Niceness Feels Good…But It Destroys Growth As a former nice guy—or should I say a recovering nice guy—who spent over two decades being incredibly nice, I speak with some authority when I say that being nice is a completely bullshit way of being. It actually does more harm than good. Let’s start by defining what being nice even means. Nice Read More

Should I bother confronting someone when I know they’re going to react so badly that it just doesn’t feel worth doing? Shouldn’t I just cut them out, or sort of maintain the boundary without any type of confrontation? Firstly—what I’d say is that a confrontation should always be for you. It’s not about changing the other person. Confrontation is about Read More

Digital life is no longer separate from “real life.” Every interaction, post, search, and share now leaves a mark that can influence relationships, careers, and wellbeing. As technology integrates into every aspect of daily activity—from communication and shopping to social exploration—responsible online behavior has become one of the most important life skills of the modern era. From safeguarding privacy to Read More

As you’ve no doubt already heard from numerous philosophies: confidence depends largely on focusing on what you can control, and accepting what you can’t. While this advice makes immediate sense to most people, very few seem able to put it into practice, and spend a large amount of their time frustrated, disappointed, worried and hopeless – the emotions that warn Read More

In great movies, the protagonist – or even the villain – often executes detailed and thoughtful plans. Movies often have a twist where an unexpected setback turns out to be part of the plan, revealing a mind-blowing strategy that explains lots of previously unconnected points. Think of the bank heist in Ocean’s 11, or the killer’s extraordinary coup at the Read More

Let’s talk about managing a counterattack, especially when it’s done with manipulative intent, in an effort to show that you are not in a position above them to give commentary on their behaviour, to gaslight you into believing that you don’t have a right to set a boundary because you’re either a hypocrite for doing the exact same behaviour, or Read More

So what is the difference between being honest and just telling the truth? Well, ultimately, it’s about what truth you choose to tell. Honesty is about choosing what I call the obvious truth—the most important, most real, most vulnerable, most epic thing currently occurring inside you—and nothing else. No pre-scripting, no going around the obvious truth to find a safer Read More

This is where I might get a little controversial: I’m quite against talk therapy, mostly because the scientific consensus is that it’s ineffective. You sit around talking about your illness non-stop with absolutely no effort made to correct the behaviour that’s harming you, justifying that behaviour, saying, “I can’t help it because I have X diagnosis.” That’s just self-serving, egotistical, Read More

Often, when it comes to rumination, the question is—what do we focus on? It’s not so much about stopping the thoughts from happening, but detaching from them. One of the simplest ways to detach from a thought is to find something else to focus on. Simply give yourself a real problem to solve. A lot of automatic negative thoughts are Read More

I was the funny type of performer. If you’d put me in a party or something, I was always telling, not really jokes, more like funny stories or taking the piss out of myself or other people, bantering and having everyone laugh as much as possible. That was very much a mixture of me genuinely enjoying myself and having a Read More

If you pay attention, you’ll notice that there’s no such thing as being completely 50/50 on something. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’re never exactly in the middle. The idea of 51% describes which side you slightly lean towards. Take, for example, some political issue: should sex education be taught in schools? You might be the kind Read More

A common frame that I often see working with people is the “I’m not good enough” story—the belief that you’re a loser, a failure, that you never do well, or that you’re just not good enough. For some people, this frame is permanent. They carry it with them wherever they go. They’re always focused on what they’re not doing well, Read More