Earlier this year I used Google Analytics to identify the most read pages on this website and I wrote the post "Update on website traffic: the ten most popular blog posts". I then wondered - "What are my own personal favourites?" and I quickly realised that the posts that I've written that have had the most impact on me and my practice as a therapist are nearly always made up of sequences of blog posts rather than just individual items. I said that glancing back over the last year or so, themes that stood out included mindfulness, therapist feedback, self-control, conflict, embodied cognition and positive psychology. Going further back still there are the posts about interpersonal groupwork, relationships, therapeutic writing, walking in nature, compassion, exercise, healthy lifestyle, attachment and goal setting.

"The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices."      Irvin Yalom

"I expect to pass through life but once.  If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being,
let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again."        William Penn

In about a month's time I'm scheduled to go back to my old university for a reunion.  I've never been back for any kind of reunion before ... not to school, not to university, not to medical college.  Why not ... and why am I going back now?

In June I wrote a series of five posts reporting on a pre-conference workshop (about treating chronic fatigue) and the first day of the British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) main annual conference, held this year in Leeds.  Then last month I wrote a further couple of posts.  Now here is the eighth and final report in the sequence:

The last day of the BABCP main annual conference in Leeds was the usual mix of presentations & conversations.  I had breakfast with a couple of delightful researchers earnestly discussing the technicalities of a proposed new questionnaire about genital dissatisfaction.  Mm ... not a very appetising topic over the tea & toast. 

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work"   Thomas Edison

In yesterday's post - "Power objects, power postures, power clothes, power prayers: all ways to facilitate change (1st post)" - I introduced recent research highlighting how we can use physical objects and the way we position our bodies to significantly improve our chances of following through on new ways of thinking, feeling & behaving.  In today's post I extend this discussion of ways to help ourselves change to what we wear and what we say to ourselves.

"I will love you like a wind,
like a man stitching a skin
together like a winter coat.

Like a man sitting in meditation
and repairing a cracking spirit.
Like a man in love with a leaf,
a cloud, a flame, a temple.

Like a man on fire
running in the wilderness
shouting for sheer joy."

From the poem "A blessing (the way)" in the book "A shaman's songbook" by Norman Moser 

(This post on purpose in life: clarifying future goals & the challenges we will face in achieving them, and yesterday's on purpose in life: reconnecting to meaning & values, have been combined into a handout that is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

"Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity,
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible."  
T. E. Lawrence

(This post on purpose in life: reconnecting to meaning & values, and tomorrow's on purpose in life: clarifying future goals & the challenges we will face in achieving them, have been combined into a handout that is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

"When I get to heaven, God will not ask ‘Why were you not Moses?'. He will ask ‘Why were you not Susya?
Why did you not become what only you could become?'"   Susya, a Hasidic rabbi  

(This post on purpose in life questionnaires and the previous one on the importance of purpose in life for health & wellbeing have been combined into a handout that is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)