Don’t Abandon Your Self-Esteem.

Gratitude is supposed to be such a wonderful thing to do.

For years I never bought it.

That changed.

If somebody complains a lot about their life, someone at some point is going to say: “Be grateful, you’ve got so much going for you!”

Oprah has run TV shows specifically devoted to doing just gratitude.

For years I listened to this stuff and I thought to myself: “It’s just contrived it’s trying to force yourself to be grateful, it sounds like my parents giving me a lecture” and I really just couldn’t do it.

Harvard Business Review

Then I read a research article by the Harvard Business Review and the self-righteous and resistant part of me calmed down. The article is entitled Gratitude the New Willpower. [Read more…] about Gratitude, the Antidote to a Negative Mind.

How to Fail Better in 2017

“It isn’t money that makes the world go around, it’s our fantasies.”
Mark Peter Kahn

It’s often hard for us to distinguish fantasy from reality and the bigger the gap, the more we suffer.

Dreams about our future can be amazing and inspirational, but if we can’t actualise them, they are just fantasies and the consequence can be depressing, not to mention the impact on our Self-Esteem, which can be devastating.

Unfortunately most New Year’s resolutions fit into the ‘depressing’ category.

The official stats say that only 46% of New Years (NY’s) resolutions make it past 6 months and less than 20% have a lifespan of 2 years or more.

My personal experience says that these numbers are very optimistic!

In a word, NY’s resolutions are very difficult to sustain. [Read more…] about Are Your New Year’s Resolutions Destined to Crash and Burn?

Have you ever noticed how often you are certain that your memory of an event is perfect, particularly when you are having an argument with someone? One of the defining features of human nature is that we have a deep seated and enduring belief in our infallibility.

We have an idea and we are sure we are right. We have a belief system and its validity is unquestionable.

Most people will argue most vehemently about something that happened in the past, which implies that their memory is photographic and perfectly so!

Two gentleman by the name of Simons and Chabris performed an experiment in 1999 that completely turned around this perception.

It’s called the Invisible Gorilla. [Read more…] about Do You Have a Gorilla Memory

If you have read my previous blogs you will have realised that I’ve had a lot to say about how much of the time parenting comes from the ego, from fear and a desire to manipulate and control kids and how this desire for control is deeply destructive to Self-Esteem.

That’s the downside.

Last Sunday I was reminded so profoundly of the upside.

I took a trip into the Rhenosterspruit Nature Conservancy, just north of Johannesburg, where I once lived for 10 years. It is 18 months since I’ve been there and I was visiting a very special place. [Read more…] about Thank you Mom!

“Self-doubt is chopping your personality up into pieces and scattering them to the wind.”

Mark Peter Kahn.

I have spent decades creating this work and yet I continue to discover new things. Isn’t life wonderful?

What I discovered recently is that self-doubt is one of the greatest sources of our pain and suffering and collapsed Self-Esteem.

There is no question that the moment we doubt ourselves our Self-Esteem begins to crumble.

It’s best to work with an example so let me share one with you. I’ve just read a lovely quote from a friend on Facebook which went like this: “It’s as if before you there are countless doorways, all leading to new and different hallways. So you wonder and think, calculate and stress, over whether or not you will knock on the “right” one. They all lead to the same great room so you may as well just pick one.”

Really lovely. [Read more…] about Self-Doubt…the Confidence Wrecker!