The electricity board keep turning off our ‘leccy. 

Before you start with your jokes, yes, we have paid the bill, but they recently turned the supply off for a few hours to do something important and not kill themselves in the process. 

When it was off a couple of weeks ago, I spent the afternoon elsewhere to make my calls, but today I’ve charged up all my devices, and I’ll be hot-spotting off my phone, feeling pretty confident that I’ll have enough juice to last until lunchtime, at which point I’ll dash to a cafe and cheekily recharge for the afternoon sessions. 

Being without power got me thinking about habitual behaviour. 

It’s such a massive thing in our lives, but we underestimate it because most habits occur beneath the level of consciousness. 

I know I have no electricity today, but what’s the first thing I’m doing when I walk into a dark room? 

Yes. I hit the light switch. 

Not just once, but every single time!

Now, you might think it’s just me being a bit dizzy with ADHD, and that’s possibly a factor, but I reckon it would affect anyone to some degree, because we are so conditioned to reach for the lights when it’s dark. 

Habits are great. They’re vital. 

We’re designed to develop habits like that to free up our working memory for more complicated tasks that demand our processing capacity. 

Are you in the habit of working out before work? Great. 

Are you in the habit of drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning? Marvellous. 

Are you in the habit of journalling. Superb. 

However, habitual behaviour can also work against us: if we feel fried after work, we reach for the wine to soothe our souls. It happened once; it felt good, so we did it again…and again…and again… until it became as habitual as reaching for the light switch in a darkened room. 

This is not so great. 

One of the techniques I’ve been learning in hypnotherapy is habit reversal. It’s designed to help you become conscious of the unconscious behaviour that doesn’t serve you. 

It’s really cool. So simple, but effective. 

I won’t bother using it on myself today for light switches because everything will be back to normal tomorrow, and switching on lights isn’t bad for me, but I can definitely use it to keep my hand out of the cookie jar, which has been spending too much time in there lately. 

This is how I will do it. In my imagination, I will practice visualising opening my larder door and seeing the cookie jar. I will then visualise reaching for the lid and then making my hand into a fist. Don’t worry; I’m not going to punch anyone. I just want to imagine my hand balling into a fist whenever I reach for the cookies. 

The theory is I’m breaking an automatic habit of unconsciously raiding the jar and ending up with a mouthful of double chocolate chip cookies before I even know I’m doing it. 

Balling the fist interrupts my habitual behaviour and gives me time to think. 

Of course, I might decide to eat the bloody cookies anyway, but at least I won’t be doing it on automatic pilot, and therefore, it’s highly likely I’ll be consuming fewer cookies. 

Do you need to break a bad habit? 

DM me, and I’ll give you some pointers!

I’m anchoring into Yacht Rock. 

For the last couple of weeks, I have been head-down. Things like housework, long walks in the countryside, and generally chilling out have had to take a back seat as the impending target of wrapping up my coursework by the end of November looms large. 

Sometimes, life needs to be temporarily unbalanced to reach goals, which is OK as long as it’s not out of whack for a long time. 

My house is full of cobwebs, the larder is quite frankly weird due to my lack of focus on meaningful food shopping (peanut butter and green tea soup for lunch, anyone?), and I have to do emergency laundry procedures when Kev and I run out of undercrackers. (Oh, and please don’t ask why Kev isn’t helping around the house because this weekend, he was up a ladder clearing all the leaves from the gutters, putting the garden to bed for the winter, loading the dishwasher after meals, and regularly runs the hoover around to collect up the clouds of ginger fluff that Eddie sheds. We’re definitely a team).

Anyway, practically every spare hour I have is spent plodding through my studies. I make myself tea in a travel mug (when I make it in a cup, it goes cold before I finish it because I forget it’s there), and I stick the “Now That’s What I Call Yacht Rock” playlist on Spotify. 

So, what the hell is Yacht Rock, and why am I listening to it? 

