Feel Good Productivity

A Muhammad Ali quote came up a lot: ‘I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”’

• Positive emotions are the fuel that drives the engine of human flourishing.

• Why feel good productivity works

  • Feeling good boosts our energy.

  • Feeling good reduces our stress.

  • Feeling good enriches your life.

• Success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.

Part 1: Energise

• Play is our first energiser. Life is stressful. Play makes it fun. If we can integrate the spirit of play into our lives, we’ll feel better–and do more too.

• An adventurous life holds the key to unlocking positive emotions.

• Identifying and exploring our play personalities helps us reclaim some of the adventure that defined our childhoods–a time when feeling good was the norm, not the exception. It’s a spirit that still lies within us.

• Harnessing your curiosity is a second method for building adventure into your life. Curiosity doesn’t simply make our lives more enjoyable. It also allows us to focus longer.

• By adding a side quest to your day, you create space for curiosity, exploration and playfulness–and could discover something amazing and totally unexpected along the way.

• In every job that must be done, There is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game.

• Think of a task that you don’t want to do right now, and ask what would it look like if it were fun? Could you do it in a different way? Could you add music, or a sense of humour, or get creative? What if you set out to do the task with friends, or promised yourself a treat at the end of the process? Is there a way to make this draining process a little more enjoyable?

• If we can learn to focus on the process, rather than the outcome, we’re substantially more likely to enjoy a task.

• When we’re stressed, we’re less likely to be playful. And our creativity, productivity and wellbeing tend to suffer too.

• For play to flourish, we don’t just need to seek out adventure and find fun. We also need to try and create an environment that’s low-stakes and that fosters relaxation. And we can start to do that by reappraising how we think about failure.

• These supposed failures are not really failures, they’re ‘data points’ that we need to figure out how to succeed.

• No failure is ever just a failure. It’s an invitation to try something new.

• Don’t Be Serious. Be Sincere

• There is a difference between being serious and being sincere.

• The most fun people to play games with are people who play sincerely. They take the game seriously enough to be fully engaged in the experience, but not so seriously that they become fixated on winning or losing. They’re able to laugh and joke around, to make light of their mistakes, and to enjoy the company of their friends without becoming overly attached to winning (or the rules).

• When you feel like your work is draining or overwhelming, try asking yourself, ‘How can I approach this with a little less seriousness, and a little more sincerity?’ If you were approaching a difficult project at work sincerely rather than seriously, you might focus on the process of completing each task, rather than becoming fixated on the end result. You might also seek out the input and collaboration of others, rather than trying to tackle the project on your own. By doing these things, you may find that it’s easier to approach it in the spirit of play, and that you’re better able to stay focused and motivated throughout.

• If you were approaching a job interview sincerely rather than seriously, then instead of becoming overly nervous and stressed about the outcome, you might focus on being present and engaged. You might also try to connect with the interviewer on a more personal level, rather than simply trying to impress them with your credentials. By doing so, you might be more likely to approach the interview with lightness and ease, and to come away from the interview feeling more confident and satisfied with your performance.

• Seriousness is overrated. If you want to achieve more without ruining your life, the first step is to approach your work with a sense of play.

• There are three ways you can incorporate the spirit of play into your life. First, approach things with a sense of adventure. When you step into the right ‘play personality’, every day abounds with opportunities to see life as a game, filled with surprises and side quests.

• Second, find the fun. Remember Mary Poppins: there’s an element of fun in every task, even if it isn’t always obvious. Try asking yourself what this would look like if it were fun, and then build your projects around the answer.

• Third, lower the stakes. Failures are only failures when you think they are–and not every problem need be approached with such a straight face. So what would it mean to approach your work with less seriousness and more sincerity?

• Power is our second energiser; a crucial ingredient in feeling good and being productive. And best of all, it’s not something you seize from others–it’s something you create for yourself.

• Feeling confident about our ability to complete a task makes us feel good when we’re doing it, and helps us do it better.

• Believing you can is the first step to making sure you actually can.

• Next time you’re feeling like a task or project is particularly difficult, ask yourself, ‘What would it look like if I were really confident at this?’ Just by asking yourself the question, you’ll visualise yourself confidently approaching the task at hand. The switch has been flipped.

