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All of us have encountered challenging times in our lives, when we feel vulnerable to the strains of daily living. Some of these strains show themselves as a result of big events that happen to us or people we care about, or are merely geographically close to.  Some of the strain is the cumulative impact of lots of little events that add up and threaten to push you over your tipping point of coping capacity. Both types of negative events - big and small - can have an effect on our wellbeing. If you cross this with various cycles in our lives which mean that we are more vulnerable to the impacts of these big and small negative events, it becomes clear that it is really important that we keep an eye out for how well we can withstand these challenges when they arrive.  An example: for many of us, mid-January can be a testing time. This is about when those new activities designed to sort our lives out made in those New Year's resolutions are perhaps beginning to be very difficult to maintain. As a result, we can feel guilty, throw the towel in, and revert to old behaviours that we recognised we needed to change. What do we do when we feel under pressure like this? There are many strategies that have been put forward to help build our personal resilience and wellbeing. Here is a set of 5 practices that differ slightly from the 5 Ways to Wellbeing that you might be familiar with, designed to help you to focus on basic self-maintenance, and some reflection on what you want your life to be about.

Positive deviants are people who appear to be finding better solutions to complex and pervasive problems compared to their peers and neighbours despite having access only to the same resources. Their 'uncommon behaviours' can then be spread and adopted more widely by the community. And they are uncommon behaviours. Positive deviance is about behaviours that break the constraints of the accepted norm and has profound effects of those people and organisations that foster and encourage those behaviours.

The good news is that there is a lot of evidence that optimism isn't fixed. It isn't a commodity that you either have or you don't. Optimism can be learned.

You have probably had the delightful experience of being stuck in a jam of slow-moving cars that suddenly disappears without revealing any obvious cause for the jam. No crashed cars, no roadworks - what was that about?

There is nothing wrong with having dreams and goals. But often, we don't take the time to stop and consider whether this self-critical and competitive attitude actually helps us towards reaching these goals or realising our dreams, or actually might be getting in our way.

Being present in your everyday actions seems to be a key ingredient for good mental and physical well-being. The more you practice the practices described in this short podcast episode, the better you will get. These exercises will help you to centre yourself and engage with your environment. Practice them throughout the day, especially at times when you find yourself caught up with your thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes when we come to a situation of thinking that we know all there is to know, then we may already risking missing some vital elements of what might make this situation different. Although you might be an expert in a technical field or as a manager, when you aim to communicate or create change in a complex environment it is in your interests to adopt a 'beginner mind' and open up to additional possibilities.

Our minds do not have all the answers. The interesting thing for athletes and others is that there are ways of knowing about the world and ourselves that operate beyond the mind. Sometimes what your mind knows might not be enough, and what it does know might even get in the way of what you want to do.

When we find ourselves doing the same thing over and over again in our lives, it can be hard to figure out why. Listen to this podcast for some clues.

Suppose you had a choice: Option 1: you never had to experience a painful feeling ever again. That's never. BUT, it means that you lose all capacity to love and care. You care about nothing and no-one. Nothing will matter any more. No one matters. Life becomes meaningless because you don't care about anything whatsoever. Option 2: You get to love and care. People matter to you. Life matters to you. You care about what you do, and what happens. You care about friends and family. You get to build loving relationships. Life becomes meaningful. And where there is a gap between what you want and what you've actually got, painful feelings show up. Which option do you choose?

What's wrong with being a perfectionist? You get good stuff done, working hard all the way, right? Maybe some of the time. Always hard-working - possibly - but not always getting stuff done. Sometimes, getting stuff done can be compromised by being so driven. Perfectionists start by setting very high standards. You want to be brilliant and the only way to do this is by expecting the best of yourself. But in the perfectionists' case, 'the best' becomes perfection. That automatically becomes a problem. Perfection isn't a high standard. It's an impossible one.

You can't control what you feel. Not completely. So, if this is true then ask yourself, why are you continuing the struggle?

Despite how successful we are in dealing with problems outside our skin, we humans tend to run into difficulties from the way we deal with problems inside our skins. Often, we try to apply the control rule that works so well in the real world, outside our skins, to the virtual world inside our skin. We try to change, remove, or avoid the thoughts, feelings and memories that we don't like. But this doesn't really work inside our skins. It's not easy to just stop thinking about something we don't want to think about. In fact, don't you find that trying not to think about something just makes you think about it even more? The problem is that when we try to control thoughts and feelings, we embark on a no-win struggle with whole chunks of our own experience. And this internal struggle costs us. Ironically, the stuff we struggle with is likely to become more, not less, important. And the struggle will continually draw us away from the present moment, from the here and now. The struggle may also involve us avoiding situations or people, and can reduce our ability to meet our goals in life. Because of these costs, in the world inside our skin, our efforts to control it becomes the problem, not the solution. Don't take my word for it though - have a listen and a think about whether this applies to you.

The metaphor of observing like a curious scientist helps to foster openness and curiosity towards our own feelings - approach instead of avoidance. The simple act of observing or noticing a feeling with curiosity rather than being caught up in it often leads to acceptance - and if not, at least it is a step in the right direction. Here's a guide to how to take that step in the right direction.

Sometimes, especially when we are trying to dismiss thoughts from our minds, it can feel like we aren't on the same team. The more you try not to think about it, the more it is there. Even if you get practice suppressing the unwanted thought, that doesn't seem to work in the long-term either. Trying to push it to the back of your mind just - does - not - work. Thought suppression has behavioural impacts too. In one experiment, people asked not to think about chocolate ended up eating more chocolate when given the opportunity than those who weren't given the instruction to suppress the thought. One theory to explain this is that we try to distract ourselves by intentionally thinking about something else. Secondly - and here comes the ironic bit -  out minds start an unconscious monitoring process to check if we are still thinking about the thing we are not supposed to be thinking about - you know, to check if our conscious process is working or not.  The problem comes when we consciously stop trying to distract ourselves and the unconscious process carries on looking out for the thing we are trying to suppress. Anything it sees that looks remotely like the target triggers the thought again and round we go in yet another loop of thinking the same thought we were desperately trying to forget about. So, the irony of thought suppression, then, is that actively trying to manage our own minds can sometimes do more harm than good. 

We don't really use our rational brain that much at all. Instead, we rely on our emotional brains for most decisions  When we weigh up between multiple choices, we don't carefully weigh up the options and then come to a conclusions, no matter how appealing that sounds as an explanation. Instead, we tend to use mental shortcuts - many of which are inaccurate and can mislead us.

Erich Fromm is very good at explaining this in 'To Have or To Be', but I hope this simple example can bring these concepts to life, and perhaps provide a nudge towards some reflection.

Here’s the values list that I mention in the podcast - use it to help you complete the task I talk about:VALUES LIST (not by any means exhaustive, but just to get you started)AchievementAdventureBeautyBeing the bestChallengeComfortCourageCreativityCuriosityEducationEmpowermentEnvironmentFamilyFinancial freedomFitnessFriendshipGiving I serviceHealthHonestyIndependenceInner peaceIntegrityIntelligenceIntimacyJoyLeadershipLearningLoveMotivationPassionPerformancePersonal growthPlayProductivityPrimaryRelationshipReliabilityRespectSecuritySpiritualitySuccessTime freedomVariety

You can read more at www.sarbjohal.comDon’t gorget to subscribe for future episodes and rate and review the podcast too - it really helps me. Thank you!

In this first episode, I ask if we being directed to become humans that look and seem happy rather than actually experiencing happiness. Listen to my thoughts on this and tune in for further episodes - don’t forget to hit that subscribe button if you enjoyed this - thanks!

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