Yacht Rock is the genre I used to haughtily roll my eyes to as a teenager when my mum wiggled her butt to it whilst listening to the Terry Wogan Show in the 80s. 

When she was swaying to “Africa” by TOTO, I turned up the volume on “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads. If she started singing to “What a Fool Believes” by Christopher Cross, I’d storm out of the house to buy a can of Top Deck and a Marathon (yes, kids were allowed to buy shandy back then, and - fun fact for you - Mars called the UK bar Marathon because the original name, Snickers (named after a family horse), was thought to sound too much like knickers! They are releasing a limited run of correctly named Marathon bars this year to celebrate their 90th anniversary, and I want one!) 

Yacht Rock was a term coined in 2005, following a series of the same name about yachting set in Southern California. Wikipedia says Yacht Rock is characterised by “high-quality production, breezy vocals and bouncy rhythms”. It’s about as high-brow as Babycham and cheese-and-pineapple-on-sticks, but whenever I hear it, it puts me in the zone to study. 

This is because in one of the classroom sessions last year, my tutor mentioned a classic Yacht Rock song, “Escape”, by Rupert Holmes. You might know it better as the Pina Colada Song. If you don’t know it, the lyrics tell a complete story about a guy who’s bored with his marriage and answers an advert in a lonely hearts’ column to some racy bird who “likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain”. He arranges to meet her in a bar, only to realise it was his wife all along, who was also game for a bit of off-piste. They laughed it off and lived happily ever after. (Yeah! Like that would happen in real life! There would be mutual murder or at the very least, they’d throw cocktails over each other!)

My tutor used this song to demonstrate how we all get absorbed in a story, no matter how weird (which is lucky because most of the tales I write about are pretty random). 

Anyway, this song got stuck in my head like a brainworm, and I found it on Spotify. It happened to be on a playlist called “Now That’s What I Call Yacht Rock.” For some reason, it feels like the perfect soundtrack to study to—slightly upbeat and not distracting, except for causing me to absent-mindedly sing along to “Fool If You Think It’s Over” or “Can’t Fight This Feeling Any More”. 

Technically, we call this “anchoring” where something, like a sound or a gesture, triggers a thought or behaviour. Music can be a strong anchor - and Yacht Rock weirdly now makes me feel like studying, even when I struggle to find the energy to do so.

Plus, it possibly gives me a warm memory of when the biggest problem in my day was thinking my mum was uncool, and I was enjoying my time at the bleeding edge of my own youth culture. But I can’t listen to post-punk music when studying because it makes me feel rebellious and fling my books over the room!  

Do you ever soundtrack parts of your life? If so, what’s on your playlist, and how does it help you?

Recently, I celebrated a Big Thing with my oldest, oldest, friends

I emphasise “oldest” because she recently had a go at me about calling her my oldest friend when introducing her to people. You see, she is six months older than me, and boy, do I ever rub it in when she becomes “a whole year older than me” every April. 

We’ve known each other since we were five, and I used to envy her notching up the years, but now it’s just a twice-yearly piss-take opportunity where she’s the brunt of my ageist jokes in April, and she enjoys turning the tables on me in October when I catch her up. 

However, somehow, our friendship seems to survive and becomes more precious as the years roll by. 

We’ve been through lots together over the course of our lives, and what I love about her is that we are totally on the same page as far ageing is concerned, i.e., it’s a game we’re not taking part in. 

Sure, our bodies and faces are changing as the years go by, but we’re not going quietly into the night as far as our hopes and dreams are concerned. 

She is a professional researcher and writer, but she’s not content with just earning a living doing factual writing; she has decided to expand her horizons and follow a dream by applying for a master's degree in writing for script and screen. 

She had to “audition” for the course by sending in a sample screenplay. 

Now, she is also part of our 5% Mastermind community, and she has shared her goal of applying for the course at previous meetings. 