• Find people who are going through the same challenges as you and spend time with them–or find other ways to hear their stories. By immersing yourself in vicarious success, you’ll be building a powerful story in your own mind: that if they can, you can too.

• Learning through doing is one of the most powerful forces in human psychology. It’s the second key strategy if we’re to build our sense of power. Why? Because the more we do something, the greater our sense of control. We learn. We level up our skills. Our confidence grows. And we empower ourselves.

• The Shoshin Approach — It might sound odd that adopting a beginner’s mind helps you become more of an expert in that field. Surely a beginner is someone who, by definition, has no idea what they are doing? However, shoshin can have a remarkable impact precisely because it allows us to see things afresh. Think about a skill you’ve spent years learning. You probably have a set way of doing it; if you like to draw, you know which part of a portrait you prefer to start first. If you play sport, you probably decided long ago which position on the pitch best suits your talents. Your experiences have made you much more set in your ways than you once were. A beginner, on the other hand, has none of these preconceptions. A beginner is more willing to try things out, even if they might fail. A beginner will start with whichever part of somebody’s portrait tickles their fancy. And a beginner is happy to start off playing anywhere on the field, even if they might make a fool of themselves. They’re more willing to make mistakes, and these mistakes are precisely what’s needed to learn.

• If you’re in the world of business, shoshin might mean embracing innovation and experimentation, reminding yourself that ‘masters’ become limited by their beliefs in what’s been done and how, while beginners seek new approaches to problem-solving and explore new markets or opportunities. Or if you work in creative fields like writing or music, shoshin might mean deliberately maintaining your interest in different techniques, and pushing yourself to collaborate with people with different styles. Beginners don’t hold strong beliefs about what will work, they just try.

• By letting go of the idea that we know everything, or somehow should, we actually feel more powerful.

• In identical circumstances, with identical material, the people who had to teach others about a subject would learn the material better themselves. The researchers named this phenomenon the ‘protégé effect’.

• He who teaches learns.

• By sharing your techniques and strategies with others, you’ll be able to refine your own skills and gain new insights

• If you’re concerned that you’re not ‘qualified’ enough to teach someone else, it’s worth remembering that the people we learn from best are often the ones who are just a step ahead of us in the journey. So anyone can become a teacher. You don’t need to be a guru. You can just be a guide.

• When we can’t take ownership of the situation, we can still take ownership of the process.

• You can do the same. ‘Have to’ is coercive language that makes you feel powerless. ‘Choose to’ is autonomy-affirming language that makes you feel powerful. Whenever you feel you must do something, think again. How did your choices lead you to this moment? And is there a way to turn this ‘have to’ into a ‘choose to’? And if you’re doing something you really didn’t choose, what choices can you make around your approach?

• ‘Power’ is a scary word, but it doesn’t have to be. When we say the second energiser is power, we don’t mean exerting control over others. Here, we simply mean feeling empowered to take your job, life and future into your own hands.

• There are three ways you can increase your sense of power, starting now. Begin with confidence. We think our confidence is fixed, but actually it’s extremely malleable. So why not try ‘flipping the confidence switch’–and playing the role of someone who’s already filled with self-belief?

• Next, level up your skills. Ask yourself: if I were completely new to this task, what would this look like? And how can I start teaching others even though I’m not an expert yet?

• Finally, see what you can do to take ownership, even in moments when you don’t have as much control as you’d like. Remember, if you can’t choose what you work on, you can still choose how you work on it. The outcome isn’t always in your hands. But the process, and certainly your mindset, often is.

• Teamwork is as much a psychological state as a way of dividing up tasks.

• Simply feeling as if you’re part of a team of people working on a task makes people more motivated as they take on challenges. When the going gets tough, it’s better to have friends to lean on than enemies to lord it over.

• Synchronicity makes us want to help others. And it makes us want to help ourselves.

• Luks’s research showed that when we help others, our brains release a flood of chemicals that create a natural high. Feel-good hormones like oxytocin surge through our bodies, creating a wave of positive energy that can last for hours–even days–after the helping has ended.

• Random acts of kindness offer the first way to integrate the helper’s high into our day-to-day lives. By stopping what you’re doing and offering help to people at random, you can boost your endorphin levels and help yourself work harder.

