The journey of Change and Growth

"I still sometimes feel like a loser kid in high school and I just have to pick myself up and tell myself that I'm a superstar every morning so that I can get through this day and be for my fans what they need for me to be." - Lady Gaga That's a quote from someone who has 14 Grammy Awards, 2 Golden Globe Awards, 18 MTV Video Music Awards, 1 Academy Award, and 3 American Music Awards and still, STILL, she feel like a fraud. It's madness, isn't it? Or perhaps it's just being human. The Universal Fraud Feeling Here's a scenario that might feel distressingly familiar: You've just been promoted. Your colleagues are congratulating you, your mum's telling all her friends at church, and somewhere deep in your brain, a little voice is whispering, "They've made a terrible mistake. It's only a matter of time before everyone realises you have absolutely no idea what you're doing." Welcome to impostor syndrome, mate. Population: pr...

Let me paint you a picture, shall I? You're about to give a presentation at work. You've prepared for weeks. Your slides look proper brilliant. You know your material inside out. And just as you're about to step up, a voice in your head whispers, "They're going to see right through you. Remember that time in Year 8 when you froze during your school play? It's happening again, mate." That, my friends, is your inner critic. The uninvited guest who crashes the party of your mind and proceeds to drink all the good stuff before telling everyone embarrassing stories about you. The ancient Greeks had a concept for this, you know. They called it "eudaimonia" which roughly translates to flourishing or living well. But they understood that to achieve this state, one had to overcome the negative "daimon" or spirit that could lead one astray. Fast forward a couple thousand years, and psychologists have given this daimon a proper name: the inner cri...

"The greatest prison we live in is the fear of what other people think." - Baz Lutz Let me tell you something. We're walking around carrying more baggage than a budget airline during peak season, and most of it isn't even our own. It's the hand-me-down trauma, beliefs, and "brules" (bullshit rules, for the uninitiated) that our parents, grandparents, and entire ancestral lineage have packed neatly into our psychological suitcase. Cheers, family! The Invisible Chains: What Vishen Taught Me About Brules Vishen Lakhiani, that cheeky mind-hacker from Mindvalley, talks about "brules" like they're these invisible monsters living in our mental closet. Remember when your gran told you that "real success means working a 9-to-5 job" or your dad insisted that "men don't cry"? Yep, those are brules. Pesky little belief systems that have zero scientific backing but somehow managed to become your life's operating manual. P...

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." - Albert Camus Have you ever felt like life just decided to punch you square in the gut? Yeah, me too. Multiple times. In fact, so many times I've lost count. Grief isn't just about losing someone, mate. It's about losing parts of yourself, dreams, expectations, entire versions of the life you thought you were going to live. The Uninvited Guest: Grief Let me take you back to something profound in Ecclesiastes 3:1 - "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." Fancy biblical language for saying: life's gonna throw some proper curveballs, and grief is just one of those curveballs. Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, that brilliant psychiatrist who spent her entire career studying death and transition, mapped out the stages of grief. But here's the kicker most people don't know these stages aren't linear. They're mor...

"The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long" - Blade Runner (Okay, not exactly an ancient proverb, but bloody brilliant, right?) Let me start with a confession. I've been there. That place where your soul feels like it's been run over by the life truck, reversed, and then run over again. Burnout. It's not just a buzzword - it's a bloody epidemic. "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." - William James The Burnout Beast: What Even is This Monster? Picture this: You're a high-functioning human. Coffee is your lifeblood. You've got more tabs open in your brain than on your browser. Sound familiar? Welcome to the burnout club, mate. And trust me, it's not an exclusive one you want a membership to. The World Health Organization describes burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress. But let me tell you, it's so much more than a fancy medical definition. It...

"Comparison is the thief of joy." – Theodore Roosevelt, and probably every therapist ever. Let's be honest. We've all done it. You're scrolling through Instagram at 11 PM, tucked under your duvet, munching on a packet of crisps (no judgment), when suddenly, BAM! There's Karen from high school. Perfect house. Perfect body. Perfect car. Perfect life. And there you are, crisp crumbs decorating your pyjamas, wondering where exactly your life went sideways. Welcome to the Comparison Trap. Population: Pretty much everyone with a smartphone and a social media account. The Science of Feeling Rubbish  Dr. Brené Brown, in her book "The Gifts of Imperfection," argues that comparison is basically our brain's most toxic hobby. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that people who spend more time on social media are 2.7 times more likely to experience depression. TWO POINT SEVEN TIMES! That's not just a statistic; that's a wake-up call...

Cold showers. Just the thought of it sends shivers down my spine. Literally. Who in their right mind would willingly stand under freezing water when there's a perfectly good hot setting right there? Me, apparently. And let me tell you, it's been... interesting. The Accidental Challenge It wasn't supposed to be a challenge, really. I was fourteen literally ten years back. Right after my circumcision. The doctor advised that I should limit hot baths for my surgery to heal quicker I should do cold instead. Mhm. So first day I stood there in the morning. damn! I was in pain. Thinking to myself should I just warm the water, take this bath and get it over and done with. Bear in mind this is a cold winter morning. "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." - Joshua 1:9 Well, the Lord might have been with me, but warmth certainly wasn't. I had two choices: Take the shower (not real...