When we held a client event here at Rose Cottage a few weeks ago, we all had the privilege and fun of acting out (terribly, of course) her audition script, which we all agreed was brilliant, but of course, she suspected we were just being kind, and was very unsure whether she would make the grade for the course because she had no prior experience of screenwriting, and other applicants were likely to be improvers rather than beginners. 

It was no shock to me when she announced the news that she had been accepted on the course. Not only that, but her tutor said he could not believe it was her first attempt at screenwriting! 

And so, I am convinced it won’t be long before I’ll need a new frock to attend the BAFTA’s. (I made her promise to get me tickets to all her awards ceremonies because she is my oldest, oldest friend!)

We invited her over to dinner the other night to celebrate, and when I was walking her out to her car, I told her I felt so lucky we were both retraining and feeling excited about our future careers at an age when many people are thinking about stopping work completely.

Not that there’s anything wrong with retiring if that’s what makes you happy, but I know it’s not what I want, and I’m really pleased that I can share my journey of non-retirement with my bestie. 

So, congratulations again to my Old Chum (she reads my posts - in fact, she is currently engaged in a project with me putting together a collection of them into a book), and I hope this gives you inspiration if you are in your, shall we say, riper years and thinking about your next goal. 

People tend to be happiest when they’re working towards something, so what could be your Next Thing? 

Why do you sometimes have a sad face when you’ve achieved something big?

Our guest speaker at our quarterly event, James Benson-King, was really fascinating to listen to, and my partner Kev and I found it particularly interesting hearing about how James felt at the end of his year-and-a-half journey cycling across the Americas. 

He went through a short period of feeling quite down and empty. 

Kev’s ears pricked up at this because a few weeks ago, the day after we finished our 14-hour, 35-mile walk across Dorset, he said he couldn’t understand why he felt absolutely no positive emotions after achieving our goal. At best, he felt neutral, but he was verging on feeling quite low. 

Now, our little expedition was small-fry in the big scheme of things, but it was a big deal for us, and James explained that this feeling is very common in people who achieve such goals. The anticipation of the event, and the doing it is absorbing and challenging, and to be on the other side of it with nothing left to do can feel quite bewildering. 

I’m sure it’s also connected to physical exhaustion for endurance athletes, but it can happen with any kind of challenge that absorbs you for a long period of time - suddenly, the thing you spent so much time thinking about isn’t there any more, and there is an empty space. 

James said it took him just ten days to decide on his next challenge, because he recognised his happy place was in the planning and doing rather than the actual accomplishment of the goal. 

I think that’s worth remembering if your efforting with any kind of goal or challenge. It’s very likely you will be getting most jollies from the journey rather than the arrival, even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time. 

So, why bother at all?

Well, Kev has found more enjoyment in looking back on the photos and memories of our walk in recent days than in the period immediately after we did it. Time has helped him process and appreciate what we did. 

If you look back on your life, maybe you felt a bit underwhelmed when you achieved something big, but looking back on it gives you a sense of pride and achievement, making it all worthwhile, 

So, if you’re struggling with anything right now, remember one day, you could look back on this and recognise it was a time when you grew the most, and it gave you more than it took away. 

What’s Your I.O.T.D? 

We all have one.

It might be big. It might be small. It might be somewhere in between. 

But we all have one. 

I remember, back in the late 1990’s I was very anxious waiting for the results of a blood test I had to take for HIV in order to get life insurance. 

The whole AIDS concern was relatively new, and ours was the first generation who were told condoms were essential for disease prevention as well as birth control. 

We were given government leaflets through the post warning us about this silent killer, and everyone knew they could be infected by the incurable condition by having sexual contact with just one infected person. 

Of course, most of us pushed it to the back of our minds, taking precautions and hoping it would never happen to us, but there was always that nagging doubt that we’d been infected before we even knew there was a threat. 

It only took a week or so for my results to come through, but I remember it played on my mind terribly. 

I remember thinking to myself that I would never need to worry about anything again as long I lived if I knew I didn’t have HIV. That somehow, life would be different, and I would sail through the rest of my days appreciating my healthy body and being joyful no matter what else life threw at me. 

