Philosophy &
Mindset
‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ – Socrates
You live your whole life inside of your own head. Your philosophy dictates how you see the outside world and your place in it.
It makes sense, then, to make these a priority for improvement in your life.
Here you will find articles that will hopefully help you on your journey. Sign Up to get new posts straight to your Inbox.
Latest Posts
Spiritual and Personal Development Bondage
As liberating, worthwhile and extremely valuable the paths of spirituality, personal development and any other path of 'growth' are, they also come with their own fair share of self-imposed restrictions. A sort of spiritual bondage or personal development bondage,...
Watching Your Thoughts – A Subtle Trick That the Mind Plays
Having spent a large portion of the last couple of months with my attention turned inward rather than outward, I have started to discover some incredible but also scary things that go on in the unobserved mind. As all great philosophies and ancient traditions point...
Power of Belief – Your Most Intimate and Reality-Shaping Power
When you believe in something, you believe it into existence. It becomes your reality. Such is the power of belief. To make this idea more clear, I always find it useful to begin with some negative examples, as for whatever reason they seem to be what people relate to...
Philosophy &
Mindset
Archive
Spiritual and Personal Development Bondage
As liberating, worthwhile and extremely valuable the paths of spirituality, personal development and any other path of 'growth' are, they also come with their own fair share of self-imposed restrictions. A sort of spiritual bondage or personal development bondage,...
Watching Your Thoughts – A Subtle Trick That the Mind Plays
Having spent a large portion of the last couple of months with my attention turned inward rather than outward, I have started to discover some incredible but also scary things that go on in the unobserved mind. As all great philosophies and ancient traditions point...
Power of Belief – Your Most Intimate and Reality-Shaping Power
When you believe in something, you believe it into existence. It becomes your reality. Such is the power of belief. To make this idea more clear, I always find it useful to begin with some negative examples, as for whatever reason they seem to be what people relate to...
How To Create Your Own Joy – The Phone Call Experiment
The Phone Call Experiment is an awesome way of creating your own joy in your life and it was introduced to me by my good friend and mentor Michael Essery. It is one of the simplest methods I have come across on how to create your own joy. Since you are consuming this...
The Difference Between Your Life and Your Life Situation
A lot of the time when people talk about their life, they are actually referring to their life situation. Rarely does anybody talk about their actual life. Life itself happens in the Now. Your life has never existed outside of the present moment and never will exist...
The Elephant and The Peg – an Analogy About Your Mind
This article comes directly from one of my recent journal entries. It is about the mind, its tricks, what to do about it and how I am trying to break free and become unchained. The elephant and the peg is a useful analogy. I hope it helps you to deal with the...
Managing Expectations – Understand the Expectation Pendulum
You might have heard the saying that expectations always lead to disappointment. That may or may not be true, but expectations are definitely holding you back from living a life full of joy and bliss. One of the most effective ways of managing expectations that I have...
You Are Not Your Thoughts Or Your Feelings – You Are The Watcher
Michael Singer has an incredible life story. In a brief summary, Singer began has a 'fairly ordinary graduate student' before embarking on a pretty crazy life. After an event that we will cover in just a moment, he began studying psychology and taking extensive...
Freeing Yourself From Thoughts and Feelings; Consciousness and the Self
This post is an extract from Michael Singer's book: The Untethered Soul. It is very rare that I feature a post that consists entirely of someone else's work, but this book has literally changed my life in the space of the week. It has started to free me from intense...
How To Adapt To Big Changes In Your Life
The only constant in this life is change. It is one of the world's most famous quotes and for good reason. It might also be one of those quotes where you are like "yeah, yeah, got it, things change" but when change actually does hit, you sometimes feel less prepared...
You Control How You Respond To Coronavirus
The most important practice in Stoic philosophy is being able to differentiate between what we can control and what we can't control. What we have influence over and what we do not. In his book Meditations, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius makes us realise just how...
Your Demands For Yourself Are Far Too High
While there is a certain time and place for pushing hard on goals, being as productive as you can be and 'raising your game' in any given area, there is also a time for reflection and possibly uncovering that your demands for yourself are far too high. This is one of...
How Worrying Tricks You Into Thinking That It’s Helping
There is a cool interactive game designed by Nicky Case called 'Adventures With Anxiety'. In the game, you have a human and you have an excitable red dog. The human represents you, the excitable red dog represents your anxiety. In the game, you get to play as your...
