🤔 Think Again

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  • CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY TO EVERYTHING…

    20th July 2026

    Today, I want to talk about how just showing up every day—day after day—will always be talent. Consistency is usually the key to everything in life. Consistency eliminates excuses and builds up real trust in yourself. 

    Over the years, I’ve slowly discovered that it’s the small, ordinary actions performed every day, or week, that create extraordinary outcomes. If you just show up daily or weekly, your momentum builds on its own. That sense of reliability matters infinitely more to you than having somebody else’s approval. 

    Real and lasting transformation isn’t achieved loudly and once in a flashy way, but rather quietly through persistent effort that compounds over time. When you know that you will honour your commitments to yourself, you unconsciously become someone that you can truly believe in. 

    When you skip showing up, your motivation evaporates, and your progress stops. However, if you’re consistent, it will gradually transform any humble effort into remarkable results in the long run. Consistency is the only bridge between dreaming of something and actually creating it.

    Here are some examples: 

    – if you regularly train three times a week, even for short periods, you’ll find that in around six months you’ll become much stronger, fitter, healthier, and genuinely come to enjoy it. That’s what consistency builds.

    – If you practice one skill for just 15 minutes daily, a year later, you will have devoted over 91 hours to mastering it. Your real expertise then emerges quietly.

    – If you save just £10 weekly, by the end of the year you will have saved £520 without feeling it. Wealth always grows when you show up faithfully like this.

    However, it’s also true that rigid routines can sometimes stifle growth and overlook what actually needs to change. Life isn’t predictable, and sometimes flexibility matters more than stubborn repetition. Blind consistency also risks missing crucial moments. 

    So today, show up for yourself consistently in small, quiet ways. Real change happens there, not in grand gestures, just through daily repetition. Remember, consistency is the key to everything!

  • WE SO OFTEN MISTAKE QUANTITY FOR QUALITY…

    13th July 2026

    Today I want to talk to you about why we so often mistake quantity for quality. It’s a tempting way to measure progress, but it’s a really bad bargain, and the cost tends to show up quietly, in work that never quite does what it was supposed to do.

    Have you ever noticed how we seem to have built a world that counts things? Hours worked, tasks finished, content published, etc? The unspoken assumption behind all of this is that whoever produces the most must be doing the best work. 

    There’s something genuinely satisfying about a long to-do list with things crossed off it. But crossing things off and doing them well are not the same achievement. That difference is usually invisible; right up until the moment it suddenly isn’t! What changes things isn’t doing less; it’s doing things with more care instead.

    The second look before you finish something and send it. The hour spent on the one thing that matters, rather than doing the 10 other things that just need doing. That’s not perfectionism; that’s the difference between doing work that holds up and doing work that quietly and quickly disappoints you and others.

    Here are some examples:

    – Someone who reads only 20 pages of a book with real focus will retain far more than one who skims 100 pages for the sake of it. Understanding and coverage are not the same thing.

    – A small business owner who delivers 10 genuinely good customer experiences will earn more referrals than one who processes 50 transactions without much thought. People remember the ones who paid attention.

    – A writer who produces one considered article a week will earn a more loyal readership than one who publishes daily content that never quite says anything. Readers return for substance, not frequency.

    Paradoxically, there is actually a fair argument for volume, as producing a lot is how you build a skill. Not everything here needs to be a masterpiece, and sometimes, done really is better than endlessly revised. The problem isn’t quantity itself; it’s when quantity becomes a habit that we stop questioning.

    So, today, remember that the goal was never to do more, it was always just to do better, and to do it in a way you can stand behind, so that you can consciously realise whenever possible that we so often mistake quantity for quality!

  • WE ARE SO SUGGESTIBLE…

    6th July 2026

    Today, I want to talk to you about why you’re more suggestible than you think, and how you can use this to your advantage if you do it right. That’s because your brain can’t actually tell the difference between someone else’s external voice and your own internal voice. 

    You know how someone criticises you once, and it sticks in your head for years? Or how a passing comment from someone at the beginning of the day can ruin your whole day? That’s suggestibility at work. All you’re doing here is believing something positive about yourself.  