Getting the all-clear on my HIV test was my I.O.T.D.

My Issue of the Day. 

Thankfully, the test came back all clear, and I was momentarily elated. I could breathe again! I hugged my family and squeezed my dogs, and even felt moved to call my mum just to see how she was (something that I rarely did). 

Life felt perfect for a brief moment in time. 

However, it wasn't long before another issue came and took its place.  

The thing is, our brains are compulsive problem-solving machines. They constantly need something to be working on. Sometimes, it’s something very obvious, like an emergency to deal with, but even on the best of days, we’ll find something that needs our problem-solving skills. 

That’s how we can end up feeling just as consumed about what colour pants to buy as which house to buy. It’s simply that relocating to a new town is the I.O.T.D one day, and stripes or spots is another. 

You can use the concept of I.O.T.D. to gain a sense of perspective over your problems.

If you’re recovering from the acute stage of a major illness, then it’s perfectly reasonable to let other potential I.O.T.D.s slide off your to-do list for the day. Your main goal is to get yourself well. 

If you find your brain chewing away on anything else, then remind yourself it’s just your Issue of the Day. 

You’ll always have one, even on great days.

Like, when you’re away on holiday, your issue could be that tough decision between snorkelling or sunbathing, followed by a debate on which restaurant to go to for dinner. Some people get into full-on rows about shit like that when they’re on holiday because they hear all their I.O.T.D’s at the same volume in their heads! 

What’s your I.O.T.D., and do you need to turn down the volume on it?

Poor Ed. 

He’s been to the veterinary specialist again recently to have an ultrasound scan on his shoulders to try to ascertain the cause of his lameness. 

He had to have a sedative again, which always makes him feel rubbish for the rest of the day, but to add insult to injury, they had to shave two huge patches of fur off his shoulders to be able to scan him.

He’s gone from “Hey, Mum, check out how gorgeous I am”: 

To “Jeez, Mum! I don’t know what’s going on! You guys keep taking me to a Very Bad Place, where not only do they drug me and stick needles into me, but now they’re humiliating me with bad haircuts! When will this end?”

I nearly cried when I saw him looking so sad. He’s much perkier now, but his coat is going to take a while to restore to its former glory (not that his avant-garde buzz cut makes him any less gorgeous in my eyes). 

Don’t worry - he’s getting lots of extra snuggles, and I slept downstairs with him on both nights of his sedation to make sure he was OK.

It never feels like a bother doing extra things to look after him, because he is My Best Friend, and he laps up all the attention. 

It got me thinking that sometimes, people aren’t very good at accepting help from others. I know I’ve been terrible for it at times, and I still have moments of thinking I should be able to handle everything on my own instead of asking for help. 

People close to me have complained that I never used to admit I was struggling until I was either out the other side of the problem or so utterly crippled with mental health problems that it was obvious I wasn’t coping. 

We get so caught up in thoughts about not wanting to be a bother to people, and feeling like we should be able to deal with stuff that we forget how it actually doesn’t feel like a bother helping people we care about. 

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying that you need to become totally dependent on others because self-reliance is a good thing if you are of sound mind and body; what I’m saying is if your health isn’t 100% and it would be beneficial for you to take things easier, then get the help you need in order to make that happen. 

Or, if you are worried about something, then talking things through can help you get a different perspective and make a plan, rather than just sitting there with the endless noise of your own thoughts in your head. 

Being in need of help doesn’t make you not good enough or unlovable. (Eddie is still very much The Best Dog in the World despite being a bit poorly and looking like he’s lost a fight with a small lawnmower.) 

Far from being a weakness, knowing when to ask for help is a strength. 

It’s amazing how points of view can be so different:

Recently, my Labrador, Eddie, had a tough day. He had to go to a veterinary hospital to see a consultant because our local vet wasn’t sure what was causing his limp. 

