As I do every year on New Year’s Eve (you probably do this, too), I think about the last 12-months of my life and contemplate just what went on. Was it a good year? Did some bad things occur? What good things happened? Was I grateful enough? Did I learn anything? Am I a better person or…a worse one? Do I feel grief for anything? What made me smile and what made me weep? Oh… So many laughs and way too many tears. We said goodbye to my best fur friend of 17-years and turned aro

As 2017 starts to draw to a close, I have to say: it’s been quite the year, hasn’t it? Lots of grief and tears, fear and incredulous events that have us all wondering: what comes next? Over the last 6-months or so, I’ve noticed a new trend and although it’s been a bit shocking for many, it will continue to escalate and in the end, it will shed light on many dark secrets. This is a good thing. If we show put atrocities out in the open, maybe someone will notice them and do som

I’m taking an online introductory course in Counselling and I’m currently reading a book called: The Skilled Helper. It’s interesting. I’ve barely started and already I’ve noticed that there is something very important and fundamentally missing in our Western system: we do not teach our young how to manage their mental health. At least, not on a large scale. We show them how to take care of their bodies through eating well and exercising. We teach them to read, write and prob

There are many different stages of change, six to be exact. During the first stage (called the precognitive or…not ready) one doesn’t intend to start the healthy behaviour anytime soon. But in the meantime, we might start learning about alternative and healthier behaviours, weighing up the pros and cons of our current behavioural patterns and how we feel about the effects of our negative behaviour on others. Then, we go into the contemplation or the ‘getting ready’ stage (sta

It’s New Year’s Eve and here we go again. We’ve all done it, New Year’s resolutions that promise ourselves we’ll be: thinner, happier, healthier, make more money…blah, blah, blah. But what, other than joining that expensive gym you’ll hardly visit, come March, have we actually put in place to achieve these goals? What processes have we worked through to discover WHY we are not what we want to be in the first place? In order to ‘fix’ our problems, we need to find the core of t