Personal Effectiveness

Living a Mindful Life: Mindfulness Program

For quite some time now, many of our readers and students have wanted a Mindfulness program that not only teaches them about Mindfulness, but progressively helps them integrate Mindfulness into their lives for enhanced wellbeing. Well, we listened, and now we’re delivering! The resultant program is Living a Mindful Life. »

Why Counsellors Need Mental Health Therapy

Have you ever sat in session, listening to your client explain why they were angsty over some issue, only to find that you experienced a rising panic and sense of helplessness — because you, too, were dealing with the same issue? Have you ever finished a session with a deeply depressed client, only to find that you then felt very down, even though you were ok before the session? Both of thes... »

Intention to Realisation: Working with Will

The holidays are finished, the relatives have gone home, and your clients are trickling back in, many of them armed with an awesome set of resolutions for what they plan to accomplish. A brand new year is like a clean slate: hopeful, invigorating and full of promise. But the road to realisation of goals is littered with the carcasses of broken dreams, unfulfilled promises, and intentions that died... »

Helping Clients Learn How to Surrender

Your new boss shifts the goal posts, demanding a much higher volume of work from you than the high level that was expected before. You take one look at all the new tasks you must do, throw up your hands in despair, and angrily write out your resignation letter. Did you give up or did you surrender? »

The Mental Health Benefits of Naps

What’s your reaction when your client leans forward in her chair and her voice drops to a whisper as she confides, “You know, I just get so sleepy after lunch that I feel I must have a nap, or I can’t function — but then I feel so guilty!”? Do you nod sagely, “getting” what she says because you feel guilty about the same thing? Do you immediately jump into... »

Making Your Goals More Powerful with SMART Goals

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.” – Napoleon Hill You are here on this planet for the duration. What will you do with the time that is allotted to you? Who will you become? What will you have in your life: which people, things, and experiences? What will your legacy be? When you know the answers to these questions, you will be able to direct your energies, impulses, and activi... »

Networking for Success (In Counselling, In Life)

When one of our writing team had trouble finding work a number of years ago, she mentioned this to her friend, whose mother was visiting from another country. “Oh,” said the mother, a vivacious business person, “I guess you’ll have to join a few more clubs.” She made this statement before the phenomenon we know as “social media” even existed. What she was ... »

Problem-Solving: The Definitions and the Need

How sharp are your thinking and problem-solving skills? If you are like most people, you hope to make a difference to your world. And if you are now — or soon will be — a member of just about any trade or profession, you will be asked to solve problems, usually on a daily basis, as part of your work. Unless you lead an exceptionally charmed life, your personal world will not be problem... »

Ten Commandments of Brain Fitness

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it helps to keep us human beings alive, brain-wise. The basic idea of mind/brain fitness is to give your brain the best workout possible (to keep it growing and developing) by continuing to challenge it. The moment you find something is second nature, that is the moment to change it, bringing in some novelty. You can create that by being curious about your ... »

Learning Tips: 11 Techniques to Improve Your Memory

Having a tough time learning new concepts? In this article, we boost your learning capacity with eleven bullet-proof techniques to improve your memory: chunking, transfer of learning, memory palace, funny imagery, peg system, eliminate unrelated associations, explain to others; study with others, put yourself in the picture, use mechanical aids, use your passion, and learn from the past. »

Practical Prioritising: Important, Urgent, or Just Demanded?

How many times have you looked back on periods of your life and wondered, “How was it that I ever thought that was a priority?” Whether it was a hobby you no longer engage, an unworkable relationship you sacrificed healthy ones for, or a compulsion you no longer regard as urgent, most of us have to admit that at times we have made decisions about what to prioritise which defy logic. Th... »

The Perils of Multitasking

“Juggling is an illusion. … In reality, the balls are being independently caught and thrown in rapid succession. … It is actually task switching.” (Gary Keller) »

Making Your Goals More Powerful

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.” (Napoleon Hill/Inspirational, 2014) Do you write down your goals? You probably have ideas rolling around in your mind about what you want to accomplish now, soon, next year, and over your lifetime, but have you actually written them down? World-renowned speaker and best-selling author Brian Tracy notes that only 3 percent of adults have written goal... »

Emotional Intelligence: Definition and a Brief History

The idea that we human beings have not only a quotient of cognitive intelligence, our so-called “IQ”, but also a level of emotional intelligence, called either “EQ” (for emotional quotient) or “EI” (emotional intelligence) has been emerging for at least 30 years (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2004b). It began to be popularised in the 1990s and is now in common p... »

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