Turns out the problem isn’t immediately obvious to the consultant either. He took a CT scan of Ed’s legs and shoulders and identified some inflammation but isn’t quite sure what’s causing it, so he’s asking the rest of his team to look at it this week and see what they can come up with together. 

I took him to Southen Counties Veterinary Specialists near Ringwood, Hampshire, and I would recommend them for customer service. I’ll write a review for them at some point, and it will say something like:

“I had a very good experience with SCVS. Their intake procedure was very clear and reassuring, and they communicated with my insurance company directly, so I didn’t need to worry about them getting paid (also, big thanks to Pet Plan - who, although aren’t the cheapest insurance providers, really do provide excellent customer care, too). On arrival at the premises, I thought it looked excellent - very well appointed, and the reception team were friendly and kept me appraised of what was going on. The veterinary specialist took time to assess my dog and had a very kind manner, which was great because my dog wasn’t keen on being there. He had to stay for a scan, which took about an hour and a half because he needed to be sedated. The reception team pointed me in the direction of a great cafe nearby, and they called me when my dog was ready for collection. The vet then talked me through the scan results, gave me full instructions for his aftercare, and let me know he’d call me the following week when the team had time to discuss the results. All in all, a very good experience, and I would highly recommend SCVS.”

If Eddie could type, this is what he would say: 

“If it were possible to give minus stars for a day out, this joke of a place would get minus billions! 

Usually, a car trip ends in a nice walk or, at the very least, a meal in a pub for my mum and dad with snacks for me, but this particular trip ended in what can only be described as a living nightmare. 

Firstly, it smelt weird - a nasty concoction of cleaning chemicals mixed with the unmistakable aroma of fear -  and I understand why: this place is atrocious on every level. The only slight redeeming factor was they had a separate VIP lounge for cats, who tend to be rude bastards at the best of times, so at least I didn’t have them glaring at me.  

Anyway, I felt completely duped by a white-coated Norwegian man, who, although he seemed friendly on first impressions, took my mum and me to what can only be described as a private lair, where he proceeded to poke and prod me, and pull my legs around in angles they really weren’t designed to be in. 

He then convinced my mum to leave me with him (he’s obviously a confidence trickster because she didn't bat an eyelid) and took me down a long corridor into his torture chamber, where he drugged me, stuck needles into me, and did indescribable things to me with clunky machines. 

God knows how long I was in that room but it must have been hours, or possibly days, because when he let me out, I found all the hard floors had been replaced with ridiculous waterbed-type flooring, which was a bugger to walk on, and they had filled the place with purple elephants. 

Mum must have bought this experience day from Wowcher Rejects or something because the whole day was utter shite, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy. 

AVOID THIS PLACE!”

Poor Eddie. I really felt for him, but the coaching message from this is everyone’s experience will be coloured by their own expectations. Somebody might tell you a restaurant is crap, while someone else will tell you it’s the best one ever! The explanation is rarely a simple one. Even the top restaurants won’t please everyone all the time, and the most mediocre diners can feel brilliant when you’re in a great mood and with great company. 

The next time you listen to someone else’s opinion about something or someone, especially if it’s a poor one, then remember their view is likely to differ from your own for many different reasons. 

Our Eddie dog is a poorly boy. 

He was referred to a specialist dog hospital, because he has a limp our local vet can’t find the cause of. He wasn’t allowed to eat past 10 pm the night before and wasn’t allowed any breakfast the morning of his appointment because they wanted him to arrive fasted, and I found it really hard to see him look at the cupboard his food was kept in with longing eyes. 

He didn’t know what was going on, bless him. 

The night before his appointment, a visitor dropped in unexpectedly at around the time I would usually have started preparing our evening meal. 

I asked him if he wanted to eat with us, and he declined. Rather than try to cook the meal I’d intended to, I made the decision to throw a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven for Kev and me after our visitor had gone.  (As much as I love the thought of cooking whilst chatting to guests in the kitchen, my ADHD symptoms tend to kick in, and I either burn the food or myself or wander around the kitchen looking lost because I don’t know who I am any more.) 