How to Get Out of Your Head in 5 Effective Steps
“It’s not a matter of letting go, you would if you could. Instead of ‘Let it go,’ we should probably say ‘Let it be.'” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn Overthinking and living in your own head can be one of the most frustrating, painful, maddening and downright depressing parts...
Doing Your Work Is Enough – Lessons From Stoicism
Belisarius was a military general in ancient Rome and is probably one of the most famous generals of that time that you've never heard of. He won brilliant victories in Naples, Sicily and Constantinople to name just a few and managed to save the Roman Empire on more...
What To Do When You Hit a Brick Wall in Life
Life is full obstacles. Big and small. Permanent and temporary. Serious and trivial. If you live any sort of a long and decent lifetime, you are going to experience plenty of all of these. A simple search online will reveal some of the toughest challenges that people...
Familiar Joys Are The Best Kinds Of Joy
I'm quite a big fan of travel and seeing the world. I'm extremely lucky that some of my most memorable experiences have come from reasonably expensive journeys to many different parts of the world. Discovering new cultures, gaining new experiences and ultimately,...
You Don’t Need To Finish What You Start
I was thinking about finishing this blog post somewhere around halfway through - maybe mid-sentence - for comedic and dramatic effect. The message would be that you don't need to finish everything that you start, even if it is informing people about that message....
What Is Real vs What Is True
The question of what is real vs what is true may seem like a strange one to ask - they're both the same thing, right? In the English language, we use these words interchangeably for convenience and usually, there isn't much of an issue with that. However, there is a...
Memento Mori and the Legacy of Kobe Bryant
Last night, a big portion of the world was shaken by the tragic loss of one of it's biggest sporting icons and all-round great man, Kobe Bryant. The even more heart-breaking news was that his 13-year old daughter, Gianna "Gigi" Bryant, was also taken from the world in...
The Secret of Disciplined People: They Rarely Need to Use Willpower
In 1971 as the Vietnam War was entering its sixteenth year, it was discovered that over 15 per cent of U.S. soldiers stationed there had become heroin addicts. Shortly after, it was discovered that around 35 per cent of troops had tried the Class A drug. When the...
The Best Moments Can’t Be Captured
A couple of weeks ago, I went out for a walk to get some fresh air. It was a cold, misty evening with dusk starting to set in and the winter sun disappearing quickly. There is this field near my house just across the train tracks. Normally, it is completely empty...
How to Fulfil Your Potential – The Stories of the Eagle and the Lion
One of the biggest human tragedies to both watch and experience is the unfulfillment of potential. Someone who was seemingly destined for greatness but managed to throw their life away. On the flip side, it is incredible and uplifting to watch someone who seemingly...
Why Do I Need to Worry About Something All of the Time?
Before diving into the topic of worry and why it can be so prominent - often too prominent - in our lives, it is important to realise that worry is a perfectly natural and normal human emotion. Everybody worries about things, whether they show you or not. If you're...
How Reading The Daily Stoic Every Day Is Changing My Life
The Daily Stoic is a book written by Ryan Holiday that includes 366 meditations for each day of the year on wisdom, perseverance and as Ryan calls it, 'The Art of Living'. In that sense, it isn't an ordinary book that you would read chapter by chapter. Instead, it...
Empty Your Cup Story: What It Teaches Us About Life
The Empty Your Cup story is a famous one that is retold in Zen circles time and time again. It was also one of the iconic Bruce Lee's favourite stories, so it's definitely worth knowing about. A learned man once went to visit a Zen teacher to inquire about Zen. As the...
The Secret to Happiness: Don’t Add to Your Life, Take Things Away
When people discuss the secret to happiness, the conversations tend to become complicated. Maybe your friend believes that making more money or a certain amount of money is the only way to happiness and so pursues a career where there are plenty of opportunities to...
Fake Positivity Is Way More Deadly Than Real Negativity
It has probably been drilled into you a million times by now but I am going to say it again anyway for those at the back: Instagram isn't real life. With the rise of the recent 'self-help' culture, there has been a massive emphasis on focusing on the positive,...
Compassion For Others: From Cashiers to Serial Killers
Much of the self-development world focuses on just that: the self. We often seek self-help tips for building self-confidence, self-awareness and self-compassion. These, of course, are all key cornerstones of living a life of equanimity but they certainly aren't enough...
I Am an Imposter, and So Are You
"No matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think, 'How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me?'” - Tom Hanks Imposter syndrome has run rampant over the last few decades or so and...