• Benjamin Franklin effect — It suggests that when we ask someone for help, it’s likely to make them think better of us. It’s the flipside of the transformative effects of helping others: we can ask others to help us, which will help them feel better, too.

• When you think you’ve communicated plenty, you almost certainly haven’t.

• At every turn, try to make your overcommunication about the good as positive and as uplifting as possible. Overcommunication won’t just inspire them. It will inspire you too.

• Life is more fun with friends around. That’s why our third energiser is people. There are some people who naturally uplift our energy–the trick is finding them.

• That starts with becoming a team player. Try treating the people you’re working with as comrades rather than competitors.

Part 2: Unblock

• When you want to succeed as badly as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.

• Motivation and discipline are useful strategies, but they’re band-aids covering up deeper wounds. They might sometimes work to treat the symptoms, but they don’t change the underlying condition.

• The unblock method encourages us to understand why we’re feeling bad about work in the first place.

• This is a little like the sensation of procrastinating. Often, the reason we don’t make a start is because we don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing in the first place–a mystifying fog has set in around us. I call it the fog of uncertainty.

• Previously, when I embarked on a project my instinct was to immediately press ahead, planning every step–without ever really thinking about my desired end-state. But this level of obsessive planning can prove an obstacle. I would get so bogged down in ticking off specific tasks that I would lose track of what the ultimate point was. So now, before embarking on a new project, I ask myself the first commander’s intent question: ‘What is the purpose behind this?’ And I build my to-do list from there.

• My twist on Toyoda’s method is to use the five whys not only to explain mistakes, but to determine whether a task is worth doing in the first place. Whenever somebody in my team suggests we embark on a new project, I ask ‘why’ five times. The first time, the answer usually relates to completing a short-term objective. But if it is really worth doing, all that why-ing should lead you back to your ultimate purpose, as laid out in your commander’s intent. If it doesn’t, you probably shouldn’t bother.

• Near-term: Near-term goals ensure that we’re concentrating on the immediate steps we need to take along our journey.

• Input-based: Input-based goals emphasise the process, rather than some distant, abstract end-goal.

• Controllable: We want to focus on goals that are within our control.

• Energising: We’ve already discussed plenty of principles and strategies for making our projects, tasks and chores more energising.

• If you don’t know when you’re doing something, chances are you won’t do it.

• We get procrastination wrong. All too often, we approach procrastination by treating the symptoms rather than the underlying causes. And all too often, those causes relate to our mood: when we feel bad, we achieve less. So the unblock method is about establishing what’s really blocking your good mood–and finding a way to eliminate it.

• The first emotional barrier is the simplest: uncertainty. The solution? To gain clarity about what you’re actually doing. That involves asking ‘why?’ and then using this to figure out your ‘how’.

• Next, ask ‘what?’. That means an alternative approach to goal-setting. Forget SMART goals. What you need are goals that feel NICE (near-term, input-based, controllable and energising).

• Last, ask ‘when?’. If you don’t know when you’re going to do something, chances are you won’t do it. One solution is to use implementation intentions–where your common daily habits become triggers for the things you intend to work on: for example, if I brush my teeth, then I’ll stretch my hamstring.

• It isn’t lack of talent or inspiration that’s holding you back. It’s fear.

• Getting to know our fears is the first step towards overcoming them.

• This technique is called ‘affective labelling’. Put simply, it’s the act of putting your feelings into words, which forces you to identify and get to know the sensations you’re experiencing. It works in two ways. First, it increases our self-awareness. By naming and acknowledging our fears, we cultivate a deeper self-awareness that helps us better understand our emotional patterns. Second, it reduces our rumination. Cyclical thoughts about our fears can make us even more convinced the fear is justified. When we label our emotions, we become better able to process and release them–and so escape the cyclical thoughts that make us put things off.

• When you’re procrastinating, say to yourself, ‘What am I afraid of?’ Our core vulnerabilities and insecurities are often at the heart of procrastination. To work through them, we have to first identify them.

• ‘Labelling theory’, and it suggests that labels become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’ve probably experienced this yourself. You have one bad relationship and you conclude that you just aren’t good at relationships at all. You fail one test and you label yourself an academic failure forever. You miss one deadline and label yourself a procrastinator. The good news is that labelling can also cut the other way. Just as a negative label can amplify our fears, a positive label can overcome them.

