Self-improvement shouldn’t be a default way of being. When we improve at things, we feel better. And knowing how to do that occasionally requires us looking in, at our ‘self’. But we need to know when to stop looking in, and how to start looking out.

Doing our best to avoid all forms of stress isn’t a blessing, it’s a trap. We’re designed to response to short-term stress because without it, we only ever stay the same. And that’s far more dangerous.

Is happiness about ‘wanting what you already have’, or ‘having what you want’? The truth is… it depends. But the more important question is: are you willing to try to figure out what happiness means for you?

New scientific discoveries are revealing that certain patterns in our lives, such as our capabilities, attitudes or behaviours, are not as hard-wired as many might have you believe. Our brains are not blank canvases that become filled with a set picture for life. They’re a lot more like an Etch a Sketch. And that creates an exciting space for us to create new patterns.

Much of our time is spent worrying about making good or bad choices; trying to focus on the former and completely eliminate the latter. But these choices drive the arc of our life’s story, for better or worse. The road blocks in our story are not bad choices, but tragic ones; choosing to give up the power of choice.

It’s easy to beat ourselves up for what we think are poor choices when it comes to our fitness, diets and sense of purpose. Make no mistake, we’re responsible for these important things. But we can also give ourselves a break when we realise that our deeply engrained impulses exist for a reason, and make it understandable when we don’t always meet our own expectations.

Confidence isn’t something we’re born with, it’s a story that we learn. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. But if spread them out on a spectrum, you create room for confidence to grow.

Rules suck, right? We’re basically taught to hate them as kids.
We’re indoctrinated into thinking that they’re the fun-sponges of life. They can feel like these hurdles designed to stop us from having the things we want most. But what if, as adults, we could turn rules into one of the most powerful tools at our disposal for getting what we want?

Three questions that will change the way you make decisions in your life, for the better.

Nobody thinks about you as much as you do. And in a world where no one is going to care, why should you when it comes to taking a risk?

Why the stories we tell ourselves really matter, as does learning the ability to change them.

Happiness lies in the smallness of the gap between our expectations, and our reality. Now, we could lower our expectations to gain more happiness, but I believe that honing the ability to change our reality is a more enduring way of achieving that. And mindfulness can give you that power.

Today’s world wants you to believe that every problem can be solved. There’s an app, or website, or product for that. The harsh reality no one wants to tell you is that your world will always have problems. The way to improve your world in this modern context is to choose the problems you invite into your life.

A strong sense of self should not be ‘I am what I think is true’. Rather, it should be ‘I am what I think is important’. In other words, if you’re going to have a strong sense of identity, it should be grounded in your values, not your beliefs.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” These words feel like they were crafted specifically for our modern world. We don’t want to sit with our thoughts. Because doing so might lead to us questioning their weaknesses, or worse, their origins.

Humans’ superpower is the ability to tell stories. Stories help us to make sense of an uncertain world. Stories are not facts; they exist to prompt questions. The ability to question and update our own uncomfortable stories is the key to building resilience.

The question we should all be facing is not “what is the meaning of life?”. The questions we must ask of and explore within ourselves is: “What is the meaning I want to create for my life?” How we do that is difficult. But possible.

Happiness might just be hiding behind that choice. The relationship between choice and control steers our life's direction. And much of this balance lies in what we're willing to let go of, and let exist outside of our control.

Our inclination to be distracted has kept us alive for millennia. But today's technology turns this useful trait against us by becoming "super-stimuli". We can't defeat the power of super-stimuli, but we can remove it. This is a fight worth walking away from.

A world of texting and instant messaging means we can avoid the unpredictability and messiness of phone calls. We can outsource the expression of emotions to GIFs and emojis. We can reduce uncertainty. But life is unpredictable, messy and uncertain. And that's a reality we can't ignore.