January 1st….must start the new year off with a whole list of resolutions that I am going to achieve this year. January 8th…..well seem to be back to my old ways and have broken all of my resolutions already! Have you heard this before? Are you guilty of this? If so you aren’t alone, in fact, research has shown that only 9% of people see their resolutions through until the end of the year.

stationary goals journal

Why is it that we pick possibly the most depressing time of the year to set new goals and resolutions for ourselves, in the northern hemisphere anyway? Why do we find it so difficult? Shouldn’t we be given a manual on how to set goals and accomplish them?

I bet you have had many conversations along the lines of “ know let’s it here I prefer it,” or “no if you got his way it will save so much more time than the way you are suggesting.” These simple sentences may seem innocuous enough but if you hear them enough, they may highlight a more insidious problem, that you have a controlling person in your life.

Once you realise this is the case, you may start asking how you live with controlling people. It could be that the p controlling person is someone that you can’t just drop from your life, so you are going to have to learn some empowering ways to deal with them.

There are many people who can be controlling, a partner, friends, work colleagues, your boss, parents, family members and neighbours.

Seasonal adjustment disorder or seasonal affective disorder is a type of depression that comes and goes during the seasons. Most people who suffer from SAD do so during the winter months, though there are people who can feel fine during the winter months and who suffer during the summertime. SAD can often be known as winter depression because it is more prevalent during the winter months.

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.

It is surprisingly easy to fall into the trap of catastrophizing no matter how level-headed we are. Jumping straight away to the worst-case scenario and imagining all sorts of terrible things until you are in a state of anxiety and stress.

We can all be prone to thinking the worst at times, it is a part of what it is to be human. The odd irrational thoughts we have that life is always going to be awful, and that the situation that we find ourselves in is never going to change.

Most of us will snap out of this way of thinking after we have examined the irrational thoughts that we are having and have replaced them with new, positive ones.

Other people though will tend to catastrophize about a situation and will begin to see it as being far worse than it is or will imagine that there will never be a change in their circumstances. These are people who are prone to catastrophize thinking.

You walk into a room and forget why. You can’t remember the name of someone you have just been introduced to and feel mortified or, you are fed up with constantly looking for things you have just had and can’t remember where you put them.

These everyday occurrences seem innocuous enough but you can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that something is wrong with you and you are starting to lose your memory at a young age

Are you one of the many people feeling lost in your 50s? Unsure of what has happened in your life thus far and not knowing where you are going or what you want to be doing as you get older? Do you feel that the spark has gone from your life, you’re not sure when it went out or how to get it back?

What you think about becomes your reality. This is a certain fact that we can’t escape. You need to be thinking about how to make your thoughts become the reality that you want to be living and release thoughts that don’t serve you.

There can be no doubt about it the last few years have been an incredibly stressful time for many and with so much looming on the horizon, you may be wondering about how to increase your resilience to stress and anxiety for 2023.

Globally, there has been a pandemic, war, talks of recession, rising energy, fuel and food bills and a general sense of uncertainty, so it is no wonder that many people are starting to feel stress and have anxiety levels rising as we start to approach 2023.

Imagine if we treated everybody in our world the same as we treat ourselves at times. Have you ever noticed that voice inside your head telling yourself all of the things that you do wrong and thinking “How do I stop being so hard on myself?” This constant habit we have of knocking ourselves down, criticizing ourselves and causing pain is something that needs to stop but how do you go about it?

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.

You start the day with so many plans and ideas of things you want to achieve and then suddenly realise that it’s almost 5 pm and you haven’t achieved anything as you have spent most of the day procrastinating. How did this happen? and more importantly, how can you stop it from happening again?

Most of us want to take care of our physical and mental health and one of the simplest ways of doing so is to recharge our batteries as much as possible. This means taking some well-earned rest and time for ourselves, stepping away from life’s pressures and doing something that we love and having a mental and physical rest.

Recharging your batteries is an essential way to eliminate stress and overwhelm from your life, and to remove the build-up of pressure that modern living brings.

Charles Duhigg in his book “The Power of Habit“ coined the phrase keystone habit. These small habits lead to routines that can impact unintentionally other areas of our lives. They are according to Duhigg, “they are that central stone in an arch which locks the whole structure together.”

How many of us have had one of those nights when we just lie there, looking at the ceiling with thoughts ruminating around our heads and unable to turn them off? Nearly all of us will have experienced this at some time or another but for many people, this is a common problem that causes them to have night after night of broken sleep.

We all have goals that we want to achieve in life, whether it is to purchase your dream home, find your ideal partner, reach your ideal weight or attain your perfect career, goals that we set ourselves propel us forward to gaining bigger and better rewards in life.

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?

We generally tend to spend a lot of our lives working on automatic thoughts. You don’t think, “I will get up in the morning and go to work”, instead you just do. The same with getting dressed, showering, having your breakfast or locking your front door. These are all actions that the brain just does automatically without you needing to think about them. The brain works from habits, habits learned over a long period of time. In the main these automatic thoughts help us in our day to day activities they save us time and aid our progress throughout the day.

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?