Emotional principles

We all struggle with change. At the same time we often want change, or at least recognise the need for it. Things have become stale. Or a situation that we have long tolerated is slowly becoming intolerable and we know we must change it. Yet when we go to make change, our wheels often spin. […]

Listening. Like breathing, it’s one of those things that we tend to take for granted—in other words, to assume that we do it well. I recently wrote the script for a film project where the director was deaf. His inability to hear forced me out of my unconscious approach to listening and made me think […]

I’ve read some dumb-ass motivational statements in my time. One of my favourites is: “To succeed, simply outlast failure.” It sounds wonderfully and deceptively simple. Just keep going. You’ll get there. Failure will give up. But if what you’re doing doesn’t work—i.e. there is a structural reason for your failure—then continuing to do it will […]

I am standing at the lip of a chasm. I would like to tell you that my back faces the chasm—that I have just crossed it. But no, the chasm stands before me. It is one I need to cross. It’s one I have tried to cross before in my life, and failed. It’s taken […]

I know. It’s not what you wanted to hear. We all have desires, and we all like to think that they are almost within reach. Yet some of our desires simply stay almost within reach, sometimes for years—yet we’re never able to actually turn them into reality. That’s because everything we desire lies outside our […]

A man crouches in a field of glowing grass. His head is bowed, his face concealed by a wide-brimmed hat. Is he having a moment of blissful, peaceful community with nature—or is he dragged down by the weight of the world, oblivious of his surroundings? That depends on whether he believes life isn’t fair or […]

Have you ever wondered why people behave irrationally? Or why they sometimes can’t seem to stop themselves uttering put-downs or engaging in other low-grade abusive behaviour for no obvious reason? The answer lies in these three simple words: emotions precede thoughts. Civilization I have no idea who first articulated this very profound observation, but it can […]

Are you familiar with the term ‘shadow work’? It’s been around for a while. It seems to be gaining in prominence—perhaps because the need for shadow work is growing. Shadow work is a term that comes to us from the New Age movement. In the personal development world it’s sometimes referred to as ‘inner work’. Or, more […]

What is the meaning of life? Ah, the ultimate question. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams gave the answer as 42. He just didn’t say what the exact question was. In Buffalo River Home, the great—and often humorous—American songwriter John Hiatt sang, “There are two things in life / But I forget […]

We all suffer from emotional pain. Whether it’s the trauma of separation, the grief of someone close to us dying or the acute pain of a miscarriage, we’ve all been there, we don’t want a T-shirt and we don’t want to go back. But let’s stop for a moment and ask: what is emotional pain? […]