
I have been a student of personal change ever since I was a depressed teenager reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (although that book never worked for me, as I never could work out where to start living). Before and after I trained as a psychotherapist I studied the Upanishads, Gurdjieff, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Stoicism, Psychoanalysis, Transactional Analysis, Hypnosis, Ericksonian therapy, Cognitive-Behaviour therapy, NLP, EST, Brief Solution-focused therapy, and Acceptance & Commitment therapy. All of which later on filtered through the lens of working with my clients over the past 32 years.
This series of articles summarises my conclusions of what works best in therapy, as well as what doesn’t. And I aim to share these insights with you over the coming months.
Here is the planned list of articles (the list may change as the series unfolds)
Normalising problems
Change through doing nothing at all
Changing consciousness
Accepting what is (and what is not)
Downsizing the ego
Changing expectations
Changing thought
Breaking the rules
Changing the pictures in your head
The Crystal ball method
Focusing on possibilities rather than problems
Separating intentions from outcomes
Replacing bad habits with new ones
Taking one (small) change at a time
Changing feelings and internal states
Exposing to scary environments
Changing personal strategies
Pursuing your passion
Changing behaviour
Building resilience
Please do let me have your suggestions or requests for further articles in this series. As well as your own stories about personal change.