    This means that whatever you say to yourself has exactly the same power as what someone else says. This isn’t just positive thinking; you’re already proving how suggestible you are every time you believe something negative about yourself. 

    The only question is then whether you keep letting random people programme your brain, or whether you’re going to start doing it deliberately yourself. If you’re going to be suggestible anyway, you might as well be suggestible to positive things you say, not negative and harmful things that others say. 

    Here are some examples:

    – Athletes use this technique all the time, without necessarily realising it. They say things like, “I’m stronger than I think”, or “I’ve got this” during a difficult stretch. This makes it feel easier for them because their minds accept it and their bodies respond accordingly.

    – Morning self-talk changes how your day goes. Tell yourself you can handle whatever comes up that day whilst having breakfast, and you’ll notice you approach problems differently that day; not because you’re magical, but because you’ve given your brain an instruction and it’s following it.

    – When panic or anxiety starts building up, telling yourself you’re calming down actually works. This is because your suggestible brain treats it as information rather than just wishful thinking. This thinking then starts shifting your nervous system to match what you’ve said.

    But you can’t just tell yourself you have abilities you haven’t developed or circumstances that don’t exist. Telling yourself you’re fluent in another language won’t help if you’ve never learned it. Self-suggestion only works with psychology and behaviour, not with objective reality, or skills that require actual practice.

    So, today, remember to use your own suggestibility on purpose. Deliberately say to yourself what you need to hear. Plant seeds in your mind that actually help you, and let your mind believe what it’s told. You are susceptible to things other people say, so start saying things to yourself, and you will believe them!

  • WHAT YOU LEARN FROM THE SHIP OF THESEUS…

    29th June 2026

    Today, I want to talk to you about how the Ship of Theseus thought experiment may be the most useful question you have never properly sat with. (Theseus was the hero in Greek mythology, famous for slaying the Minotaur). 

    The Ship of Theseus story is about a legendary ship preserved in Athens, whose planks were replaced one by one as they decayed. Eventually, nothing original remained, raising one of philosophy’s greatest unanswered questions: is it still the same ship?

    Most people pause at that. The pause is where the thinking starts. It’s not really about ships at all. It’s asking what holds anything together across time. Is it the material, the memory, the meaning, or simply the story we keep telling ourselves? That question has no clean answer, and that is the point.

    Here are some examples:

    – Your body replaces most of its cells roughly every seven to ten years, yet no one seriously disputes that you are still you. Identity is not a matter of matter alone.

    – A childhood home rebuilt after a fire, brick by brick, is still called their home by everyone who grew up there. Memory makes it real in a way that materials never can.

    – A long marriage holds two people who have each changed almost beyond recognition from the day they first met. What persists is not the people they were, but what they’ve quietly built together.

    Yet some things do become entirely different; insisting otherwise can blind you to what something is now. Someone once said, “A person never crosses the same river twice, because the river is never the same and the person is never the same”, yet we do return and feel we’re visiting the same place. 

    So, today, try to ask yourself, what is truly holding together the things and people you care about. Once you start looking, you find this question everywhere, so we can really learn from the Ship of Theseus thought experiment!

  • THE MORE YOU CHASE A FORGOTTEN THOUGHT, THE MORE IT RUNS AWAY FROM YOU…

    22nd June 2026

    Today, I want to talk to you about why the more you chase a forgotten thought, the more it runs away from you. I’ve noticed this happens to me constantly, and I’m guessing it happens to you, too.

    The moment you start chasing a thought that you have or want to remember, you’ve already lost and you have forgotten it. That tight, desperate grip we place on our memory sometimes only pushes it further away. The harder we squeeze, the more it escapes. It’s really frustrating and irritating, isn’t it?

    This is because your mind usually works better when you’re not interrogating it. It’s almost as though focusing conscious attention on a blank space makes it deeper, whereas you’ve got to stop looking to actually find it.

    There’s something almost spiritual about letting go. It’s not laziness, it’s just knowing when to step back and realising that the best way through sometimes isn’t always pushing straight ahead.

