20s. Then marriage, family, buying a home, career advancement by your late 30’s. Life up until this point is all mapped out. We are programmed from an early age to follow this formula to bring us success and happiness, and to set us up for our later years, with a family we can rely on as we get older, financial security as we retire, and all the trappings of the world that we live in.

The brain is a very powerful organ, a supercomputer capable of the most amazing feats. It manages the activities that our bodies perform on a daily basis. It processes the information that comes into and goes out of our bodies and it operates our emotions and all of our cognitive abilities, such as our memories and our thoughts.

As a new year dawns, it is very tempting to start a list of resolutions that will often be abandoned halfway through the month. Let’s face it in the Northern hemisphere, when we are confronted with long cold days, very little sunshine, and are having to spend a large part of our time under artificial lighting, setting resolutions and sticking to them is destined to failure. It is the time of the year that our bodies crave carb-rich foods, chocolate, and the odd alcoholic drink. We don’t fancy going out into the cold to exercise and on top of all of that, we have the comedown from Christmas and New Year celebrations.

As we move into the final days of the year, many of us will start to set goals and resolutions for the coming year. Whether it is wanting to lose weight, get healthier, exercise more, get another job…..whatever it is, the New Year always seems like the ideal time to start a new chapter in your life.

We can all feel lonely from time to time it is a normal human emotion and there are many reasons for it. One person’s experience of being lonely may be different from another, each experience will be personal to the individual. Many people choose to be alone, they prefer living alone and they are happy to be away from busy social situations. For many though, loneliness is not a lifestyle choice, the ONS in the UK has found that 45% of adults feel lonely from time to time which equates to roughly 25 million people.