Time to Rest "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven" – Ecclesiastes 3:1 Rest. It's that thing we're all supposed to do but somehow feel guilty about actually doing. Or simply put, doing nothing on purpose! The Madness of Modern Busyness "The time to relax is when you don't have time for it." – Sydney J. Harris We've become proper obsessed with being busy, haven't we? Like it's some sort of badge of honour. "Oh, I'm SOOO busy," we say, secretly hoping everyone thinks we're terribly important. Meanwhile, our bodies are screaming, "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, PLEASE JUST SIT DOWN FOR FIVE MINUTES!" Dr. Matthew Walker, in his book "Why We Sleep," explains that rest isn't just a nice-to-have. It's essential. Your brain isn't being lazy when it demands rest; it's actually being quite clever. Without proper rest, our cognitive functions go down the...

To-do lists. Those little scribbles of hope and ambition that somehow always end up longer at the end of the day than they were at the beginning. How is that even possible? It's like they're breeding when we're not looking. The To-Do List Trap Sunday evening, feeling all productive and organised, writing out this magnificent list of everything we're going to accomplish in the coming week. Monday morning arrives and... well, let's just say things don't exactly go according to plan, do they? According to Dr. David Allen (the man who wrote "Getting Things Done" - proper famous in the productivity world, he is), the average person has about 150 tasks floating around in their head at any given time. One hundred and fifty! No wonder we feel defeated before we've even started the day. Why Our To-Do Lists Are Rubbish It's not entirely our fault, mind you. The University of California did this study where they found that the average person is inter...

Procrastination. It's that peculiar human tendency to avoid doing the thing we absolutely need to do by doing literally anything else instead. Or simply put, being lazy! Why We're All Masters of Delay "Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?" – Everyone, probably. Turns out, we're not just being lazy when we procrastinate. No, no, we're actually being quite sophisticated in our avoidance techniques. The brain's up to all sorts of tricks. Dr. Tim Pychyl, in his book "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle," explains that procrastination isn't about time management at all. It's about emotion management. We're not avoiding the task; we're avoiding the negative emotions associated with it, fear of failure, anxiety about performance, feeling overwhelmed. Your brain's basically saying, "That looks stressful, mate. Let's not. Please!!!" The Procrastination Cycle From Hell Here's how it usually goes for me...

Right, so today I've been thinking about success. Not because I'm feeling particularly successful (though it is my birthday and I've got this whole CEO thing going on with three companies under my belt). But more because... well, what exactly is it, innit? "Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal." That's what they say, anyway. But who's "they"? And what on earth does that actually mean when it's at home? I was sitting in my garden earlier today (well, more hovering between my couch and fridge if we're being brutally honest), and I started wondering why some people seem to crack on with life while others just... don't. Is it talent? Resources? Luck? A particularly persistent mother who rings you up every Sunday to ask about your "career progression"? The Secret Formula Nobody Wants to Hear You know what's fascinating? In his book "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell bangs on about this 10,000-hour rule...

Have you ever noticed how we're always chasing after the next thing? The next promotion, the next fitness goal, the next relationship milestone. We're proper obsessed with progress, aren't we? Always looking forward, rarely looking around. I was rushing to an appointment last week, late as usual, when I nearly collided with an elderly gentleman who held the door for me. I mumbled a quick "thanks" without even looking at him, and then it hit me, I wasn't actually grateful at all. I was just performing the social ritual, wasn't I? Going through the motions like a robot programmed to mimic human courtesy. The Gratitude Gap: Where Did It Go? Here's the thing about gratitude, we all know we should be doing it, like flossing or eating more veg. But somewhere between our morning coffee and scrolling through everyone's highlights reel on Instagram, we seem to forget. Robert Emmons, the bloke who's basically the Indiana Jones of gratitude research, ...

Genesis 1 v 1 : "In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth." There it is, Done!  The blueprint for everything that matters. Before anything else happened, God had to BE God. Then He DID the creating. Only after that did He HAVE Heaven and Earth. That's the end of the blog folks go ahead and be someone great, do some grand works and have incredible things! The Backwards Brigade Let's be honest, shall we? Most of us are walking around with our priorities completely twitsed. We're obsessed with the "having" part - the nice car, the fancy flat, the Instagram-worthy holiday, the perfect relationship. But here's the rub, we spend almost zero time becoming the sort of person who naturally attracts those things. We want the distinction at university without putting in the hours. We want the six-pack abs without breaking a sweat. We want the thriving side hustle without the sleepless nights. It reminds me of the ancient Greek myth of Icarus. The lad wante...