    Here are some examples:

    1. You’re mid-sentence talking to someone new and, even though they just told you it, their name just vanishes. You search and search your brain, feeling foolish. Then you’re buttering toast later, and suddenly there it is.
    2. That song you always loved plays constantly in your head, but try as you might, for the life of you, you just can’t remember its title. You hum it obsessively for days, getting nowhere. Then one morning, it just appears in your mind without warning.
    3. Your keys. You’ve lost them again! You ransack the house frantically, growing more panicked. You stop, breathe, and give up the search, then spot them on the windowsill immediately.

    Some will always argue that you need discipline and deliberate practice to strengthen memory. They’re not entirely wrong: focused study does help sometimes. But there’s a real difference between learning something new and recovering something already known.

    So, today, try to notice when you’re gripping too tightly at a thought. Loosen your hold, breathe, and let it breathe and remember that the more you chase a forgotten thought, the more it runs away from you!

about

USE POSITIVE SELF-TALK…

​6th December 2021

Last week I talked about avoiding negative self-talk, but this week I want to talk about how you need to instead use positive self-talk!

You often just need to consciously verbalise in your mind what you want to happen in a positive way. You are simply replacing negative self-talk with more positive self-talk. Some people also say that it is about improving ratios and that you should have three times as many positive than negative thoughts, but I think that just having more positive and less negative thoughts is better. 

But you can’t jump straight from negative to positive thinking in one foul swoop. Long-lasting change only comes through little changes over time, not trying to do everything at once. You have to accept this and realise that you always need to do things little by little. Although you may try to be more positive than negative, you won’t immediately become positive in everything that you think.

Like most things in life, it is usually a case of two steps forward and one step back – not one step forward and two steps back, otherwise you will be going the wrong way! All these small changes a bit at a time though will lead to big changes eventually, probably without you even realising. There is also a difference between our conscious mind and our unconscious mind.

Our brain is also very suggestible. If you think about it, if we fill our brain (or allow it to be filled) with negative thoughts, rather than positive thoughts, than this is the way that we will think of things. But then, if you also think about it, if we fill our brain with positive thoughts, rather than negative thoughts, that is also the way that we will then think of things.

It is therefore important to not let your mind be continually hijacked by negative thoughts, or controlled by others, such as what we read or hear everyday on news or social media. If you really believe that it’s too hard to do this, then try to lessen or stop your exposure to it. It is not as difficult as it seems to deliberately ignore news or social media – just remember, you have a choice!  

Also, remember, as I said before, a lot of the negative thoughts that we have are based on our own unconscious fears. So, being aware and having insight into yourself are also great weapons to use against negative self-talk.  However, you have to catch yourself in the moment and recognise when you are sounding negative, or being exposed to negative things. 

You can’t just force yourself to think positively by saying positive things to yourself, as they do not really mean anything sometimes. There is also a danger that you can sometimes see these things as a bit delusional or untrustworthy. In the same respect though, just as you should not tell lies or deceive others, you should also not tell lies or deceive yourself!

Sometimes, you get turned off by a positive voice in your head feeling like it is coming from a self-help book, or it sounds a bit corny, like a motivational speaker, so you mistrust it. You must therefore find something evidentially true and put a positive spin on it that you can believe. If you record it in some way, you can also look back on it later to see how positive self-talk actually works.

The brain is also, as some people say, the rebellious organ in the body, so it often does the opposite of what we want it to. We therefore usually also need to see continual evidence that positive thinking is working for us. It is a bit circular I am afraid, as only the more we do this, the more we achieve and only can we then evidence to ourselves that positive thinking works for us. 

It is also about attitude and seeing things more positively. You don’t just need to turn down the volume on your negative voice, but you also have to turn up the volume on your positive voice. However, we often have soundtracks in our minds from earlier in life and tend to hold onto negative things that people have said to us, especially when we were young and impressionable.

So, this week, try to use positive self-talk as much as possible – you will hopefully find that the more you do it, the more positive things will become for you!

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