Swart Donkey

I lived in London for 8 years before moving to the Shire. Most of it was spent with a normal job, until I decided that was overrated. Norm...

We are all at the centre of our own Universes. What we see and understand is determined by what we have seen and understood. A Controll...

Although I went down the financial route in my studies, and choice of work, most of my extended family have been involved in the caring pr...

People are essentialists . We believe that there is something core at the heart of things and people that make them what they are. Beneath ...

It’s a sad truth of life that when we grow older, we tend to become less spontaneous and less creative as we acquire more social anxie...

There are many forms of anxiety, but paradoxical anxiety is my favourite. This is the (highly ironic) anxiety that results from fear of be...

The old cliché of meditation is that it’s a blissful state of relaxation. Unfortunately, meditation is not always blissful. It’s a lot mor...

Matthieu Ricard While self-help and psychedelics may be dismissed as snake oil, the benefits of meditation are increasing well docum...

Ayahuasca In moments of weakness, many of us have sneaked a peak at the self-help section in the bookshop. But, while these books mi...

Before we start our trip down the trail of self-discovery, a word from the skeptics. There are so many problems in this world, they say. H...

Socrates To paraphrase a few online dictionaries, ‘self-awareness’ means that you are conscious of your own independent existence, i...

Maintaining the ability to walk away doesn't mean you don't value something. It means you have perspective. A view above addictions...

One of the guys I was at school with was quite some way ahead in his reading... very early. Every now and then a word would slip in to his ...

'Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside dreams. Who looks inside awakens.' Carl Jung ...

Stress builds happiness. Excessive stress causes anxiety and pain, but insufficient stress causes boredom and stagnation. If I could, I wo...

I once heard a story I loved about how to implement unpopular change. A minister asked his congregation whether he could move a piano from ...

My cousin Charles is a psychologist who helps people with Chronic Pain. The pain that doesn't go away. It seems to me we are mostly wir...

The battle between what we do and what we want to do is tragicomic. My favourite metaphor comes from Jonathan Haidt . He describes our men...

One of the thing I struggle with when friends, family or people I know have mental health issues is that they are normally far more of an e...

A 'Permabear' is someone who is always negative. They don't get to lay claim to predicting the crises that come along. It woul...