Posts

This week on the Confident Mind I talk about sadness and how one of the ways that depression happens is when we get stuck in sadness, and allow it to define our sense of ourselves. I discuss research that shows that when we practice mindfulness meditation it decreases our tendency to define ourselves by our emotions
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Have you ever felt like a robot? Like you’re responses are automatic, and out of your control?  This week on The Confident Mind I talk about how our emotional programming in childhood can leave us feeling as if we are trapped in certain patterns and ways of responding, and how mindfulness and therapy can enable
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This week on The Confident Mind I talk about how our tendency to “look up” at those who have more, creates anxiety and unhappiness.  In capitalism and western society our tendency to strive and want to be more successful fuels anxiety and insecurity, and ultimately creates “status anxiety.”  I talk about how to consciously switch
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On The Confident Mind this week I spoke with Aaron Jarden.  Aaron is a Senior Lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology, President of the New Zealand Association of Positive Psychology, lead investigator for the International Wellbeing Study and co-investigator of the Sovereign New Zealand Wellbeing Index. We talked about how to measure wellbeing, and
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What is reality?  It’s a philosophical question.  Are we, like in the film “The Matrix”, all living in a computer simulation?  This week on The Confident Mind I discuss how our perception of reality is unlikely to be a computer simulation, but however is nonetheless different for all of us.  And may be limited by our own perceptions
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We all lie, all the time.  That’s what I talk about this week on The Confident Mind podcast.  Honesty is a virtue we all hold to be worthwhile, but human nature means that we lie to others and most often ourselves, all the time.  Reality is painful but mindfulness helps us to be able to
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How to be free?  That’s what I talk about this week on The Confident Mind podcast.  True freedom comes from feeling free to think and feel what ever we like, or need to.  We are not our thoughts, as the saying goes.  I explore how to achieve this freedom, and included is a brief mindfulness
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This week on the Confident Mind I talk about compassion, both for ourselves and others.  I explore how being able to feel compassion is vital for emotional health and how extending and challenging ourselves to feel compassion for others, also helps us be kinder and more gentle towards ourselves. To see more about my online
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This week on the Confident Mind I talk about “normal” and how as it’s an abstract concept, no one is actually normal.  I explore how we all tend to act like out there, somewhere, are normal people that we are comparing ourselves to.  I also talk about how to use the ideas of mindfulness and
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