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I had quite a bit of feedback on my last post Permission to Pace. This was partly because people identified with feeling fatigued and demotivated, but also because giving themselves permission to take the foot off the pedal is hard.

I took the opportunity of Christmas being “cancelled” to plough on with getting my book ready for the deadline with my editor. After a final push, I despatched the manuscript the Saturday before last. And then I fell off a cliff.

How are you? This time of year can be challenging at the best of times as you get back into the swing of things after the Christmas break and hunker down given the short winter days.

A few months ago, I wrote a post called Befriend reality about how holding on to expectations about how things should be, rather than how they are, can cause us unnecessary suffering.

The other day, I watched a talk by Peter Baines, a former forensic specialist and founder of charity Hands Across the Water, a charity set up to help children in Thailand who lost their families and homes as a result of the tsunami in 2004.

Where is your breath right now? When I ask my coaching clients this, they’re often a bit perplexed. “My nose? My mouth? I’m not sure what you mean.”

In her latest book, Dare to Lead, Brene Brown talks about the Stockdale Paradox. Admiral Stockdale was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for 8 years.

Since they introduced clay courts at our tennis club, it’s much easier to make a line call. If you call the ball out and your opponent disagrees, you can actually go over to the spot where the ball landed and find the mark. Conversation closed.

When I run webinars, I ask participants at the end what their top takeaway was from the session – their golden nugget.

Confidence has a bad press. It’s often dismissed as not being a serious contender in what helps high-achievers unleash their leadership potential.