It was lovely relaxing into the evening and chatting with our visitor whilst Kev finished his calls for the day in his office, and I remembered that I had a couple of chicken breasts to cook for Eddie as a special pre-fast treat, because he is my Best Friend and The Best Dog in the World.

When Kev came into the kitchen after a long day of calls, he said, “OOH! Something smells good. Yum! Roast Chicken!”

“Ermmmmm…we’ve got pizza. The chicken is for Ed.”

“What? Balls!” Kev laughed. 

Our visitor was open-mouthed at this point in sympathy with Kev, and then peed himself laughing. 

Sometimes, you don’t know how weird your household is until someone else looks in on it!

It’s standard behaviour in our house for Eddie to come first, but we sometimes forget that not everyone thinks the same way. 

I mean, I’m not completely heartless, so I allowed Kev to cut off a corner of one of the chicken breasts as a special treat for himself (I don’t even make him give me a paw first!), but Ed really did rub salt into the wounds, because when I got Kev’s pizza out of the oven later, one of the very few slices of pepperoni slid off it and Ed immediately gobbled it up. 

I love our slightly bonkers household and I wouldn’t want to live with a person who would have been upset about the dog eating better than them. 

It’s inevitable that people will look in on your life and find parts of it weird, but that’s OK as long as it works for you.

Embrace your weirdness, and do what makes you happy! You don’t have to live like anyone else. 

I rarely listen to news broadcasts because they are heavily biased towards what’s wrong with the world rather than what’s right with it, but every so often, I’ll catch a news bulletin on the radio when I’m driving.

Recently, I had the grave misfortune of listening to Sir Kier Starmer warning us about how we were all going to suffer in October because the Conservatives had been Very Naughty Boys. 

He was like a headmaster standing up in a school assembly saying the spolit, bratty popular kids had ruined it for everyone again. He rammed the point home by making his address to the nation from the very same rose garden that Boris and his cronies held their debauched lock-down parties in during COVID, when we good children were diligently doing our homework. 

Now, I’m as political as I am religious i.e. not at all, and I don’t think Sir Kier is a good person or a bad one, but I did get a shudder of fear when he warned of hard times ahead.  

Luckily, I’ve been doing some work recently with clients about ‘thought disputation’, which is the mainstay of the Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy technique I’m training in. 

The technique takes you through a process of recognising thoughts that trigger you, and then choosing better thoughts, and this alters how you feel emotionally and physically. 

I’ll take you through the process using my own experience yesterday: 

Trigger Situation: Hearing Sir Kier Starmer telling the UK that there would be difficult times ahead for the nation as his government strives to get us out of the mess that the previous government allegedly put us in. 

Automatic Negative Thoughts: Shit! This could make business really tough! Plus living costs are likely to go up. ALSO, F.U. Kier for saying the ones with the ‘broadest shoulders’ will bear the brunt of the burden - I work with some incredibly hard working clients who put blood, sweat and tears into their businesses, employ people, and spend money that creates further jobs, but you’re going punish them for being wealthy. ALSO F.U. Conservatives for being slippery little twits who’ll do anything to get votes. I want to move to Mars. 

Subjective Unit of Distress: On a scale of 1-100 of how crap do I feel when I have this thought? (1 = Best Possible Feeing / 100 = Worst Possible Feeling) 25

Evidence in favour of my automatic negative thought: There has never been a government in history that has got it completely right for everyone. Times inevitably get tough and it’s quite likely that the measures the government will put in place will affect the types of people who are our clients. 

Evidence against my automatic negative thoughts: Throughout history, there are always people who continue to make money in tough economic situations, and there are always people who are able to lead happy and fulfilling lives regardless of of what’s happening in their bank accounts. Happiness is a choice, and it’s not dependent on a set of perfect circumstances. It’s good to be challenged because that is where personal growth occurs.  