How To Navigate Your Internal Narrative
'Homunculus' is a term that translates as 'little man'. Not in the sense of someone who is vertically challenged, but in reference to the little man (or woman) who lives inside your head. More accurately, the person who appears to live inside your head and constructs...
Where Is The Fine Line Between Realism and Self-Deception?
This is a question that I have wanted to tackle for some time. Realism and self-deception are two sides of a coin that often blend into one another. Not only is it a juicy topic with so many components, but it is also something that we humans beings toil with day in,...
Give Yourself Permission To Be Happy
Recently I managed to emerge from a very strange rut. Will I slip back into it again? Almost definitely. However, let me give you a bit of background on the rut and how I managed to pull myself out of it, almost instantaneously. It eventually came down to an idea...
Stop Comparing Yourself to Others, You Silly Human
Cover image by MoralStories Comparing yourself to others is a killer and a trap that everyone falls into all of the time. One of my favourite stories about comparison is that of the crow. It goes a little something like this: The crow was a happy crow....
Why Does Discipline Equal Freedom?
Jocko Willink, the retired Navy Seal who is now a podcaster and best-selling author is famous for coining the phrase Discipline Equals Freedom and it is even one of the titles of his many books alongside others like Extreme Ownership. Despite making acquaintance with...
What came first, the Motivation or the Action?
Anyone who has tried to change some behaviour in their life has most likely asked the question: how can I motivate myself to do this? Whether it be getting your butt to the gym, starting to eat more healthily, or simply getting a task ticked off your to-do list that...
What Exactly Is Mindfulness?
It's perhaps the biggest buzzword of the 21st century after Bitcoin. While Bitcoin is yet to prove its worth to the world despite its hype, mindfulness is already slowly but surely changing the lives of millions, including my own. So begs the question: what exactly is...
Amor Fati: Love Your Fate
Despite being adjudged clinically insane before his death, which usually doesn't do much good for your life's work, Friedrich Nietzsche is still considered one of the most impactful people on modern Western Philosophy. Aside from his famous quote of 'God is dead'...
The Social Self
We continuously experience varying states of self, and how we feel as selves seems to vary remarkably on the context. When we are interacting with others, we bring forth something known as 'The Social Self'. During one period of university, I experienced this...
Did you really think that you would ever run out of problems?
It's a bit of a silly question, isn't it? When it is staring you right in the face. That you would ever run out of problems. Maybe somewhere deep down you did expect to one day have no more problems. The dream of relaxing on a yacht, retiring on a yacht, drifting...
How Expectations and Stories Are Ruling Your Life (and What to Do About It)
Expectations tend to be a key part of the human experience and it is easy to forget that they are just stories that we tell ourselves in our heads. There's likely been a time in your life when some experience has fallen short of your expectations, which...
The Case For Putting On ‘Wait’
No, not putting on weight. Putting on wait. Waiting is a tough old game. Nowadays, it might even be considered a skill. If I have a question or there is a song that I can't remember the name for, Google has an answer for me within seconds. No waiting required. If I...
How To Make Better Decisions: The Sunk Cost Fallacy Trap
If you think that you make smart, rational decisions most of the time, then you would be making a smart decision by thinking again. Although as humans we tend to have a bias for believing that we are strong-willed creatures that aren't influenced by strong outside...
7 of the Best Ways to Avoid Being Overwhelmed at Work and in Life
Overwhelm is certainly a common symptom of the stresses of modern day life. Whether you work in an office, are in charge of your own hours or are just feeling the full weight of life resting on your shoulders, it is easy to feel like there is too much to do in too...
5 More Go-To Podcasts For Upgrading Your Life – April 2019
Affiliate Disclosure You may remember back in September 2018 when I published 'My 5 Go-To Podcasts Right Now'. That list is a great list for anyone looking to improve any and every facet of their life: from mental to physical to spiritual health. About 7 months on, I...
One Day You Are Going To Die
One day you are going to die. Time is the undefeated master. It is an ever-flowing river where if you try to put your foot down and stop the current, it will only move around you even faster. It is quite an uncommon thing to talk about death. This is perhaps...
Is unconditional love for yourself and others possible?
Achieving some form of unconditional love for yourself and others is certainly a difficult task but one that I think can be achieved, like many other things, through practice and experience. The battle between conditional and unconditional love is something that I...
How to overcome analysis paralysis
Have you ever really needed to get started on something but there is something holding you back? You need to analyse every option first, do a SWOT analysis (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for something as simple as choosing a colour for your new...
