Browsing CategoryMindsets

Will you know when you reach enough?

Jim Carrey recently announced his retirement from acting. At the same time he released a short film about his  love of painting called I Needed Colour  in which he speaks about the importance of art in his life.  (See the firm embedded below.) In an interview about his decision to step back from the film world he said: “I really like my quiet life, and I really…

Read More

How to cope with the feeling of languishing

Languishing is the topic of the moment. Psychologist Adam Grant wrote an article about it for the New York Times back in May 2021 and since then his ideas have gone viral with any number of publications recycling his comments. It hit a nerve because the term ‘languishing’ explains perfectly the ‘meh’ feeling that so many people around the world have as the pandemic lingers….

Read More

How easy should excellent work be? (Clue: Easier than you think.)

Mr Carson* was my second-year chemistry teacher. My sister remembers him for his dandruff ridden comb-over and predilection for taking the eighteen year old male sixth formers to the Abbey pub at lunchtimes. I remember him as the man who unfairly ruined my Effort Card. Every term we were sent home from school with a two-columned card on which every teacher had given us two…

Read More

Are you there yet? How to get the benefits of a holiday from your home.

HOLIDAY [ Hol-li-day]  any day of exemption from work EXEMPT [ig–zempt] to free from an obligation or liability to which others are subject; release: – Dictionary.com I live just at the edge of my town, my road running off a lane that starts with a school and church and peters out to fields with horses and rabbits. Every now and again my Mum will be in the car…

Read More

The real gift of 2020

My coach took me through an exercise last month in which he asked me to write down a memory for every year of my life. The first interesting observation that cropped up was that the supposedly best years of my career, the nineties ,ended up blank. These were my years at the Bar and conference speaking, the ones which set me up for the judiciary…

Read More