• Labels are not just inert tags other people place on us. They’re tools that help us make sense of who we are. If we can change our labels, we can often change our behaviour.

• The 10/ 10/ 10 Rule — A simple way to put cognitive reappraisal into practice is to remind yourself that the thing you’re feeling so bad about probably won’t matter that much in the future. You can do this by asking yourself the following three questions, which add up to what I call the 10/ 10/ 10 rule. Ask yourself:

  • Will this matter in 10 minutes?

  • Will this matter in 10 weeks?

  • Will this matter in 10 years?

• Make a start. You won’t need to get perfect for a long time yet.

• Adele took her inspiration from Beyoncé. In 2008 Beyoncé named her third studio album after her alter ego, Sasha Fierce. Beyoncé said that Sasha Fierce was a persona that she could channel on stage to become more confident, more powerful, and free from inhibitions. ‘Sasha Fierce is the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I’m working and when I’m on the stage,’ she said.

• The truth is, everyone is concerned mostly about themselves, and how they’re coming across. They’re not spending much time (if any) thinking about us. What this suggests is that the spotlight effect can be reduced with a simple reminder that, well, no one cares. And when fear is holding you back from doing something, this can be profoundly liberating.

• The mindset of ‘no one cares’ can be totally transformative. It’s one of the simplest methods I’ve identified to reduce my anxiety-related procrastination.

• Batman effect as a tool for overcoming our fears of failure–and in turn overcoming our procrastination. When we embody the traits of a fearless, confident alter ego, we can tap into a reservoir of courage and determination that we might not feel our regular selves possess.

• Repeat this mantra to yourself when you need a boost of courage or motivation. I am confident. I am fearless. I am unstoppable.

• That courage comes from three sources. The first is to understand your fear. Ask yourself: why have I not started on that task or project yet? What am I afraid of? Where does this fear come from?

• The second is to reduce your fear. Our fears are often blown out of proportion. Ask yourself these questions to prevent yourself from catastrophising: will this matter in 10 minutes? Will this matter in 10 weeks? Will this matter in 10 years?

• The third is to overcome your fear. If you’re scared of what other people think, remind yourself that most people are not, in fact, thinking about you. We’re a self-conscious species, but we’re not usually a judgemental one.

• Well, the trick is to tweak your environment to make the thing you want to make a start on the most obvious, default decision. And, in turn, to make the things you don’t want to do the more difficult decision.

• Adjusting your environment helps tilt your actions towards the right decision, the one you actually want. Not the bad decision you take without thinking.

• The five-minute rule is a simple but powerful technique that encourages you to commit to working on a task for just five minutes. The idea behind this rule is that taking the first step is often the most challenging part of any task. During those five minutes, you focus solely on the thing you’re avoiding, giving it your full attention. Once the five minutes are up, you can decide whether to continue working or to take a break.

• First, because tracking your progress helps you identify any areas where you may be falling behind, or where you need to make adjustments. By monitoring your progress, you can identify patterns, habits or obstacles that may be hindering your progress.

• Tracking your progress provides you with tangible evidence that you’re moving towards your goals.

• Starting something alone is infinitely more difficult than starting it together. When we find a partner to hold us accountable, we’re much more likely to overcome inertia.

• An accountability partnership is just a mechanism that turns this basic social fact into a formal system. You and another person mutually agree to hold each other accountable at an agreed time for an agreed task.

• The best accountability buddies meet five criteria: being disciplined (they must stick to what you’ve agreed to), challenging (they know what it means to help you move on to the next level), patient (they don’t jump to conclusions or rush you into making decisions), supportive (they’re there with words of encouragement) and constructive (they must know how to give you honest feedback and constructive criticism).

• Procrastination isn’t something we can always control. Forgiving ourselves is something we can. You can focus on the small losses. Or you can celebrate the small wins. By accepting and forgiving our inevitable tendency to procrastinate–and celebrating the little victories instead–we can begin to conquer its hold over us.

Part 3: Sustain

• There are three common forces that make us feel worse and in turn lead us to burnout. They’re easy to confuse with one another. But they’re fundamentally different.