Slow down, you’re moving too fast
Hello and welcome to another episode of me messing something up and trying to do it better. The ironic thing about getting things wrong is often the fact that the whole time that you are doing it, you believe it to be right. In about the space of a week, I received...
The Hindsight Window – Become Emotionally Impenetrable
This week I was sent a video from my dad that was a speech given by the famous entrepreneur Eric Edmeades titled 'Master Your State of Being'. Did this video contain a potentially life-changing concept? Yes. Do I have one of the coolest dads ever? Yes. Within the...
Things you can (and can’t) control in life
This has been a bit of a burning concept in my brain recently, especially after I've committed myself to read at least one passage from Stoic philosophy every day. Although it's only been 13 days into the New Year, I have already seen one topic crop up more than a few...
How to keep your New Year’s resolutions
It's that time of year again. You're sick of turkey sandwiches, the festivities have died down, hopefully you've made some good memories with those you care about most and it's time to look forward to the New Year. And a New Year means new resolutions, new goals, new...
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
The stories we tell ourselves may seem like a fairly harmless and insignificant part of our lives but they are actually the underlying mechanism running the whole show. We all see things through our own unique lens based on our experiences, our genetics and a...
The 1 Day Extreme Gratitude Challenge
So we've seen many 'challenges' over the internet doing the rounds in the last few years or so. There has been the likes of the Ice Bucket Challenge, The Harlem Shake and The Cinnamon Challenge. All very good fun, except from maybe the last one. And you have to...
Self-worth, Output and Identity – Mistakes I’ve made
The other week saw me once again get my butt-kicked in one part of life but which thankfully, led to a moment of realisation and helped to shine some light on another piece of shadow. Uncovering, acknowledging and growing various parts of myself has been a common...
The problem with the ‘good vibes only’ movement
You will no doubt have seen it all over Instagram, Twitter or even on a t-shirt of a passer-by in the street. It is especially prominent on Pinterest. The term 'Good Vibes Only'. Either that or some other variation of positive thinking or positive energy or however...
The Game of Life – A Poem
This week's post is a little different. I wanted to share with you this poem that features on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast. Below you can see the video of it being read out and I have provided a transcript below that for your convenience. The poem is about the nature of...
Negotiating with yourself – Are you really being fair?
Affiliate Disclosure I like to think of negotiating with yourself as a messy art form. It is very difficult to do, takes an indefinite amount of time to perfect (if ever) but has an absolutely beautiful outcome. Ever get mad at yourself for not doing more when you...
My 5 Go-To Podcasts Right Now – September 2018
To tell you the truth, I think that my podcast list is pretty fire right now. For me, it's got the perfect mix of topics that I'm interested in. Go-to podcasts for when I need some specific guidance on anything physical, mental or spiritual. Stuff for general interest...
The Power of the Present Moment
Recently, I have been putting a lot of emphasis on acknowledging and living in the present moment. The power of the present is real. The present moment is where everything that has ever happened, happened. Where everything is happening now. Where everything that ever...
Do we really have multiple personalities?
This may seem like a very strange question to propose. You may be on one end of the spectrum where you're like of course not. I'm me, I've got one body, one brain so how could I have different personalities? It's simple maths: 1 personality = 1 person. You say he or...
Hedonic Adaptation: How to be Rich
The cool thing about humans is that we adapt to stuff really quick. The annoying thing about humans is that we adapt to stuff really quick. It's an evolutionary trait that has kept us going for thousands of years but it can be a bit problematic. This is what hedonic...
Extreme Ownership: The Life Changing Mindset
Affiliate Disclosure If you haven't heard of Jocko Willink before, he is a bad-ass retired Navy Seal Commander who fought in the Iraq war. Now he is the host of a podcast, has the best soundtrack on Spotify when you just need a good kick-up-the-butt to get off your...
A Ripple In Time: Why You Matter
My dad recently told me a story I want to share with you. He was in his mid-twenties and was on his way back from a football match. He was on his own street, walking past the local pub when a group of four lads starting shouting abuse at him, looking for trouble. He...
Page 500 – Why today is the most exciting, and pivotal, time ever
Header image via: IslamSciFi Let's talk about humans. As an evolutionary species, we haven't changed much. For about 90% of our past, we just sort of bumbled along, playing with sticks and just generally being a very average species. It is only literally in the...
The Why Game – Why The 4 Year Olds Were Right
4 Year Olds may not be right about many things. For example, hitting your siblings, throwing a tantrum when things aren't going your way or picking your nose and eating it aren't things that are generally considered as 'right'. Not only is there little nutritional...