Alternative Realistic Thoughts that are more helpful to me: My happiness is not dependent on my economic situation, and it is something I have complete control over. If  I focus on everything that is right with my life right now, rather than spending time worrying about what may or may not happen in the future, then my daily life experience will be positive. In that place of happiness, I am more likely to make good decisions about my business, rather than knee-jerk reactions based on fear (PLUS the added benefit of avoiding the heavy moving costs of relocating to Mars) PLUS maybe Sir Kier really will be able to sort the country out by being tough with us all. I’ve gone through tough times before and I don’t regret the growth and learning that has taken place. 

Subjective Unit of Distress (SUD) with revised thought: On a scale of 1-100 of how crap do I feel when I have this thought? (1 = Best Possible Feeing / 100 = Worst Possible Feeling) 5 

It’s almost magical how you can shift from feeling really triggered, annoyed or fearful to feeling as if you are in a good place just by disputing your negative thoughts and replacing them with better ones. 

Note how it’s not a case of denying negative thoughts and sweeping them under the carpet. 

I’m acknowledging the validity of the negative thoughts and recognising they aren’t completely unfounded, but I’m looking for a different perspective that helps me recognise that I do still have control over aspects of my life, and sometimes good things can come from bad situations. 

My SUD didn’t fall to zero because I’m not totally happy about the thought of Headmaster Starmer’s impending school detention, but I’m feeling much more empowered than I did when I first heard the news. 

Are there any thoughts you need to dispute today? 

Remember the 90s? Dial-up screeching, floppy disks clicking, and the ever-present worry that your computer was about to implode from trying to run too many programs at once? 

I can only imagine my grandchildren listening to me wide-eyed one day when I tell them how part of my weekly routine used to involve defragmentating and optimising my PC so that the bloody thing didn’t seize up and refuse to work. 

Luckily, IT development means we don’t have to do that any more for personal devices, but sometimes we forget our brains work very much like those old school computers in that they need a little help at times to remain efficient. 

Just like those clunky 90s computers, our minds have a limited amount of working memory to juggle all your thoughts at once. 

Trying to brainstorm ideas for a new product or service, interspersed with responding to someone’s “urgent” email, thinking about what to buy for lunch whilst simultaneously scrolling through social media is like opening a hundred browser tabs on a Windows 95 machine – things are bound to get slow, crashy, and you’ll probably feel the smoke starting to plume from your ears.

Here's the thing: multitasking is a myth. Our brains can't truly focus on multiple tasks simultaneously. Instead, we're rapidly switching between them, like a stressed-out waiter in a room full of grumpy clientele all demanding to speak to the manager.  This constant context-shifting is exhausting and leads to errors, missed details, and the overall feeling of disappearing up your own backside. 

So, how do we avoid becoming human Blue Screens of Death? (It still sends shudders through me when I think of the number of times I forgot to save my work and got Blue Screened!)  

Here's how you can defrag and optimise yourself: 

• Focus on One Thing at a Time: Pick a task, give it your full attention, and finish it before jumping to the next. Imagine your brain as a laser, not a bloody disco ball.
• Take Breaks: Just like a computer needs a reboot, our brains crave downtime. Step away, stretch, do something mindful like seeing how many red things you can spot out of your window, or simply take a walk. 
• Prioritise Sleep: A well-rested brain is a sharp brain. When you’re sleeping, your brain to consolidate memories and information, just like a computer defrags its hard drive.
• Feed Your Brain Right: Your brain thrives on nutritious foods. Ditch the junk and load up on fruits, vegetables, and brain-boosting oils.

A little mental maintenance goes a long way. So, don’t wait until you get the Blue Screen - close those unnecessary browser tabs (both literal and metaphorical), take a deep breath, and give your brain the care and attention it needs. 

Of course, if you want to go for a full service on your noodle, you can book a coaching programme with me, possibly even treating yourself to a glorious 1:1 coaching retreat to get an instant lift. 

email me if you’d like to know more.