• First up, there are the burnouts that come about from simply taking on too much work. Your mood is suffering because you’re packing too much into each day. I call these overexertion burnouts.

• Next, there are burnouts that relate to a misguided approach to rest. Your mood is suffering because you haven’t given yourself the deeper periods of time off that you need–not just little breaks throughout the day, but the longer breaks that recharge the energy of your mind, body, and spirit. I call these depletion burnouts.

• Finally, there are burnouts that relate to doing the wrong stuff. Your mood is suffering because of the weeks, years or decades when you’ve put all your efforts into something that doesn’t bring you joy or meaning, and it has worn you down. You’ve been using your energy in the wrong way. I call these misalignment burnouts.

• Do less, so that you can unlock more.

• ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on,’ he said. ‘But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are … Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.’ Jobs’ message was clear: no was just as important as yes. ‘I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done,’ Jobs said.

• The idea of the ‘energy investment portfolio’ is simple. You simply come up with two lists. List A is a list of all your dreams, hopes and ambitions. These are things you would like to do at some point, just probably not right now. List B is a list of your active investments. These are the projects you’re actively investing energy into right now (or want to be). And by right now, I mean this week.

• When you find yourself weighing up whether to take on a new project or commitment, you’ve got two options–either ‘hell yeah’ or ‘no’. There’s no in between.

• Ask yourself a simple question. Every time you’re presented with a request for a few weeks’ time, think: ‘Would I be excited about this commitment if it was happening tomorrow? Or am I only thinking about saying “yes” to it because it’s easier to make it a problem for my future self?’

• If you wouldn’t say yes to something happening tomorrow, you shouldn’t say yes to it in a month or more.

• On the one hand, the erosion of our abilities when we change focus too often comes from what scientists call ‘switching costs’. These are the cognitive and temporal resources expended during the transition between tasks. Think of the mental effort required to disengage from one task, reorient oneself to the new task, and then adjust to its demands.

• Failing with abandon is a common reason we waste vast amounts of energy. The key thing is getting back on course.

• Think of distraction as a temporary veering off-track–not an indication that it’s time to abandon your plans altogether. As long as we correct course, we’ll still end up at our intended destination.

• Give yourself permission to be distracted.

• Adding a break of just ten minutes between two tasks that require self-control seems to help combat overexertion.

• So the last step to conserve your energy is even simpler than the first two: find moments in your working day to do nothing. And embrace them.

• Schedule Your Breaks

• The first way we can embrace the redemptive power of breaking is devilishly simple: schedule time into your calendar to do nothing. And schedule more of it than you think.

• ‘You can’t be of any use to anyone if you’re exhausted, but you can make more effective decisions if you take the time to recharge and refocus,’

• Breaks aren’t a special treat. They’re an absolute necessity.

• Embrace Energising Distractions

• Life isn’t about maintaining focus all the time. It’s about allowing space for little moments of serendipity and joy.

• The greatest cause of burnout isn’t exhaustion. It’s low mood. If you can make yourself feel better, you won’t just achieve more–you’ll last longer, too.

• Our first kind of burnout arises from overexertion. The solution: do less.

• There are three ways to do less in practice. The first is to stop yourself from overcommitting. Limit the list of projects you’re working on and get comfortable with saying ‘no’. Ask yourself: if I had to pick only one project to put all my energy into, what would that be?

• The second way is to resist distraction. Ask yourself: can I uninstall social media apps on my phone so that I can access them only through my web browser? How can I correct course and restart if (or, more realistically, when) I get distracted?

• The third way is to find moments in your working day to do nothing. Ask yourself: am I treating breaks as a special event rather than a necessity? And what could I do to take more of them?

• They argue that creative activities are particularly likely to make us relax. And they have four characteristics that are especially helpful in making us feel good–ones that I like to remember using a simple acronym: CALM.

  • First, creative activities unlock our sense of competence.

  • Second, creative activities play to our feelings of autonomy.

  • Third, creative activities give us a feeling of liberty.

  • Finally, creative activities help us mellow.

• Hobbies are the first way we can integrate CALM activities into our lives. The defining characteristic of a hobby is that it’s low stakes; there’s simply no way to win or lose a hobby, nor to turn it into a business.

