Do you ever feel like you’d do something if only you felt braver about it? Things like… I’d speak up in a work meeting if I knew that no one would think I was stupid/annoying. I’d say no to my child if I didn’t think it would cause a tantrum. I’d set a boundary with a family member or colleague if I didn’t feel so scared of displeasing them. These are all real-life examples for me! And my most recent one: I’d start sharing consistently on my mailing list and via social

I once thought that I was failing in life because I was too emotional and not resilient enough. There’s lot of talk about how to “build resilience” around. And then there are people who appear to be unphased by the ups and downs of life. They seem to deal with setbacks with ease, grace and even a sense of humour. Almost as though resilience is a personality trait and they lucked out in the personality department. It so doesn’t look like this to me these days, which is why I s

How do we create resilient children? A question asked by many parents and educators. We discover our own resilience, our own true nature. Terrifying, right? Much easier to pretend we are not awesome and get busy trying to help others. But if we haven't discovered the true source of resilience within ourselves, we can never really help anyone else discover it. I'm seeing the power of this as both a parent and a teacher, as I recently took up a part time post as a primary teach

I don’t know about you, but there are a lot of ideas about how Christmas “should” be that have been learned by my mind, over the years. Which is fine, and exactly what a mind will do, but then that mind also goes and forgets that these are ideas and starts judging itself when not all of these things happen in reality. It’ll say things like: "Why have I not been more organised this year?" "I should have had all the presents wrapped by the end of November." "I wish I could ho

If you’re following Strictly Come Dancing this year, you likely watched the semi-final on Saturday and heard each professional dancer give their reasons why they thought their celebrity partners should make it through to the final. Something in what Vito said about his partner Sarah really struck me. I’m not quoting here, but this is what I heard: He thought she was one of the strongest people he’d ever met. He felt privileged to have been allowed to see some of her fra

Let’s take sitting exams at school as an example (it’s topical in our house right now and a great example). “Anxiety” is a label your brain has learned to put on sensations that arise within the body. These sensations are completely normal and it’s not surprising for them to come up when thinking about sitting an exam. The intensity of the sensations that your brain labels as “anxiety” is not an indication of how you will perform in the exam, nor of how you will feel in

What would you do if you felt more confident? Go for that promotion? Speak up more in meetings? Try out a new activity, at which you’re a complete beginner? I relate. I think we all have stories like these. And the truth is that most people are pooping their pants when they do any of these sorts of things, especially for the first time. So here’s a different question: What even is confidence? Is it a guarantee that things will go the way we want them to? A promise t

Do you or someone you care about ever feel nervous, especially before performing in any way or trying out a new experience? Me too. Minds love to make up “what if” scenarios and get lost in them. Here’s a different sort of “what if” – something to get curious about. What if… “Nervous” is a label our mind might give to certain sensations in the body – things like butterflies in the tummy, a quicker heart rate, and so on. And as soon as that label is slapped on, off t

It's mid-December. There have definitely been times so far this month, when I have felt overwhelmed. AND... I’ve had a lot on and like many business owners who are also parents to excited kids, there are quite a few things I’d like to get done before Christmas. But did you notice I didn’t say I’ve been feeling overwhelmed BECAUSE I have a lot on? Sure, at times it really seems like my “to-do list” is the cause of feelings of overwhelm. But then there are other times when I’m

A while back, I saw a post going around with someone saying they didn’t want to be described as resilient because they wanted to be able to feel vulnerable and break down sometimes and not have to just keep going regardless. My definition of resilience definitely does NOT include not feeling feelings or not stopping when we need to rest or regroup. To me, that sounds like the very opposite of resilience. How about you? As I see it, feelings – all of them, including uncomforta

If you’ve been reading my posts this week, you’ll know that I see resilience as a natural capacity that we’re all born with – one that allows us to navigate the ups and downs of life, learn from it all and move forward. All very well you might say, but something must happen in the intervening time between the baby who shows limitless resilience while learning to walk and the older child or teenager who holds back from life due to lack of confidence, self-doubt and worries abo

WHAT DOES "RESILIENCE" MEAN TO YOU? “Resilience for All” empowers schools to connect both students and teachers with resilience. My definition is very simple, and it goes like this: "Resilience = a natural capacity that allows us to deal with and learn useful things from whatever happens in life." By the way, these are just words and they don’t even go halfway to conveying just how amazing humans actually are at handling whatever happens. One of my favourite examples that poi

Have you ever felt like you are somehow different to everyone else and that you aren’t as good at life as other people? These days, there are messages all around us that reinforce that we need to “work hard” to always be happy, and that if we’re not happy pretty much most of the time, there’s something wrong with us, and that we might even have a “mental health issue”. This is such a disempowering message to share with young people. The focus of Mental Health Awareness Week

Because it’s Mental Health Awareness Week, it feels like a good time to share the reason for my blog being very quiet over the last year or so. It’s that I’ve been working really hard on something that helps young people to reconnect with their resilience, confidence and wellbeing. Lots of young people in schools have tried it out now. Their feedback is helping to refine it into an even more useful resource for schools. And this is just the beginning. There’s so much talk abo

How do you define “success”? Often we think of it as somewhere we will arrive, one day, after achieving something or creating a set of...