Nostalgia. It's a beautiful soft, sepia-coloured word, isn't it? Comforting, cushioned and universally understood, although in terms of nuance, it punches way above its weight. Unlike terms that refer directly to longing, or regret, nostalgia isn't really about wanting to return to the past, or somehow have the past return to us, but much more subtly, it suggests a profound and meaningful gratitude that the past actually happened at all. Nostalgia has inherently soft edges. I

There is something very unsettling about regrets. With me, they have a score of almost zero on the mental, feel-good scale. A bin of despair, out of which we must occasionally haul ourselves, using the ropes of clever mantras and helpful sayings, like "Well if I hadn't have done that, I wouldn't be where I am now" - wordy platitudes, which while indisputably true, barely contain the comfort of a decent slice of chocolate cake. Regrets are our mental, feel-bad reels. Wholesale

Comparisons... just one more item, on an ever-expanding buffet of human habits, capable of turning a perfectly good morning into a very bad one, in the blink of an eye. We might wake up, feeling relatively chipper, coffee in hand, birds-a-chirping, hair acceptable, with a B+ for emotional stability. And then Wham!.. Your online scrolling uncovers some bloke you sort-of-knew at school, standing shirtless and barefoot in a Tuscan lemon grove, beside his perfect CEO wife who res

From a fairly young age, I always felt the need to choose a direction. A kind of path. A version of myself that made the most sense to whatever situation I found myself in. We moved around more than most, so adapting was a key skill I had to learn early. And once I chose that direction - once I rearranged my room to suit me, I set my personal sails to suit the local wind, the expectation was simple: stick with it, Vanessa. There was a comfort in that idea. One that I definite

I like looking up quotes. It is nice to see who wrote what and where it came from. As well as being little wordy gems, that represent "things I really wish I had said", quotes give us an anchor to a thought, or a state of mind - perhaps even a way to live life. Mostly, they are either clever or beautiful or deeply deep. And I think deeply deep down, we all crave a life that is quotable... Good quotes - the ones that resonate the deepest - engage us the mostest, because the p

In almost every film that involves the use of a map, there always seems to be a moment when one character looks around, stops the group and exclaims, “Wait… I recognise this.” It’s often a tree or a bend in the path, or some feature that painfully drags out the conclusion that everyone has just completed a giant, waste-of-timey circle. There is no sense of metaphor or philosophy here. It is entirely literal. How did we end up back here? It is generally framed as a cross betwe

The word "Status" is probably still synonymous with a centuries-old meaning around something that can be physically seen . Things like rank, title, land, or visible wealth. It comes from the Latin verb "Stare" - to Stand. It is where we much more than figuratively stood. Status was a marker of position - worn outwardly and instantly understood by all. The trappings of status were the Bentleys, the Castles and the cash.. ..Our status symbols. It's a bit quieter these days. We

Vanessa and I were recently speaking to a company that was offering some service provision around "Digital Marketing". It's a curious term, which commands respect from me, simply because I have no idea what it actually means. I think it might be a buzz-phrase that we just need to have access to, conversationally. It deals mainly with harnessing the might of Social Media. Digital Marketing is a quiet power, that sits beneath almost everything we scroll and scan and click. A po

Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions. ~Eckhart Tolle The world is testing our mental soundness. Fueled by the dramatic and life-changing weather patterns, coupled with disinformation and misinformation propagated by mass media, the collective atmosphere has thrown many off-kilter and left many feeling out of sorts. Yet, the quest for Equilibrium is always present, and a quiet call

Have you ever been told you weren’t listening… when you absolutely were? It’s a strangely frustrating accusation. You were there. You heard every word. You could probably replay the conversation back if asked. And yet, somehow, the conclusion is the same — you weren’t listening.The difficulty, of course, is that you don’t get to decide if that is true, or not. Listening is one of those curious things that feels entirely internal, but is judged almost exclusively from the outs

Everyone makes mistakes. We recognise them on a bit of a sliding scale of real-time. Often they are seen immediately as glaring errors of judgement, sometimes only after months or years of emotional, financial or physical investment, give way to a proportionate sense of "Ooops".. and of course, an important learning and growing opportunity. A mistake is something we generally only recognise after the fact. It's often accompanied by a "wake-up" moment - both literally and figu

Guest Writer - Dr. Stephanie Burchell Take a second to look at everything in front of you right now. If you’re like me, you’ve got at least a few browser windows open (each one loaded with tabs you “ need ”). Your email inbox is steadily filling up in the background. Teams keeps popping up messages from different teammates. And of course, your phone… In other words, you’re multi-tasking. The problem is, there’s no such thing as multi-tasking! As multiple studies have confirm

I think we are all sufficiently familiar with the concept of 'conservational re-wilding', for the subject not to require a lengthy intro. In an eco-nutshell, it's designed to help prevent species extinction and restore balance to our ecosystems that have suffered as a result of human activity. We have priotised control over nature for centuries, with a rather obvious disrespect. So how is that all going? Humans love dominance. It's in the soup of our DNA. The rank of an indiv

February 14th arrives with its familiar gestures of ribbon-wrapped chocolates and things to do, just for two. Everywhere you look, love is presented as something to be given, something to be received, something that must come from somewhere outside of self. But what if this year, you made the decision, that love was going to dress a little differently? Oscar Wilde wrote "To love yourself is the beginning of a life-long romance". He had a point, you know. What if the most mea

Somewhere along the way, we took the word intimate for a long walk. We led it out of philosophy, psychology, and human experience, and ended up folding it neatly in a drawer, labelled - "Reserved - Date Night"... But why even take this subject on, when we seem quite happy for it to describe what we take off? Is intimacy all about the bodies beneath the clothes, or the self beneath the surface?

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance". Oscar Wilde When asked why I did not write about relationships, I thought, but I do. Everything I write is about ‘relationships.’ Not in the traditional sense of couples or coupleship, but every interaction is related to something or someone. So I pondered, and here’s what emerged. We are connected to all things: friends, family, coworkers, animals, nature, the world, and ourselves. Being a part of a

Being single on Valentine's Day, is not everyone's dream scenario. We are bombarded with noisy, brass band-volume messaging around the normal of being smack in the middle of chocolate box relationship land, where heart-shaped balloons are such fun , and a piece of heart-shaped toast pops out of the hearty toaster and you both giggle at the sweetness of it all. Valentine's Day sucks so badly for some of us, that it has an actual negative, psychological effect. Of course Sain

In the world of romantic relationships, grasping the concept of attachment can truly transform how couples connect. Attachment theory, proposed by John Bowlby and further expanded by Mary Ainsworth, illustrates how our early caregiver relationships shape our emotional connections as adults. Let's explore together some ideas around attachment.. We are going to examine four main attachment styles—secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized—and how these styles affect couples, i

Vanessa is American. Her entire family is American, as is her accent, her passport and most of her cultural references. Yet she says she doesn't "feel it" any longer. This makes me sad. We English feel that national identity (not Nationalism) represents a central value - not a totally defining one - but nonetheless a solid sense of tribe, to which humans have been hardwired, since the dawn of people.

“Take a deep breath". ..It ’s rarely said before something pleasant. We say it before the needle goes in. Before "the conversation". Before the bill arrives. Before we brace ourselves for "the good news or the bad news" and anything else we supsect we won't enjoy at all. It’s a phrase that assumes impact. A small hand-on-the-shoulder, before something uncomfortable happens. Which is curious, when you think about it. Because breathing deeply is one of the most beneficial thing