• How can we maximise the potential of these creative hobbies? The trick is to ensure that they remain just that: distinct from your work, with no clear end point and no stress. To this end, it can be helpful to make sure that your hobby has clear boundaries. Establish specific times for your creative activity, and distinguish it from your work and daily responsibilities. Try dedicating a particular room or space to your hobby, turning off work notifications during your creative time, or setting a regular schedule for when you’ll engage in your chosen activity.

• Next, continually remind yourself that the hobby should be enjoyed for the process, rather than any kind of high-stakes goal. As you paint, play or build, remind yourself that this is an arena in which quality doesn’t matter. So allow yourself to make mistakes, experiment, and grow at your own pace. Your primary goal is not to become an expert or a master. It’s to enjoy and to recharge.

• Going public with your hobby in this way–trying to put it into the public eye, or even monetise it–is risky. It means you might no longer view your hobby as true recreation, and instead see it as another side hustle. If you want to properly recharge, you need to maintain areas of your life in which personal advancement doesn’t feature at all.

• Basking in the glory of the natural world is our second way to recharge properly. Nature replenishes our cognitive abilities and boosts our energy. Nature makes us feel good. We need a way to integrate it into our rest.

• If you’re looking for a simple and easy way to immediately feel rejuvenated, just try taking a walk–no time limit, no distance to reach, no place in particular to go. If you can, take your stroll through a park, or a forest, or just a particularly verdant street. If you want, bring a friend. It may not be the four hours that Thoreau recommended, but even a ten-minute stroll down the block during your break might be enough to change your day–and your life–for the better.

• The real gauge of friendship is how clean your house needs to be before they can come over.

• Doing nothing can be surprisingly productive.

• The Reitoff principle is the idea that we should grant ourselves permission to write off a day and intentionally step away from achieving anything.

• By doing less today, you can do more of what matters to you tomorrow.

• Not all extrinsic motivation is inherently ‘bad’.

• When we think about death, we get a clearer view of life.

• The Eulogy Method — My iteration involves focusing not on your obituary, but on your funeral. Simply ask yourself: ‘What would I feel good about someone saying in my eulogy?’ Think about what you’d like a family member, a close friend, a distant relative, a co-worker, to say at your funeral.

• This method helps us get at the question of ‘What do I value?’ from other people’s perspective. At your funeral, even your co-workers would be unlikely to say, ‘He helped us close lots of million-dollar deals.’ They’d talk about how you were as a person–your relationships, your character, your hobbies. And they’d talk about the positive impact you had on the world, not how much money you made for your employer.

• The Odyssey Plan — At the heart of the exercise was a simple question: what do you want your life to look like in five years’ time?

  • Your Current Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you continued down your current path.

  • Your Alternative Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you took a completely different path.

  • Your Radical Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you took a completely different path, where money, social obligations and what people would think, were irrelevant.

• Values affirmations make our most abstract ideals real. And they boost our confidence along the way.

• The wheel of life, Dr Lillicrap explained, was a coaching framework we could use to define success for ourselves. You start by drawing a circle and slicing it up into nine segments. Around the edges of each spoke of the wheel, you write down the major areas of your life.

  • We’ve got three for Health (Body, Mind and Soul); three for Work (Mission, Money, Growth) and three for Relationships (Family, Romance, Friends).

  • Next, you rate how aligned you feel in each area of your life. Ask yourself: ‘To what extent do I feel like my current actions are aligned with my personal values?’ And colour in the segment accordingly–if you feel fulfilled, fill it in entirely; if you feel completely unfulfilled, leave it blank.

• The 12-Month Celebration — Imagine it’s twelve months from now and you’re having dinner with your best friend. You’re celebrating how much progress you’ve made in the areas of life that are important to you over the last year. Look back over the values that you identified in the wheel of life. Now, write down what you’d want to tell your best friend about your progress in each of them.

• Each morning, simply choose three actions for the day ahead that will move you a tiny step closer to where you want to be in a year’s time.

• Misalignment burnouts arise when we spend time on goals that don’t match up with our sense of self. Overcoming misalignment is a lifelong task; one that requires us to continually work out what really matters to us, and change our behaviour accordingly.