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.

There are occasions in life when we are apt to blame other people when we do not achieve goals that we have set, whether that be a job, promotion, or weight loss, we often look for all external excuses but don’t look to ourselves as the reason. When things don’t go our way, it is always easier to blame someone or something else but more often than not it can be our self-limiting beliefs that hold us back from achieving the things that we want from life.

Have you ever wondered if life is really meant to be perfect? We see perfection everywhere these days, on Facebook and Instagram, in films and magazines. We are constantly bombarded with celebrities who seem to live perfect lives and with friends and family on social media posts also seeming to live in some sort of perfect reality. There is so much reinforcement everywhere that it can often make our own lives seem mundane, hard, and anything other than perfect.

When most people think about what it is that they want most from their life, they often answer ….” to just be happy” as if this is a concept that is somehow difficult to obtain or is fleeting and only enters our lives on sporadic occasions, such as weddings, births, expensive purchases or holidays.